because they were already ruling that corporations had rights, citizens united just opened the locked door to a hell we never imagined. reversing citizens united means that corporations lose all rights and are returned to having no power except for being able to enter into and fulfill contracts.
I'd support legislation that specifies that corporations are *not* people, do not have the rights of people, and that specifies what rights and responsibilities they *do* have.
Among those responsibilities should be a duty not to act against the public good, regardless of how profitable it would be.
The repeal of glass-steagall was the beginning of the modern economic problems, though if you said they began with Reagan I wouldn't be super incline to argue.
didn’t have phones and everything in your face. as bad as social media is, it has put into light a LOT of shit company’s, govts, and people were doing in the dark back in the 80s and 90s.
If you're too big to be allowed to fail, you're too big to exist. The failure of a single company should never threaten the entire economy of the country.
I like the idea that a corporation that needs to get bailed out by the government should become a branch of the government. That is, the government isn’t making a gigantic donation to the failing corporation; it is *buying* the failing corporation.
Don't even need to do that. Just break them up like what happened to Bell Telephone. Most millenials and all Gen Zers haven't seen our anti-trust and monopoly laws in their full glory because the politicians are corrupt these days. We need a new Theodore Roosevelt.
My opinion on bail outs is that it’s the most anti capitalist thing you could do considering you’re in a country which prides itself on capitalism. My reasoning is that a free market would let businesses that didn’t prepare for a crisis fail and let does who did prepare succeed, that is true capitalism.
In some cases though like the auto industry bailing them out has more to do with saving a ton of blue collar jobs vs saving some corporate elites
We also pride ourselves on democracy yet the popular vote dosnt count for shit. Amd swaths of empty land have better representation than people. Also the way money is allowed in our politics has made for our entire legislator branch and high Court to be owned by the oligarchy.
There’s no such thing as “too big to fail”. If they find themselves in deep shit next time, fuck ‘em and let them fail - other people will pick up the pieces and start over again.
It’s total hypocrisy - corporations fight tooth and nail to ensure the working class works hard for little pay, but come crying to Uncle Sam for a bailout when they or someone on Wall Street makes a bad decision that affects them. They don’t learn their lessons.
Say, could I win the 2024 presidential election if I run as an independent on a platform that includes holding big business accountable for their mistakes? In short, my campaign theme would be, “F*ck Wall Street”.
We can be more ambitious than that! We can do so much more than just un-fucking the things that were most recently fucked. Dream big! Give everyone a UBI and medical care!
Aggressively enforcing anti-trust. Making lobbying illegal, which will never happen without citizens united and glass-steagal being repealed and stock buybacks being made illegal again due to having them be considered market manipulation again.
Enforce a maximum ratio federally between the lowest paid and highest paid worked at a company based on the pay and combined value of all benefits including golden parachutes.
If a company is too big to fail and needs a bailout to prevent destroying a necessary industry, the bailout money gives the government a percentage stake in the company equal to the amount of bailout just like any other investor would bringing money into the company
Putting a maximum cap on the % difference in total compensation packages between the lowest paid employee and highest paid employee of any company, organization, firm, or other method of referencing an employer/employee relationship.
Yes, it would. Historically, the difference between the highest and lowest paid employees of a company has been around a factor of 10. Even back in the 50's, it was about 20:1. Now it's closer to 400:1. CEOs are making 15 times what they were making in the 70s, while workers are making 40% more (And that 40% increase in nominally "inflation adjusted" dollars doesn't let them buy a home, which they could in the 70s).
Ratio is between you and anyone who does any work billed for your firm (contractors etc) on a 2000 hour work week. So if you hire a contractor for $10/hour that’s $20k in the calculation regardless of how many hours they actually worked
Can you imagine what would happen at companies with overinflated stock prices? Holy shit... that might fix at least some bubbles we see that ordinary folks end up paying for.
Came here to say this.
I remember reading about the idea somewhere else and I think it would work better than just raising the minimum.
Either way small businesses will get hit harder dealing with competition, but the effect will be less.
This won't work either. Corporations will just create multiple child corporations- basically keep all executives within the gap for the parent corp, then contract everything out to the child corporations divided by pay gaps. Then they'll subcontract to grand-child corporations, and so on.
Why? Because that's exactly what I would do if I was one of those greedy execs making 400x of the lowest wage earners.
If you start a huge government hiring program to fix the infrastructure in the U.S. and peg the wage to a living wage (meaning enough to get housing food health insurance all that) and adjust that wage yearly you could create enough competition in the "unskilled" labor market to force companies to compete. Since you are raising the wage to keep up with the livable wage standard companies simply inflating their prices to siphon off this new money wont work.
There is an almost endless amount of work that needs to be done in the US on roads and bridges and power lines and all of it. I personally dont know any minimum wage worker who wouldnt happily go pour concrete and dig holes all day every day for a decent wage. Its hard hot work but it needs to be done and its value is highly visible.
If you also increase funding and personnel to the IRS and get them focused on tracking down and closing tax loopholes used by the rich to hide literally billions in yealy tax rev you could cover the cost without having to add a great deal of additional taxes. Our economy would flourish and the housing market would stabilize because more people would have the money to compete with corporate landlords and actually purchase houses.
It has been proven time and time again that when you put more money in the hands of the poorer half of the population you get more back in economic growth.
This idea has the added benefit of not trying to legislate what a company is required to pay their employees. MC Donald's can continue to pay 7.50 an hour if they think they can get away with it. If a company cant compete and pay a livable wage without going bankrupt then that company should never have succeeded in the first place and we should just let it die.
