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Mostly good stuff. I don’t think I’d merge house and Senate. Some of them need more constraint, like I’d legalize prostitution, but only if it’s regulated like restaurants (health inspectors, workers rights, etc.).
What is your solution the massively disproportionate representation in the senate then? There are currently around 66.7 Californians for every Wyomingite. Do you think Wyomingites deserve 66.7 times the representation in the Senate? And yes, legalization would occur with reasonable regulations which would make sure the industry is safer for all those involved. I tried to keep the list as concise as possible for each issue reformed.
Do you think wyoming deserves to be a state? Every state gets the same representation in the Senate and I think that’s fair. I don’t think it’s fair that the proportional side of the legislature isn’t proportional anymore, though, and fixing that goes a very long way.
States don’t deserve equal representation. American citizens deserve equal representation, they are the ones who create value.
Then what you’re really saying is abolish the concept of states and have a single federal state.
No, states still would elect a number of representatives based on their population. Just no 2 senators per state.
Why even have states? Good way to get rid of jerrymandering would be to get rid of imaginary borders. No states, no senate necessary.
Something something…. Redraw state lines every 10 years…
Because state legislatures should continue to exist. If less populated conservative states want to go down a rabbit hole of far right shit then let them. Just don’t give them 2 senators per state to gridlock the states that continue to produce and provide for their population.
The Senate isn’t intended to be a representative body, it’s just two per state. They aren’t doing things like setting funding/budgets. Congress (the house of representatives) is designed to do that, though that needs some tweaking.
The Senate isn’t intended to be a representative body
Both the house and senate vote to pass bills. The disproportionate population increases have led to less representation of citizens in more populated states.
But the original states didn’t have balanced populations, the founders knew that, but they still set it to be two senators per state. The house is scaled by population.
They did that for as part of a negotiation though. The less populous states refused to join the union without something like the Senate.
To me it’s an outdated concept because states are much less independent now than they were back then. And we have a national identity that didn’t exist during the revolution.
There are other proposals to solve the Senate’s disproportionate nature, such as apportioning Senate seats by state population. Most proposals I’ve seen for that would leave the Senate with a little more than a hundred seats (with a minimum of 1 seat per state), which would (mostly) solve the problem and make it closer to the house in terms of proportionality. Of course, it all depends on the exact implementation.
What’s the purpose of the senate at that point? Seems redundant, like having two house of representatives.
That is in fact the point. It’s about checks and balances to stop bad actors from completely changing all of the rules the moment their party is in power. Of course, that’s completely pointless in a 2 Party system anyways and we should really reform campaign finance and election laws surrounding how to get on the ballot.
The point of the Senate is that it’s a more deliberative body, representing larger numbers of people, which serves to moderate the power of the House. Mind you, Congress as a whole was more powerful when the nation was founded; they’ve handed off power to the executive over the years, for better or worse (really, a bit of both). The House was also intended to grow with the population, and if we’d followed the general guidelines for growth the Founders suggested, we’d have a House with more than 600 members. The number of seats was capped ~90 years ago, because Congress didn’t want to fund another renovation of the capitol building to fit more people. Also keep in mind that the States had a more uniform population distribution when the country was founded. You didn’t have California and Nebraska sitting with orders of magnitude of difference between them, so the difference in representation in the Senate was not nearly as significant as it is today.
Wether we need a secondary deliberative body in the legislature or not is a matter of debate and opinion. I can see why you’d want one, but I can also understand why people would think it’s not useful anymore.
There’s no solution needed, since there isn’t a problem to begin with. Individuals (should) have proportional representation in the House, and states have proportional representation in the Senate, which is how it should be.
Do you think Wyomingites deserve 66.7 times the representation in the Senate?
Yes.
There’s no solution needed, since there isn’t a problem to begin with.
This is funny, it’s like an self soothing mantra. I’ll try to repeat this to myself as things get worse.
