Since we have people here representing both sides here, what would you do to change the course of what we are facing, both economically and pandemic wise?
You are handed the "Keys to the Kingdom". How do you steer this massive ship?
Please give some solid reasoning to your ideas as well instead of just bullet points. I'm curious to see what your entire idea is.
For me-
1. $2000 a month Universal Basic Income per person over 17. Minor children's parents would receive $1000 for the first, $500 for the second, and I could see scaling down from there. Once your income exceeds $75-100,000, ramp it down. No earner over $100,000 a year would receive UBI.
Reason - If you want less losers in your country, help people not be losers. Yes, there would be folks out there happy to have the bare minimum. And UBI would provide for shelter, food, utilities, and maybe a few luxury items if those people chose to save up. But that is all they would receive. If you chose to work, you could afford a nice house with a 2 car garage. You could afford to have the wife stay home and raise your kids if she chose to do so. What a UBI provides is something so American everybody should be screaming for it - Freedom. Freedom to know that if you start a small business you can keep the roof over your head and food in your children's stomachs. Freedom to know that if your business fails for whatever reason (like a pandemic), we as a nation have your back. Freedom to take chances and pursue your happiness. How many of us here have had a soul sucking job in their working career? How many haven't? What could more freeing than not having to work those kinds of jobs?
Speaking of - what about those jobs that need those low wage earners? Those workers will always be there. There will still be those that would be happy working behind a bar, or stocking shelves, or working at Best Buy. Hell, I'd love nothing more than to be a simple budtender somewhere. That would be fucking amazing to me. But I could never afford to. With a UBI, we could keep the minimum wage at $7-10 bucks an hour. And folks could live a decent life with that.
Who pays for it?- No more corporate tax loop holes. No more multi-millionaire tax breaks. No more off shore holdings. Slash the Pentagon's budget 25% by reducing our footprint around the world. You know who doesn't pay for it? The bottom 85% of American earners.
2. Medicare for all - Not just 97% there Uncle Joe. ALL! Again, this is all about freedom. Freedom to not have to worry about putting food on your table and a roof over your head so you can buy your insulin. Freedom to know that if you want to start a small business your children will have healthcare. On a personal note, I know my medical costs have skyrocketed since Obamacare was enacted. I've had bills go to collections because I couldn't pay them with what I was earning. I had to have a hip replaced 3 years ago that I'm still paying for. Not do anything within my control, but because of bad genes. If I had gotten cancer, I would have been screwed beyond belief. It is insane that in this day and age America is the only country that doesn't have universal healthcare and a for profit health system.
Who pays? The aforementioned corporate taxes and slashing of the Pentagon's budget. We need to stop feeding the industrial military complex.
3. Getting America back to work - compulsory masks for everybody. Masks get you 90% protection. Social distancing gets you another 90%. Together, that's 180% effectiveness! OK, not really. But it does get you 99%. And that's as good as you can hope for if you want to get the economy going again. Right now, experts are saying that 50% of small businesses are not going to come back from where we are now pandemic wise. Let's not increase that number by needing to shut back down. WEAR A MASK!
3a - Take 10% of the 25% cut from the Pentagon's budget and invest in America's infrastructure. 2020's New Deal. No it isn't sexy. No, there is no short term return on investment. This is the long play move. Our current infrastructure is falling apart. Our power grid is woefully inadequate for our needs. We have dams and bridges that are in serious disrepair and need to be fixed. We have 30-40 million American's unemployed right now. Let's get them back to work!
4. The current 800 pound gorilla in the room - systemic racism. I'll break this up into 2 parts.
4a - Police reform - Invest heavily in the police. (Fun fact - I used to interact with cops on a daily basis high as balls.) Most of them are woefully under trained to deal with what they need to deal with. I really like Jocko Willink's take on it - Navy SEALS spend 20% of their time training. We should be doing the same for the police. Not only force on force as in the SEALS, but de escalation techniques. Also, reduce their workload so they only have to deal with the bad guys. Have more Community type officers and train them up to do the mundane tasks of accident reporting. Hire more social type workers to handle the psych cases and domestic disputes. The police are so overwhelmed with stupid things that they were never trained on how to deal with, so their response is always to escalate so it ends in violence. If you want to wear a badge, it takes a 4 year degree and another year of training to earn that badge. And your training never stops.
4b - Invest in communities we have "left to the wolves". I really think a lot of the issues we have with neighborhoods falling into disrepair would be solved with not only a UBI, but investing in traditionally marginalized communities of all colors. I've driven through the dirty south. I can tell you ghettos know no color. White folks just call them trailer parks to make themselves feel better I guess. Any place that is the result of any kind of shift in manufacturing. I'm looking at you Detroit, Northern Indiana, coal mine country, South Chicago, Oakland, East LA, etc. All of these places and more need to be invested in to raise them up. "A rising ocean lifts all boats" or some such inspirational slogan. This could easily be rolled into my 2020 New Deal package. The same with Police Reform.
There is more, but this is a good platform to launch from.
So, do I have your vote? :yay:
You are handed the "Keys to the Kingdom". How do you steer this massive ship?
Please give some solid reasoning to your ideas as well instead of just bullet points. I'm curious to see what your entire idea is.