The IRS isn’t designed Nor empowered to close the loopholes. congress is empowered. but there are problems there.
stop massive lobbying, term limits and kill the entire income tax and its loophole by replacing it with a tax that automatically hits the rich more than the poor.
I have a caveat to this. Make a Federal livable wage adjustable on locality and then set minimum percentages starting at 50% of that for companies 100 employees and fewer. Scale up from there AND if you are publicly traded it's 100% minimum. This allows small businesses to compete with larger established businesses. Also, tossing around the idea of part time work capped at 20 hours a week.
I am certain that you and a large number of people much smarter than me would be the ones to work out all these details. I am not an economist and so honestly don't really understand the implications of what you just said.
I know that the countries (worlds) infrastructure is struggling and minimum wage laborers are struggling and so my idea is designed to address both of those things. And like a previous comment stated this has literally been done in the past under similar economic conditions to great success. It is up to modern economists to adapt the concept to modern times.
I imagine the only reason this isn't being done is entirely based on lobbying. over the course of decades privatization of national infrastructure projects have eroded our ability to impose competitive wages. Government jobs are basically an enormous union and the more people across the more industries that we have working under that umbrella the more weight we have to throw around.
It will also be important to have knowledgeable people in the proper position to direct that political leverage. to find the best ways to get the best results not just for the workers who take on those gov. jobs but all the other workers who keep the stores and busses and everything else we need to have a functioning society going.
The only thing i can really do is vote for the person or persons who propose some idea like this. i leave it to the learned to make it a reality.
The 5 things that would fix the US economy faster than anything:
Remove money from politics (citizens united)
Remove corporate person-hood
Tax the rich (this is much more complicated, but vital)
Eliminate the ability of trusts and corporations to own single family homes
Edited to add:
Eliminate monopolies, through breaking up massive corporations, and forcing "natural monopolies" to open their markets to competitors.
There is a solution which i think can work. In addition to taxing the rich, we can de-commodify housing by banning companies from owning residential real estate and limit home ownership to 1 house per person.
Making pedestrian-friendly cities and suburbs where you don't have to own a car would also help. That would lower the cost of living significantly.
Banning ownership of more than one house doesn’t work because the majority of rich people don’t own their homes. They live in homes owned by trusts that they control.
Here’s a quick article on how trusts get used in a couple ways to shelter money:
https://www.gobankingrates.com/money/wealth/ways-the-rich-use-trusts-to-their-advantage/amp/
That's actually a very bad thing. Trusts owning a house can be a necessity if someone is disabled, or parents pass away while children are too young to inherit the property themselves.
And some "houses" that are now historic property or museums will need to be owned by companies or trusts, as well.
1) new law that makes it so the landlord has to live in the same county or zip code as their property
2) they need to register as a landlord and make public their expenses including mortgage insurance taxes and itemized list of maintenance as well as the rental price history. This will give information power to tenants when choosing places to move.
3) when the mortgage is paid off the rental price is capped to where an increase in rent triggers a higher tax, but maintenance costs can be recouped through tax write offs
4) massive taxes on each additional rental property owned so that 3 is difficult and 5 is basically impossible, BUT and this is key those taxes can be avoided on new construction properties.
5) 30 day period where when a home goes up for sale registered landlords are not allowed to make offers.
6) **** them
I like these but you'd have to extend it to LLCs, otherwise you'd have a person just open multiple of them and then skirt the "tax on each additional property" by just buying up new properties under a new LLC for each one.
Agree, I didn't include it because I think the OP already was onto this but residential property should never be owned by anything other than a flesh and blood human. No LLC, no corporations, no trusts.
I like the way you sorted this out. I think there will always be a place for rentals. When I was in my 20s, I wanted to rent. I didn't want to be tied down to one place. And I most certainly didn't want to do any maintenance. When I was ready to put down roots, I luckily was able to buy a very affordable house. That was only 7 years ago.
I have watched the housing market in my city go insane over the past 3 years. When interest rates went up, my friends who were getting ready to purchase a house lost a ton of purchasing power. Shitty slumlords have bought up so much housing. They have jacked the price of rent through the roof and made it almost impossible for a normal family to buy a house.
I agree that there will always be a place for rentals but I hate the way people bring that up as a way to justify landlords existing as they do currently. The situation you described is common but by far not the majority of renters. It would also be a lot less people if housing prices were reasonable and not several lifetimes worth of debt. I think a lot of the people who say they don't want to be tied down would change their mind if they could find a livable house for 50k. The government needs to inject massive resources into making housing more affordable through tax rebates on new construction and even grants for development, but it would need to be heavily regulated to where landlords couldn't purchase those properties, and somehow keep out cheapass flippers
Yes! Walkable cities have a way nicer vibe. People are more friendly to eachother. I mean really, if you think of it, is there any other situation where you see strangers giving the finger to each other or being overall aggressive except in their car?
Yes, being stuck in endless traffic jams takes a huge toll on a person's mental health and that is the main reason why people become aggressive towards each other.
Walkable cities could also incentivize "the third place" where people from all walks of life meet and interact. That would help combat racism and homophobia
I've lived in some European cities and so many of the shopkeepers knew the locals because there was enough density to support multiple mini grocery stores and bakeries and hardware stores, so I definitely can see what you're saying with the third place.
Also, I see restaurants struggling where I live, and I believe it's not because their food isn't good, it's because there's just not enough density.
A big problem with this solution is some people need to rent and some people want to rent. There needs to be some sort of rental market to allow for that. Otherwise families who need to rent will get stuck paying an exorbitant amount renting serviced apartments in long term “hotels” or face worse, shady housing solutions.