Beyond what you’ve stated about the disproportionate nature of the Senate, what exact legislative problems are you attributing to the existence of the Senate, and its disproportionate nature? And why do you think a purely proportional body will solve said issues? I’m also curious what you believe the purpose of the Senate, or a bicameral legislature in general, is.
I’m not trying to be accusatory in my probing, I’m simply curious what your exact rationale is ☺️.
The senate exists to maintain an artificial balance and make sure that only the approved things are actually voted on. That is why popular things like marijuana legalization are never voted on.
The senate exists to maintain an artificial balance
What do you mean by “artifical balance”?
and make sure that only the approved things are actually voted on
What do you mean, exactly? Bills are debated as they are presented [See 7.6 and 8.1 of the Senate Manual].
That is why popular things like marijuana legalization are never voted on.
I don’t understand this point. If you want a senator to introduce a bill regarding the legalization of marijuana, then vote in a senator that will present such a bill.
I don’t understand this point.
Yup, you don’t.
then vote in a senator that will present such a bill.
🤡
To be fair, Congress wouldn’t be so inept if it weren’t for the filibuster, which was never intended to be abused the way it is now. I’d be somewhat ok with the Senate if filibusters only required a simple majority to break again.
It is federally legal to prostitution. Just every single state outlaws except nevada.
Interesting, I never really thought about it, but of course that must be true for it to be legal anywhere.
Mandatory voting just adds semi-random votes, skewing the proportion of people who are really voting for their own interests, but rather out of vibes due to obligation. Holiday on voting days and repealing of disenfranchisement measures work much better.
One minor twist: the legislation mandates that one reports to the polling center. The uninformed can select “none of the above” if they are not sure what would be best.
I think it would still encourage meme voting in retaliation for having to show up. “You can force me to do this but you can’t force me to do this in good faith.”
If the worst you can say about this scheme is: “people may vote randomly” I don’t feel that bad. I assume the amount of people that spite vote(!) would be greatly outnumbered by people that actually give a shit (but who may not be able to vote today, due to work obligations)
The reason I think mandatory voting in Australia is nice (tiny fine for not doing it, so turn out is like 85-95% every time) is that because everyone obliged, it keeps voter disenfranchisement politically difficult. When you go to vote on election day, you wait 20 mins, tops, usually less, and you can vote ahead of time via mail or in person. It’s always Saturday for this reason too.
I’d argue it’s this easy partially because everyone HAS to do it, so if politicians start making it hard, people are gonna be pissed very quickly, so no one messes with the well-oiled machine.
And there are no stupid “get out to vote campaigns” wasting valuable headspace where instead we could be talking about actually issues.
Australia’s electoral system is far from perfect (single member local electorates which basically guarantees two stronger parties), but mandatory voting is definitely a feature I do not want to be rid of.
it keeps voter disenfranchisement politically difficult
Voter disenfranchisement, and mandatory voting are mutually exclusive concepts. One does not have the right to vote if they are forced to vote. Having a right encompasses the freedom of choice.
It doesn’t “just” do that. It totally reverses the ability for governments to block people from voting. If it’s an obligation then people must be provided a reasonable chance to vote. It makes more people engaged in politics as well instead of “can’t be bothered”
The last one could just be “free education”
Free education.
No private/charter schools.
Religions are businesses and pay taxes.
Ban religious-justified discrimination.
Religion is private between you and God.
Absolute separation between church and state.
Repeal all religion based laws.
I dont understand why Americans are horny for mandatory voting. Voting is mandatory in Greece, it makes no difference. It is theoretically illegal to not vote but are you going to imprison people for not voting? So it isnt enforced, at all.
No one is voting because it is mandatory. Greece has 60% participation.
How tf Americans don’t have a holiday on voting day 😭
Russia just did three day voting on friday, saturday and sunday to make sure that both 9-5 and 2 over 2 could have a day off to vote. The downside is that it was very expensive as the staff gotta be paid more than thrice the amount, it was very taxing on volunteer observers, and ultimately useless as they’ve made up whatever numbers they wanted using the unverifyable electronic voting in the end.
