Less is more. Washington is just too far away from most people. Even assuming that our legislators have your best interests in mind, most simply are too far away to know what life is like for you and what you need.
It's none of the Federal Government's Business
It's none of the Federal Government's Business. The reason costs have skyrocketed is that easy money has skewed the market. The government must stop guaranteeing loans. The government must remove special protections for creditors regarding students loans. The market will correct itself.
It's none of the Federal Government's Business. We don't manage it well. We have no funds for it. They have been raided. If we really must protect people from themselves, we can go with the Chilean model of forcing people to save for themselves.
For those who have paid in and been made promises, we'll do our best to pay you what you were promised. If you are younger, we'll probably move you out of the system and push off the time you get it until you reasonably can't work anymore.
End the drug war. Make drugs legal. Stop wasting billions incarcerating people. Stop wrecking the lives of their families and loved ones. President Nixon appointed the National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse (the “Shafer Commission,” chaired by former Pennsylvania Governor Raymond P. Shafer) to study the problem. It did not recommend the drug war that followed.
Portugal decriminalized drug possession in 2001. Drug use hasn't gone wild, though by some estimates it has increased a bit. Drug deaths though, are way down.
I say make it legal, production, distribution, sale, all of it. Regulate and tax it. Treat it as the public health problem it is. But don't fuel an international criminal drug trade that only lines our enemies' pockets.
I want to say my thoughts are evolving on this as I smell more and more weed and see the health crisis it is growing. We still have bigger fish to fry, like the unravelling of the fabric of American life. There has been too substitution of our religion, community and a healthy nationalism, to a Marxian vision of a rapacious bourgeois out to ruin the world.
A crimes is a crime is a crime. If you call me a “dirty jew” while you are trying to assault me, I don't expect you to get more time than any other guy who is committing an assault. You have the right to believe what you believe, and say what you say (it's in the constitution). You don't have the right to assault me.
Every public space in America is a safe space to share your mind. This is what we call the marketplace of ideas. You have the right to not agree, and respectfully state your case. If you can't deal with that, stay out of public spaces.
I don't really love this idea, but it makes sense. Give everyone an allowance with an eventual target of twelve to thirteen thousand a year. It's probably cheaper to do this than administer all the programs to give away money that we do now.
Just to compare, keeping someone in prison costs about $30,000. In 2012 Secretary Shaun Donovan of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development reported that “at the end of the day, it costs, between shelters and emergency rooms and jails, it costs about $40,000 a year for a homeless person to be on the streets.” Then there's section 8, food stamps, and other benefits, and the cost to administer them.
We could start around six thousand, which is about half our current total federal spending, and significantly less than we spend on Social Security, Unemployment and Labor, and Medicare and Health right now.
It's probably not enough to meet your needs completely, but it should be enough to keep you from starving, and it doesn't go away if you add work.
My only caveat is that this should be in lieu of all the programs we administer now, not in addition.
The Feds must get out of this business. It was sloppy law making and regulation (from both sides) that gave us the housing bubble of 2008, which we still haven't fully recovered from. Take care of your own. This is one reason why you are getting a Universal Basic Income.
Again, this is why you get a Universal Basic Income.
This is none of the Federal Government's business.
Please exercize your rights and share what's important to you, but mostly also learn to listen. The marketplace of ideas only works when we actually trade them.
It's crystal clear, and the Feds should not be regulating firearms. Indeed, the “well regulated militia” suggests we should all have access to military grade ordnance. That doesn't mean you should be able to run around with it. That's for your states to determine.
If it's too big to fail, it's too big to exist.
Our senators and congressmen should be paid for their time in office only. And they should get paid less. They should also work less. They should be making government more simple.
I don't like paying interest on debt. It might be the smart thing to do, but I'm just not that smart. We'll tax income progressively and aggressively until the budget balances and the debt is paid off. Maybe we'll even link our tax rates to our debt. That way Congress will have an incentive to eliminate the debt so campaign donors can enjoy lower taxes.
While immense value has been added, the compensation of boards and executives has grown at even greater rates. The CEO of a Fortune 500 company makes 204 times the median pay of the regular employee. And when was the last time you got a multi-million dollar pay out for failing at your job. It's ridiculous, but that's what happens.
There is an oligarchy controlling our banks and publicly listed corporations that just must be reigned in.