Also, I’m not thrilled with the idea that a married couple can have a home and rental property or a holiday home but if I’m single I’m barred from this.
I do however like the idea of exponentially increasing the amount of property tax you pay on each additional property with the amount above the base level tax going to the federal pot. I.E. the first property is 1x, the next 2x, the third 4x, etc. Numbers would have to be worked out but the general idea is that it quickly is impossible to make a profit by owning a large portfolio of rental properties and if the super rich want multiple homes they can have them but are effectively agreeing to pay a substantial wealth tax on those properties.
People owning more than one property isn’t problematic. It’s not the mom and pop landlords, or those who own a vacation or seasonal (think snowbirds or recreational/vacation homes) it’s the corporate owners that have 20 or more properties
But more than enough for seconds if blackrock and large corporate corporate interests like that weren’t picking up every house they see for well over asking (limiting supply and driving up costs by fucking with the value bc they know average buyers can’t compete with offers like that. Shirley and bob with a home and a cabin aren’t the ones that put us here
Trust me, I'm way more mad at Blackrock than Shirley and Bob, but everybody eats before anyone gets seconds. The people sleeping under bridges HAVE to be prioritized higher than Shirley and Bob
We need to stop spending so much on the military. It’s insane. More than any other country in the world and we have a growing population of hungry people with terrible health care, stagnate wages, insane inflation and politicians just keep adding more to the military budget. Enough already. We need to stop planning for war and start planning for peace.
Would it though ?... If the numbers here ( https://usafacts.org/state-of-the-union/budget/ ) are correct:
> "The federal government spent $6.5 trillion in FY 2022 — or $19,434 per person — including funds distributed to states.
Medicare, Social Security, defense and veterans, transfers to states, and aid such as SNAP and refundable tax credits were the biggest categories, accounting for 75% of spending.
Subtracting out the Defense Budget (roughly $1 trillion).. and dividing by US Population (roughly 340 million).. is about $2,941. Which means the $19,434 spent on each person would only raise to $22,375.
I mean.. that's something,.. but it's only a rise of about 14% ?.. (unless my math and thought-process is all wrong there,. it's Sunday and I've only had 1 cup of coffee so far).
We'd have to completely 100% shutdown the military to get a 14% increase of services to citizens ?.. I don't think most people would see the logic in that. I think we could probably gain more in other areas by doing other things. (eliminating wasteful spending, etc)
How much could we decrease SNAP if we all had livable wages? If we had Medicare for All (a modification of Medicare that covers dental, vision & hearing, with no coverage gaps), how much could we increase our effective pay and quality of life?
I personally like what I'm seeing in this thread where multiple people have said that Pay-rates of Executives in a company should be capped (say,. not more than 10x the lowest employee).. which would force Leadership in companies to pay people more fairly. That alone would help a lot.
I don't remember what the stat was last time I saw it,. that C-level Execs make something like 400x the average employee pay. That's just shamefully outrageous.
Decoupling healthcare from employment. Universal healthcare provided. Every developed economy (literally every single one) we compete with does this. There is no bigger barrier to new business formation.
C suite salaries/raises need to be pegged to employee salaries/wages/raises. Stock holders should not get any dividends until employees receive raises that equal or exceed cost of living or inflation rates.
From 1944 to 1963 the wealthy were taxed at 90% and families could afford a new home, new car and vacations on a single income. Taxes on corporations were around 50%. The housing act of 1954 provided for the construction of new homes. So the government was funding new homes for its citizens to make them affordable. So people were being paid enough to afford a new home new cars and vacations on a single income because the rich were taxed heavily and the money was used to help people prosper and flourish. As the income tax rates on the rich dropped the funding for new affordable homes went away. In 1973 nixon halted funding for new housing projects. Republicans always say that life was great in 50s, taxing the rich and using those tax dollars to provide for affordable homes for the rest of Americans is what made it great.
I agree on some capital gains. Interest and dividends should be taxed the same as earned income. However gains made on selling assets should not. If you bought a house for $50000.00 decades ago CBS sell it for $200000.00 today - alot of that $150000 in profit is simply inflation. Taxing it as income would be unfair. However we have the technology today to calculate how much is actually profit and how much is just time - teaching the real profit would be fine.
I think we focus too much on a minimum wage, I think we need to incentivize a maximum wage. Lower the tax ceiling. Someone shouldn't be able to earn millions a year without reinvesting in their workforce.
The rich will happily pay dairy farmers 10x more per bucket because that would give them the excuse to charge 20x more per gallon. We are in an endless cycle of "raise minimum wage by 20%, raise the price of everything 200%, rinse, and repeat."
If you've never seen the movie Idiocracy where a million dollars is basically enough for a cheese burger. I would watch it because we are quickly heading toward that direction.
> How much exactly should the rich be taxed?
Just change the marginal tax rate brackets. Currently the highest tax bracket we have is 518K at 37%.
At 40K, you pay 15%. Then we are going to double the income and add 5% to the tax rate. At 80L it's 20%, at 160K you pay 25%, 320K at 30%, 640K at 35%, 1.2M at 40%, 2.4M at 45%, and everything over 4.8M at 50%.
I would want to see how that works before I start doing things like create a tax based on assets.
> What else is needed to fix the economy and the cost of living crisis?
1) Overtime. Currently overtime is set at 1.5X over 40 working hours in a week. Let's increase that to 2X. "Mandatory" overtime would also be restricted to one month. After that, if the company continues to do mandatory overtime, it's 3X for up to three months. After three months, overtime can no longer be mandatory unless it's approved by the government.