Are you seriously using Russia as a good example of democracy lmao
No, lmao, but can’t deny Russia has some nice things, even though by having those it is shooting itself in the foot. Like 2012 elections where they’ve basically said “Look, we have the entire election committee in the bag - еhey can draw us whatever results we want. But, let’s try to legitimize those elections in the eyes of the people! Let’s put a camera on every single polling station and let anyone watch them online, so that everyone can see how fair our elections are!”. As you might imagine, during the election, all social medias got completely flooded by recordings of voting fraud… And yes, people instantly noticed that the price for those cameras was like 10x of their market value, with 90% of costs landing straight into government officials pockets…
Have have three voting days - FRI to SUN - in Czechia aswell, for each voting. I imagine it is the same window in other EU countries, because it just fucking makes sense.
EDIT: I misremembered, we have only FRI and SAT.
No, we don’t, most elections are Friday(14-22) to Saturday(8-14).
I stand corrected. I must’ve forgotten since last time we had elections.
We in the UK don’t either. although polling is open from pretty early to pretty late and i have never ever seen a queue at a polling station so you’re in and out in a couple minutes, even in local elections.
And postal voting is a thing
Because decent state governments have early voting for like a full month before the final Election Day. No single day off needed.
A large portion of the states, if not the majority, do not have decent state governments.
I mean ours in India are decently spread out by disctrict and they’re all holidays in that area.
#1. Truly abolish slavery. #2. Change the legal system from punishment to rehabilitation. #3. Congress gets minimum wage. #4. Minimum wage and unemployment must be a livable wage.
Congress gets minimum wage
Only works in a country where politicians can’t enrich themselves through heredity or graft. As it stands, the bulk of a Congressman’s fortune accrues before (family/career) or after (lobbyist/book deals) they take high office.
Unfortunately, there is no perfect system when humans are involved. We’ll either fuck it up or change our minds on what is perfect.
A perfect system would necessarily be mutable. If we couldn’t fuck it up, it wouldn’t be perfect, just rigid and unforgiving.
My only issue with point 3 is wouldn’t that make members of Congress more tempted by bribes and such? Sure, we can out law it and say it’s bad, but as my uncle always told me, it’s only illegal if you get caught.
Yup. Exactly why you can bribe police in some poorer countries. They don’t make enough money to say no.
I agree. Talking in such broad terms leaves a lot of holes. Since we’re talking pie in the sky stuff maybe: have congressional service require divesting oneself of all past and future funds beyond X amount with the understanding that they have to have increased scrutiny in all financial matters- like no privacy. I can think of a lot of problems with this but could it be better than the current system? I don’t see how it couldn’t be a bit of an improvement over them making $174k and yet being hundreds millionaires from stock trading for themselves and family members over years of insider information.
I’m 90-95% on board, which is astounding considering the current options. Now fleshing out the legislation to make this transition possible…
Ok so…
Mandatory voting
I think this can get messy. It would require a system to prosecute those who don’t vote. That kind of registry can be very easily used for nefarious purposes by politicians or just anyone with access to that information. Also, it would really depend on what degree of mandatory this is. If you get thrown in jail then we are going to see a lot of poor people in prison for no reason. If you get just a fine then we are essentially introducing the inverse of a poll tax. Not voting is a protected form of free speech for a reason and can be interpreted as protest.
Merge house into senate
Last time something like this was posted I got flamed for asking what the point of this one is. The Senate is a representation of the states rights we have in our constitution. It serves as a safeguard against heavily populated areas dictating the laws for much less populated states. I’m all for reform but eliminating the Senate all together seems like a step backwards.
Ban tipping
I think this is another one where the spirit of the idea is right but the execution is wrong. What we need to ban is allowing restaurants to pay tipped positions far below minimum wage, and stop allowing restaurants to take a cut of the tip at all.
The act of tipping itself is a cultural thing that needs to be addressed culturally. If you can’t tip someone for something, complications in the law arise that may disallow giving money to people in general. For example how do you distinguish between tipping a server for a meal and giving the server a dollar as a gift?