For me-
1. $2000 a month Universal Basic Income per person over 17. Minor children's parents would receive $1000 for the first, $500 for the second, and I could see scaling down from there. Once your income exceeds $75-100,000, ramp it down. No earner over $100,000 a year would receive UBI.
Reason - If you want less losers in your country, help people not be losers. Yes, there would be folks out there happy to have the bare minimum. And UBI would provide for shelter, food, utilities, and maybe a few luxury items if those people chose to save up. But that is all they would receive. If you chose to work, you could afford a nice house with a 2 car garage. You could afford to have the wife stay home and raise your kids if she chose to do so. What a UBI provides is something so American everybody should be screaming for it - Freedom. Freedom to know that if you start a small business you can keep the roof over your head and food in your children's stomachs. Freedom to know that if your business fails for whatever reason (like a pandemic), we as a nation have your back. Freedom to take chances and pursue your happiness. How many of us here have had a soul sucking job in their working career? How many haven't? What could more freeing than not having to work those kinds of jobs?
Speaking of - what about those jobs that need those low wage earners? Those workers will always be there. There will still be those that would be happy working behind a bar, or stocking shelves, or working at Best Buy. Hell, I'd love nothing more than to be a simple budtender somewhere. That would be fucking amazing to me. But I could never afford to. With a UBI, we could keep the minimum wage at $7-10 bucks an hour. And folks could live a decent life with that.
Who pays for it?- No more corporate tax loop holes. No more multi-millionaire tax breaks. No more off shore holdings. Slash the Pentagon's budget 25% by reducing our footprint around the world. You know who doesn't pay for it? The bottom 85% of American earners.
2. Medicare for all - Not just 97% there Uncle Joe. ALL! Again, this is all about freedom. Freedom to not have to worry about putting food on your table and a roof over your head so you can buy your insulin. Freedom to know that if you want to start a small business your children will have healthcare. On a personal note, I know my medical costs have skyrocketed since Obamacare was enacted. I've had bills go to collections because I couldn't pay them with what I was earning. I had to have a hip replaced 3 years ago that I'm still paying for. Not do anything within my control, but because of bad genes. If I had gotten cancer, I would have been screwed beyond belief. It is insane that in this day and age America is the only country that doesn't have universal healthcare and a for profit health system.
Who pays? The aforementioned corporate taxes and slashing of the Pentagon's budget. We need to stop feeding the industrial military complex.
3. Getting America back to work - compulsory masks for everybody. Masks get you 90% protection. Social distancing gets you another 90%. Together, that's 180% effectiveness! OK, not really. But it does get you 99%. And that's as good as you can hope for if you want to get the economy going again. Right now, experts are saying that 50% of small businesses are not going to come back from where we are now pandemic wise. Let's not increase that number by needing to shut back down. WEAR A MASK!
3a - Take 10% of the 25% cut from the Pentagon's budget and invest in America's infrastructure. 2020's New Deal. No it isn't sexy. No, there is no short term return on investment. This is the long play move. Our current infrastructure is falling apart. Our power grid is woefully inadequate for our needs. We have dams and bridges that are in serious disrepair and need to be fixed. We have 30-40 million American's unemployed right now. Let's get them back to work!
4. The current 800 pound gorilla in the room - systemic racism. I'll break this up into 2 parts.
4a - Police reform - Invest heavily in the police. (Fun fact - I used to interact with cops on a daily basis high as balls.) Most of them are woefully under trained to deal with what they need to deal with. I really like Jocko Willink's take on it - Navy SEALS spend 20% of their time training. We should be doing the same for the police. Not only force on force as in the SEALS, but de escalation techniques. Also, reduce their workload so they only have to deal with the bad guys. Have more Community type officers and train them up to do the mundane tasks of accident reporting. Hire more social type workers to handle the psych cases and domestic disputes. The police are so overwhelmed with stupid things that they were never trained on how to deal with, so their response is always to escalate so it ends in violence. If you want to wear a badge, it takes a 4 year degree and another year of training to earn that badge. And your training never stops.
4b - Invest in communities we have "left to the wolves". I really think a lot of the issues we have with neighborhoods falling into disrepair would be solved with not only a UBI, but investing in traditionally marginalized communities of all colors. I've driven through the dirty south. I can tell you ghettos know no color. White folks just call them trailer parks to make themselves feel better I guess. Any place that is the result of any kind of shift in manufacturing. I'm looking at you Detroit, Northern Indiana, coal mine country, South Chicago, Oakland, East LA, etc. All of these places and more need to be invested in to raise them up. "A rising ocean lifts all boats" or some such inspirational slogan. This could easily be rolled into my 2020 New Deal package. The same with Police Reform.
There is more, but this is a good platform to launch from.
So, do I have your vote? :yay:
they don't WANT smart cops, just as prosecutors do not want intelligent people on juries. what they fucking WANT is low-to-no info folks that do as they are told, do not read, are uneducated (like chump wants voters to be) and believe what the Man tells them to believe. cops & the judiciary badly need an ugly divorce, it is too damn obvious that, given wildly diverging testimony, judges are going to believe the cops, even when common sense tells them the courtroom is ass deep in rats.