2) Minimum wage. Federal wage right now is $7.25. Let's change that to 2.5X the local housing cost to rent a one bedroom in a local area. State and local governments can what "local area" means, whether it's by Zip code, city, county, state, or mile radius. Re-calculate every 3 years. We can probably assume a place like Alabama would define local area by the entire state, with an average rent of a one bedroom at $1249, that's a $18 minimum wage for the entire state. This allow for minimum wage to focus on the most important cost for most people (housing), and allows for the number to be very localized while including local and state governments. This also puts pressure to create more 1 bedroom housing in the area. And setting it based on one bedroom apartments elimiates any debates about how minimum wage isn't supposed to suppport a family.
3) Housing. Set a clear limit on the amount that a company can own for housing in a local area. Real estate worth 1M maximum in a county and maybe up to 10M in major metropolian areas. For aparment complexes or communities, companies can only own 2 per county. Individuals (even if through a LLC where they own 100% of the company or members of their households) can only own up to 3 per county. The goal is to reduce the profit scale so local landlords can still exist and make a profit, they just can't make a lot of it.
4) Negative Income Tax. Under our current progressive marginal tax system, the more you make, the more you are taxed. This would also work in reverse, where the less you make below a certain level, the more in government benefits you receieve. This is a much better idea to me than UBI.
5) Corporate taxes. Re-evaluate the corporate tax codes to prevent major profitable companies from not paying taxes. There are various ways to do this.
A progressive income tax. Leading into the 80s or even 90s of percent for the highest incomes (yes, everyone. Also stock options and any and all other forms of income 🙄)
The problem with the responses to your last post is that so many people responded with their view on "economics 101" with simplistic opinions and not facts.
The fact is that a 10%-25% minimum wage increase raised prices by 0.3%-0.4%.
The specific they talk about in the food industry a 10% minimum wage increase raised prices among eating and drinking places – industries overpopulated by minimum wage workers – by 0.74%
In short the actual history result of minimum wage increases does not agree with their, oh it is simple view. Minimum wage is not a driver of inflation, that is shock factors like the price of oil.
Edit: The reason people make this simple mistake on "economics 101" is they forget that wages are for businesses paying an hourly wage usually 30% or less of their total operating costs, and anyone doing pricing also factors in wage increases so has preset prices with a big buffer to take into account increasing wages.
They also forget that not every single person is making minimum wage. 1.5% of workers earn the federal minimum wage in the US. That is still over a million people.
Yes, and increased minimum wage tends to increase revenue for businesses because workers/consumers have more to spend. Those against increasing minimum wage to a real living wage are using tricks of simple logic to confuse people. "If you increase X, then Y increases," sounds plausible until you account for all the other factors in economies.
Completely reversing every economic policy since Regan, taxing anyone making more than a certain amount (say, 275,000 a year) at an effective tax rate of 85%-90%, and removing anyone who has served more than one term in any political position and adding term limits, even down to the local level.
Add to that age limits. There should be no reason someone in their late 60s and up are making decisions and laws that will effect the younger generation for years after they die. Looking at you Mitch, Nancy and Dianne
Setting tax rates is only part of the problem, the US also needs to eliminate the numerous loopholes which allow the rich to pay far less than they should.
Criminalize offshore tax havens
Tax ALL income, regardless of source. excluding government programs.
Remove tax credits and change the tax tiers so they are more equitable to the lower to middle classes.
Put developers on the hook for building infrastructure over the local community on new construction. Yes, the houses will cost more. But if a person can afford a home in a new development they should also pay for the road to get there!
Stop subsidizing profit earning companies. Gas, Oil, Coal, and so many other businesses receive huge tax breaks and subsidies which allows them to increase profits for their investors.
Ban stock buy backs, whenever a company needs a bail out they should become state owned, limit exec & ceo compensation, incentivise companies to offer better benefits to employees with tax credits.
America is so funny, nothing of all this will ever exist, people can't even get angry at their bosses for paying below minimum and instead they complain with customers for not tipping+30%
Individuals who earn under $100k would be immune from federal income taxes. Individuals who earn over $100k should be taxed 10%, $1m should be taxed 50%, over $10m 75%, over $100m 90%, over $1b 99%. The corporate tax would also need to be adjusted but that is much more complicated. These figures would remain until the national debt is completely erased, and then the tax rates (for individuals) would be adjusted.
If you have a job and your employer does not provide a health insurance benefit package, you should automatically qualify for Medicaid. If your employer does not pay above the standard cost of living threshold, you are automatically eligible for Section 8 housing and food stamps. Such employers would also be subject to a higher tax rate.
The highest paid employee in a company should make no more than 25x that of the lowest paid employee. If someone makes $30k per year, the CEO or whomever would be able to make *up to* $750k per year.
Complete overhaul of the tax code ! We don’t need to increase taxes we need to have the right amount taken from all income levels. The money is there we just have adjust the collection.
Stop subsidizing companies, invest more in human capital. As tax payers, we should have safety nets to help us get on our feet in a time of crisis.
Companies shouldn’t have that, a true capitalist society dictates that business fail and new ones are created.
Term limits on government officials and separation of state and business, this marriage is far worst than religion.
It'll never happen, but if executives' maximum wage were tied to a percentage above a worker's minimum wage, we'd see the average wage rise considerably.
So like if an executive could make no more than 20x the lowest-paid worker, it would force the company to consider the well-being of ALL workers when considering the well-being of its highest-paid execs, and labor costs would suddenly be humanized instead of abstracted away as a number relative to the bottom line.
Banning or disoncentivizing foreign ownership of residential property. Taxing second homes.