Tipping is really hard to rein in. Your suggestion of banning the “tipped wage” is good, but the regular minimum wage is so far below living wage already that paying people minimum wage still leaves them relying on tips.
As a Canadian I refuse to participate in the “tip for everything” grift that has sprung up recently. However when we’re down at the local bar and the service is great, the food is good, the waitress is friendly and cheerful, I want to leave a tip.
Also as a Canadian, the Canadian Senate is an irrelevant relic that doesn’t serve the same purpose as the US Senate, and should totally be abolished. But it’s a totally different situation.
+1 on the senate, it serves a purpose, if you don’t think it does you clearly don’t understand why it exists lol.
It exists because there was a time when we needed buy in from states, not just people. The Senate was how that was accomplished.
It’s a way of ensuring our democracy isn’t too democratic.You can understand the point of the Senate without thinking that we need to ensure that land is adequately represented in our government.
legislatively it makes sense. it removes a significant portion of say from large states, like texas and california, over small states like wyoming, who have comparatively little say. The trick is that it’s application specific. Unless we’re restructuring the entire government the senate does exist for a pretty explicit purpose.
I think it only makes sense if you think that it matters that Wyoming is fairly represented, and not the people in Wyoming.
I don’t particularly care about the representation of the land, only the people who live on it, where each person should have as much say as any other.The Senate is explicitly antidemocratic, and since I’m a fan of fair representation, I’m not a fan of the Senate.
Well, I suppose you could also make it so states get equal numbers of senators and representatives. That would also be fine, since there’s a slight use for the Senate having a longer election cycle.
Since this whole thread is basically playing and dreaming, I’ll easily agree that you can’t just drop the Senate without at least giving a look at how that impacts the rest of the government organization.
it depends on the legislation. If it’s something that the states are involved in, and it isn’t particularly relevant to the people of the state like most legislation probably is. And in that scenario, it would be beneficial for wyoming to not be overshadowed by.
Also i dont think you understand how senate seats work, they’re literally popular votes. We put them there. That’s at least following the basic principles of democracy. I’m not sure how one would argue against that, unless you have a massive problem with the electoral college, would which would be fair i suppose.
This isn’t a supreme court situation where they’re appointed magically.
What? No, I understand how Senate seats work. It’s not undemocratic because they’re not voted on, it’s undemocratic because they over represent some people over others. Wyoming and California should not be on equal ground because California has 80 times the population.
All issues that impact a state impact the people of the state. States don’t have interests, they’re just collections of people living on a piece of land.Giving votes to land is an artifact of getting the country started.
The problem here though is that the US doesn’t work like the EU does for instance. The EU is the US if it were less federally controlled, and more “formally agreed upon” rather than legislated and codified into law.
While it is true that most issues of the state are related to the people, it’s also true that each state government is independent from the federal government. And they do need some level of individualism, in order to function appropriately, without the ability for larger states to pull a shenanigan that can negatively affect smaller states. It’s not about representation of the land, it’s about equal representation of the individual components of the hierarchical government body.
This is like saying that because America is 75% white people, that they should have 75% control over everything, which by nature, is true to a degree, but this creates a problem where the majority, can overrule anything a minority says. And they have no course of action in response.
A lot of legislation in the government is highly isolated from the average citizen. That’s kind of the whole point of the government, if you truly wanted democracy. Wouldn’t it be prudent to delete both the house and the senate? So that way we truly have democratic rule over the county? Seems like the better option here. Not to mention the fact that the house and senate co-exist in a similar space, and can be utilized to prevent further shenanigans. If we only had the house, it would only take the house in order to push through bullshit legislation that nobody wants. They exist as two separate entities, operating in two independent manners. With a reasonable level of democratic influence over the two.
While technically not democratic, the US doesn’t advertise itself as democratic, merely a democratic republic.
We already have a registry of who did or didn’t vote.
That you voted is a matter of public record, as is voter registration information.