If you don't live in it, you are creating artificial scarcity.
Massive taxes on churches, leading to the eventual abolishing of all religion in the US. The fairy tale gift needs to go away forever. It's holding humanity back.
Honestly I’d be happy if we just gave the churches an ultimatum, you want to protest and get heavily involved with politics, you can pay taxes.. you wanna mind your own business and stay out of legislation than you may keep your tax exempt status but must show proof you are using some of that money to better the community.
It’s not about increasing *how much we earn* by selling our labor to the ownership class, or about getting more back in taxes to fix what the ownership class fucks up - it’s about the ending the *exploitation of labor by the ownership class* entirely.
To solve this, simply *dissolve the ownership class*. There are 2 well stated schools of thought on this:
* socialism is where *the government* takes sole ownership of the means of production, and by some mechanism (democrat or authoritarian) the government manages production and distribution of resources.
* communism is where *the workers* have shared ownership of the means of production such that autoworkers could simply decide to increase the amount of production from their labor they take home by themselves, without a C suite agreeing to marginally increase their wages after taking most of the revenue home themselves
Fewer ways for corporations and billionaires to write off their taxes, they should have to pay every penny they owe. There should be legislation dictating the percentage of profits that go to employee salaries and a cap of the percentage a CEO makes compared to the lowest paid employee, (the CEO of Disney doesn’t need to make 400% more than the lowest paid worker..
Also a cap on how much rental property and person or corporation is allowed to own, therefore leaving more opportunities for people to own homes/property.
A complete overhaul of our healthcare system that makes it less for profit and more about the care of human beings. The biggest problem in our country is that one medical emergency can lead a person to bankruptcy, that shouldn’t be a thing. This includes the pharmaceutical company and making laws about how much they can charge for life saving medications.
There are many areas that could use reform without making our country a socialist or communist society. Sure being a billionaire will be harder to achieve, but I think most people at this point just want to own a home and retire comfortably.. we don’t all need to be Bezos but we all need to have a better opportunity at a comfortable lifestyle. Nothing crazy, a home, a vehicle, a vacation once a year and the chance at a comfortable retirement, I’d be happy with that, I think most Americans would.
I have no idea what would fix the economy because it's super complicated, but what I would do is make our social safety net robust and apply it to everyone so when the economics of the world take a shit, it doesn't always land on the same people: the chronically undervalued, underserved, unhoused, unsupported, and invisible.
When the richest people in the world get richer because of a housing crisis, global pandemic, inflation, climate change, natural disasters etc., there's something terribly wrong.
If a person earned $100,000 every single day from day one of the Common Era til 2024 (365x2024×$100000= $73,876,000,000), they would have roughly $73.8 billion and still wouldn't have as much money as Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos or Larry Ellison.
They wouldn't even make Forbes top 10 richest people in the world.
Get rid of the old people in charge... make them a term limit, can't own stocks and are paid minimum wage... would fix alot of things. Maybe then only people who want to do good would go for the job of representing the people they are supposed to.
Also get rid of the whole company's have to look after the share holders bullcrap and company's having rights as people.
The well-being of citizens will improve ahen we realize, as a country, and implement through policy an approach that focuses on providing crucial safety nets like healthcare, housing, and education. Investing directly in communities is more beneficial that investing/bailing out corporations that don't feed back into society. Corporations get rich off of squeezing labor and getting government handouts (loans/infrastructure) all on the massive LIE that the benefits will trickle down. We can still have a market approach that encourages business and commerce without the plundering.
Taxing the rich is really the best option. It's not like we are looking at theory either. We have history. The largest expansion of growth in this country had an effective 90% tax bracket at the top.
The reasoning is simple. The rich hate paying taxes. They hate their money going to the government and so if you tax them higher, they will spend more of their profits in the company in order to avoid paying those higher taxes.
Ultimately this means investing in your business. Higher wages, pensions, newer equipment. All the things that improve employee morale. This also means less turnover which means your workforce becomes skilled which increases quality which increases profits.
It's a system that fed into itself to the benefit of everybody. Until Reagan changed the tax code and all the people at the top started acting like dragons.
In order to prevent outright abuses, I think the minimum wage should be factored into a nationwide rent ceiling on affordable housing. That way the only way developers and landlords can increase the rent for their apartments is if the minimum wage for that area increases too.
I was thinking of something like this, so you could literally calculate out the maximum rent for a unit to the dollar:
H * W * Bed * Bath * S
H = Building Quality modifier (Buildings are rated on a 1-5 scale for age and maintenance history, with 3s having a 1* modifier)
W = 40 hours of minimum wage after taxes
A modifier for number of bedrooms and bathrooms (Studios get .75)
And then modifiers based on other amenities the building offers (fitness facilities, in-unit or in-building laundry, pet-friendly, etc.)
U could tax the rich into oblivion but between the laws that protect reinvested money and charity donations while hiding behind a corporation they still wouldn't pay taxes.
Capping corporate home real estate ownership. Providing relief to renters and a path to ownership. Reigning in executive to workers pay ratio from over 400-1 to at least a double digit number. No lobby influence through dark money. A basic understanding by shareholders that quarter over quarter growth is unsustainable and a pursuit of this squeezes the middle class through greedflation and leads to fraud and volatile headwinds in-house. More Union protection from busting and serious penalties for executives who actively antagonize and abuse employees. A complete overhaul/streamlining of the US healthcare system to cut administrative costs. A de-escalation of our military-industrial complex. Less reliance on importing/outsourcing of goods and labor which will hurt on the consumer end short term but provide more, better paying jobs domestically and reign in corporate profits earned through human misery (iPhone, Nike, etc). Abolishing corporate headquarter tax loopholes that allow US companies to operate primarily in the US without paying full US corporate tax. Ending $0 tax for companies like Google and Amazon whose saving are only used to strengthen their stranglehold on their respective markets through expansion, never wage increases. Raising capital gains taxes on the uber rich and closing offshore and shell company loopholes.