Registration data is used for campaign purposes, and voter participation data is mostly used to encourage people to vote.The act of tipping itself is a cultural thing it needs to be addressed culturally. If you can’t tip someone for something, complications in the law arise that may disallow giving money to people in general. For example how do you distinguish between tipping a server for a meal and giving the server a dollar as a gift?
If you are a customer at a food or retail business and opt to give one worker there a cash gift while they are on the clock, how can that not be a tip? Current US laws like FLSA already have a very clear definition of tipped wages which would include anything matching that description.
Even if you want to allow that sort of cash “gift”, eliminating tips for credit card payments should be enough to shift the norms and expectations. Namely, prohibit payment terminals from prompting for a tip as part of the same credit card transaction and prohibit the tip lines on receipts. Majority of Americans don’t pay with cash. If a business says they accept credit card, customers clearly aren’t expected to give a decent tip and by extension the advertised meal prices and wage amounts should reflect what the customer is expected to pay and what the staff should expect to earn independent of customer whims.
I can see the argument for credit card tips not being necessary, especially given that it puts the onus on the restaurant to be honest and distribute that tip correctly instead of just pocketing it (thanks subway).
But if I choose to give a server a dollar, that should be my right as an individual. Micromanaging who I’m allowed to give cash to is a step in the wrong direction.
IMPROVE PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION
edit: DST for areas that need it like alaska or new york but not California and others
HIGH SPEED RAIL PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE
Remove lobbying.
No idea why we created a new word just to cover up what it really is. Bribery.
That’s there, 6th from the bottom
just make all election cycles last for a period of no longer than 6 months, with a limit on how much can be spent on political advertisements. No Super PACs, no dark money, everyone gets to spend the same amount, and only for the 6 months leading up to elections.
Yeah except increase taxes on highest income bracket by 65, not 5%.
Reverse Harlow V Fitzgerald, that illegally set up Qualified Immunity.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/15/us/politics/qualified-immunity-supreme-court.html
I don’t like a 15 year term for scotus.
A term limit does make sense, but either in the form of a forced retirement age or a 36 year term. They should also be barred from collecting a wage or benefits from any employer after the end of their term (they should get a damn good retirement package, too).
There are good reasons for SCOTUS to be a life appointment. You don’t want them being bought out with lucrative cushy job offers once they leave. 36 years ensures one appointee per presidential term.
If life terms are there to prevent corruption, it doesn’t seem to be working. Maybe if there were any anti corruption laws that applied to them it might.
That’s just one part of preventing corruption.
The other part is having a semi-functional Congress to, ya know, checks and balances and stuff.
A 36 year term is tantamount to a life term. If a young attorney or judge is elected to the Supreme Court in their 30s they might see the end of the 36 year term.
Maybe, maybe not. You wouldn’t see judges strategically timing their retirements with elections, and you wouldn’t see people faulting RBG for not stepping down under Obama. She only spent 27 years on the bench, but she was appointed at ~60.
What about making the highest tax bracket immutable.
Basically, anyone earning more than that amount, for every dollar of earnings above that amount, taxes cannot be exempted, refunded or otherwise redirected.
Say that tax bracket is 500k/yr, and some rich fuck earns 2M. They must pay the tax, whatever percent of tax that is, on the final 1.5M of earnings. So if it’s 50% taxes, they must pay $750k, plus whatever taxation is applicable to the first $500k. They can’t skirt it by putting that money into a tax shelter or by donating it to the corrupt charity that they run.
Then they buy stocks and assets and borrow money and carry debt based off of their overvalued assets. They already do that now to pay 0 taxes.
In order to combat this you would either have to tax debt/loans, tax unrealized gains, and/or tax assets like houses and vehicles more highly than income tax.
All of which have staggering implications for normal people also. It really is a tricky thing to get right.
Maybe ban using stocks as loan collateral and make capital gains taxes have a progressive bracket from 0% for <100k per year up to 90% for more than 1 billion or something. Rich people will always find ways to dodge having to pay what they owe for the labor they exploited.
Well, I would want to see capital gains and dividends be included in the gross revenue calculation. If they bring in money, it is income regardless of where it comes from.