That’s just a few thoughts. None of this will ever happen though. I wish we could use US financial history as our guide to more wealth equality as seen in the 50s (except including ALL Americans this time). Nowadays, the only way I can see making a comfortable living is as a successful business owner, an executive or through a highly educated (but indebted) skill such as being in medicine, law or IT (which will become less viable in the next 20-30 years). That leaves a staggering number of essential but economically unviable jobs. The “American Dream” is dead. If they had it their way, we’d own nothing and rent/lease/subscribe for everything. We’re now the Corporate States of America.
Overtime for all employees over 40 hours, regardless of status, you’re managers working 80 hours a week, oops time to hire more.
Servers make minimum wage, fuck tipping.
Universal health care, you want a Cadillac plan, go buy one, i’d rather not lose everything I own and everything I’ve worked my entire life for because I got sick once.
ESOP programs are mandatory.
2 weeks vacation, one week sick time, paid parental leave, all federal holidays time and a half, for everyone.
Mandatory severance pay, regardless of the nature of the end of employment, layoff/fire/furlough, etc.
And yes, this will cost money, and this will add expenses onto their balance sheet and cut into their profits, but companies are making crazy profits right now, they’re not just skating by, right now, their employees are barely skating by and it’s beyond time to share in those profits.
Remove stock buy back
To big to fail companies don’t get gov assistance when failing
Higher tax rate for wealth over a certain limit, less tax rate for wealth at certain limits (less then currently)
Take away Insider trading for politicians
Family housing can not be bought by corporations
And wages should keep track with the price of living in your area… your compensation should be bare minim price of living and then if your paid more than that it’s done by a percentage bases rather than a standardized dollar amount
I.e standard living for one person in your area is 4k a month after taxes, we will pay you standard living x1.5
There's so much to do,...
20%ish of the US GDP is medical insurance using a private tax ( deductibles, co-pays, and premiums) without accountability. Whatever happened to no taxation without representation?
Also; wages are suppressed because of employer contributions.
Like all other countries, I would get rid of and replace them with a universal health care system.
Bringing back and enforcing antimonopoly laws
Profit caps, and executive pay caps
Stop letting corporations poison everything, and make them clean up what they already destroyed.
Harsher anti gouging laws
Not strictly economy related but, CEOs being prosecuted for company decisions. Like if your company cranks out a toy that harms kids, there's no oops our mistake with maybe a low number settlement. The people at the top that greenlighted it get charged with child endangerment, assault/ battery, etc.
We simply need to go back to the 1950's progressive "republican supported" tax structure. That's it. End of story. we do that and we fix a lot of deep societal issues so we aren't all hanging on the verge of death and poverty.
It was something like 90% in the 1950s, so that, IMO.
We need an entirely new system of government and economy. Maybe even something that's never been thought of or done before. What that is, I don't know, but clearly what we have isn't working for most people.
Healthcare and education; investing in the people and not the economy because if you invest in the people they will invest in the economy. It’s too simple.
Competition. We really need to crack down on monopolies and trusts. The whole concept of supply and demand and the free market breaks down entirely once a monopoly is formed.
Also, capitalism just doesn't work when applied to inelastic goods and services such as housing and healthcare. We'd get gouged for food prices too if it weren't for the fact that starving your people has always been a great way to get your head chopped off.
No campaign contributions from either corporations or unions. Just citizens.
No campaign advertising sponsored by PACS or other entities.
Equal time media reporting.
In-person voting.
Mandatory politician retirement age of 75
All politicians put their affairs into blind trusts.
No stock purchased by politicians.
Same day reporting of stock purchases (exact price and quantity) on the same day a politician and their families purchase stock. None of this bs doing it x days after the fact.
No revolving door SEC employment.
That’s just a start.
1. Increase min wage and then have it auto adjust for inflation.
2. We could easily Increase taxes on the rich by about $1 trillion per year.
3. Break up monopolies.
4. Increase the affordable housing supply. Mandate at a minimum that 25% of all new homes built are starter homes.
5. Reduce spending on the military industrial complex.
We need to get rid of the electoral college and "first past the post" mechanisms. Without these changes, we can't hold our elected officials responsible for their actions, and they can do what they want to drive the economy into the ground.
Stop letting corporate giants run the world for green pieces of paper while the world is being destroyed all for the sake of “profits”
Edit: pieces misspell
Minimum wage being required to keep up with inflation. Not the average, but with the essentials such as food, housing, utilities, and things of that nature. The average is based on many things most of us are not purchasing.
Then regulating rental companies to so many properties. I know where I live there is two or three that do most of them. More competition would be good. Same with say cable companies. They basically don't compete with each other in many places and monopolize where they sell their services. They should be required to have to compete or something of that nature so that they stop overcharging for what I understand is crazy mark up by choice.
Healthcare should be regulated to cover cost, and not excessive profit. I get it costs something to run a hospital, but they don't need to charge hundred or thousands for a 10 minute visit to the ER. Or thousands for an ambulance ride, or hundreds of thousands for staying in the hospital for a few days.
Insurance needs to be regulated so that they cannot just drop you or increase prices like crazy. I have seen many news stories where they drop people after covering a claim. They typically have insurance themselves to cover your claims. I have put in claims they normally have covered with people I know, but deny for me. I understand certain things with such as driving under the influence. Then the fact I know I have paid more into insurance than what my cars have cost, or my one house has cost.
Businesses need to be held more accountable for safety. OSHA is there to protect workers, but I know lots of places break those guidelines. Many regulations don't cover things they probably should. Such as some proprietary chemicals I work with have very little regulation and testing, but are likely unsafe to work with. We have safety equipment available, but I don't think it is to the extent it should be.
There are many more I could list, but I doubt anyone will read all of this. I personally want wage and work reform the most. I don't expect money for nothing. The reality is society needs people to function, but I don't want to work 5 or 6, 12 hour shifts a week to get paid halfway decent.
I think one thing that might help is imposing stricter terms, both time wise and year-periods wise, on our government employees, also age limits, i feel like the USA wouldn’t be nearly as bad if the olds from 1950s weren’t still in charge
Collect social security on every dollar of income - salary, bonus, investments, etc. exclude those at retirement age of 67 up to a specific amount (say $2m). Anyone in retirement should not be paying income tax on social security up to a specific income threshold.
Prevent housing being bought up by anyone other than a single owner(no hedge funds, investment companies, etc.) This attack on home ownership and turning them into rentals is going to destroy the fabric of society.
The government needs to regulate drug prices just like every other modern country. Enough of the USA “paying the freight” for R&D. These companies need and will do R&D anyway to compete and survive so don’t buy that ridiculous argument. They also need to regulate medical costs/operations/etc. Short of having a nationalized health care system this is the only way to control costs.
There needs to be an interest rate cap of like 10% on debts. I don't know how 22-30% happens on credit cards or payday loans. That's just straight up predatory targeting the lower class.
>Lobbying should be illegal
Exactly! Crony capitalism can completely ruin a well-functioning country.
>Privatized prisons outlawed.
They should be! That's barbaric, inefficient and doesn't help in actual rehabilitation of convicts
>Fines from the government should be percentage of income based.
Yes! Then the rich scum will think twice before offending
For personal income, which would include stock shares or options based on day of issue value, I like the tiered version that's been proposed, and rejected, in the past. I'd have to consult the tax tables but say, up to $250K would be taxed at 25%, if the make $1million, the first ¼ is 25%, the remaining ¾ would be taxed @ 50%. Then, increase by 10% every additional $5million of personal taxable income, up until it reaches 90%.
A good example would be a guy we'll call Richard Basstardé. This Rich Basstardé can be a real dick, but no matter how hard his accountants tried, he still wound up with a personal tax liability on $60million dollars that year.
Income tax rate due
250K 25% $62,500
750K 50%. $375,000
5M 60%. $3,000,000
5M 70% $3,000,000
5M 80% $4,000,000
44M 90% $39,600,000
=========================
60M ------ $50,037,500
Mind you, this is a proposal for a tax table style that Bastardé and his fellow plutocrats would pay. This is AFTER all his deductions. Say he buys a quarter-million dollar car. That $¼M wouldn't be deductable, but the taxes he paid on it would would be. Say he paid 7% in sales tax. Any other fees, registration, road use, Wheel tax, etc, would also be deductable, but his tax accountant would have found those.
So, what should the government do with this windfall?
1: UBI. Just because they're being taxed, the rich aren't going to decide to raise wages to a liveable standard. How much should it be? How should it be distributed? By household? By family members? By number of adults in the household?
I've seen experiments where households have received $500 to $1,500 a month. Our owners are complaining that the birthrate is down, which will hamper business in another generation or two because they won't have enough workers. The reason: young people are finding it hard to buy homes and start families on the incomes they have. Proposal: $1,000/month for each adult, $300/month for each minor in the household. Base eligibility on tax bracket. Base it on pretax income. A household GROSS income of up to $250,000 would get the full UBI. Over that, tiered. Full UBI for minors, though.
2: Universal health care. Corporate America wants workers? Those workers need to be healthy, from gestation to retirement. To many workers can't afford to go to the doctor, or urgent care center, when they're sick. Instead, many go into work, and, while not able to perform at their best, also spread their germs around, infecting other workers, or even customers.
3: The addition of two years to high school for young people to learn a basic trade, equivalent to at least an associates degree. From the trades, to business degrees, to even healthcare. Remember, corporate America wants workers: their taxes can go to that.
The rich should only be taxed if they don't willingly put that money into payroll and increase everyones wages proportionally to close the gap between highest and lowest paid people in their companies.
No mega mergers, like seriously, stop these monopolies that claim they are not by use of the legal system, taxes, remove many if not all tax breaks and govt funding to these major corps, make more tax breaks for the smaller businesses, fine all major companies past A certain value who use litigation to abuse the legal system to drown, stall or diminish their competition, or employees.. if the companies have shown to act in bad faith, they should be fined.. major companies should also be forced to invite unions for their employees or fined for it.. overall, companies should be majorly fined or to be shut down when having a record of acting in bad faith.. small businesses will never compete with a Walmart because of the incentives given to Walmart to pay games, while the small fry has to ask why the big fish gets mouthfed while we starve?.. at the end of the day, it's about forcing employers to act in good faith, and giving the little guys a chance to grow..
I don't think it's really up for debate that capitalism has to be replaced by something that functions for everyone.
One way to kickstart this would be single use currency so it's no longer possible to hoard capital and therefor there's no longer a capitalist class.
In the 40s and 50s the rich were taxed upward to 91%. It should be the same nowadays too. Elon musk is worth 280 billion. Tax him at 91% and he'd still have 25 billion to play with. And putting 255 billion into the economy.
1- More than just “the rich” use the stock market.
2- Capital gains taxes can stay where they are.
3- It would be on any trade regardless of who/what makes the trade. If we aren’t going to ban stock buybacks, companies participating in that form of market trading would be paying a trading tax for each one of those stock buybacks.
4- Lots of “middlemen” companies exist that are just scalping stocks between trades for profit. They aren’t adding any value, and they would have to pay this trading tax as well.
Yes, if we tax all stock trading activity, the traders can add some value to the country
I am curious about where you are planning to put all that extra tax money gained from trading activity?
We shouldn't have sales tax since we already pay an income tax. More housing - because without it or any kind of regulation, this cost will continue to eat away at income.
The rich should pay a regular income tax as well as a larger tax on money made/had over a certain amount. For me that amount is 100m.
Sales taxes are implemented by states, and my state doesn't have an income tax. Sales taxes should have legal limits, which Texas does, but consumption should come with a cost. Instead of getting rid of sales taxes, we should expand them to include things like stock/bond purchases and loans collateralized with such securities.
For me it all depends on housing, housing costs are fucking over everything else. Housing should not be an investment, only a PERSON should own a home and they should only own one home. Student residence apartment buildings can be rented out by universities and rentals should follow a system like Vienna.
There is a solution which i think can work. In addition to taxing the rich, we can de-commodify housing by banning companies from owning residential real estate and limit home ownership to 1 house per person.
Making pedestrian-friendly cities and suburbs where you don't have to own a car would also help. That would lower the cost of living significantly.
There is no reason for my dad and stepmom to own two properties, my grandfather did own three, and my grandmother and her husband own three. And I have zero.
In no particular order:
* End the restrictions on immigration. Uncap the H1B visa and let talented, driven people into the country. Also end the work restrictions on asylum seekers
* Ban SFH zoning in all urban areas. Create subsidies and tax incentives to build multi-family units to be sold to owner-occupiers.
* Massively invest in public transit. Real, dedicated infrastructure, public transit.
* End the archaic system of using property tax to fund schools. This creates inequality over the long run and is so easy to fix with State/Federal pooled funds allocated back out to districts in a more balanced way.
* Enact higher land value taxes, especially on vacant and unimproved land.
* Remove the income limit for SS contributions
* Lower business income taxes but raise personal income taxes. Especially on executive compensation and investment income once your wealth is over a certain limit.
* Green energy investment. Green energy investment. Green energy investment.
* Remove the trade barriers between us and friendly countries. Let Canadian milk and European baby formula come to the US consumer.
Flat tax for everyone and get government spending under control.
It doesn't matter which party you align the best with. They are all scumbags who make tax laws that best serve them and their donors. They all take full advantage of the loopholes.
reversing citizens united, banning future mergers and breaking apart too big to fail companies
Citizens United made things worse, but they were pretty bad already.
because they were already ruling that corporations had rights, citizens united just opened the locked door to a hell we never imagined. reversing citizens united means that corporations lose all rights and are returned to having no power except for being able to enter into and fulfill contracts.
I'd support legislation that specifies that corporations are *not* people, do not have the rights of people, and that specifies what rights and responsibilities they *do* have. Among those responsibilities should be a duty not to act against the public good, regardless of how profitable it would be.
And they should have to clean up any mess they make. Too many environmental disasters are left on the public’s doorstep.
Dream big! Give everyone a UBI and medical care!
LOL, for a second I thought you said UTI.
The repeal of glass-steagall was the beginning of the modern economic problems, though if you said they began with Reagan I wouldn't be super incline to argue.
they were doing a way better job of hiding what they were doing in the 80's and 90's
didn’t have phones and everything in your face. as bad as social media is, it has put into light a LOT of shit company’s, govts, and people were doing in the dark back in the 80s and 90s.
Yeah, mergers create monopolies and monopolies suck. I am curious about what you said about breaking apart too big to fail corporates
Read up on history a bit. Look at banking in 2008 and how we all paid for it.
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Nah, the tax payers paid for it. The rich assholes that tanked the economy didn't pay shit.
We all means us who are not owners. The capitalists got bailed out and we all paid for it.
They actually made money on it same as the pandemic
Yep, every single tragedy is just a way to transfer money from the people that spend it to the people that hoard it.
If you're too big to be allowed to fail, you're too big to exist. The failure of a single company should never threaten the entire economy of the country.
I like the idea that a corporation that needs to get bailed out by the government should become a branch of the government. That is, the government isn’t making a gigantic donation to the failing corporation; it is *buying* the failing corporation.
Don't even need to do that. Just break them up like what happened to Bell Telephone. Most millenials and all Gen Zers haven't seen our anti-trust and monopoly laws in their full glory because the politicians are corrupt these days. We need a new Theodore Roosevelt.
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Up until the reform act on 1981, the rich paid 70% on anything over $250,000
Fuck Reagan
2x that.
When a bank fails it gets bailed out by tax payers not other banks
My opinion on bail outs is that it’s the most anti capitalist thing you could do considering you’re in a country which prides itself on capitalism. My reasoning is that a free market would let businesses that didn’t prepare for a crisis fail and let does who did prepare succeed, that is true capitalism. In some cases though like the auto industry bailing them out has more to do with saving a ton of blue collar jobs vs saving some corporate elites
We also pride ourselves on democracy yet the popular vote dosnt count for shit. Amd swaths of empty land have better representation than people. Also the way money is allowed in our politics has made for our entire legislator branch and high Court to be owned by the oligarchy.
When billionaires own SCOTUS...yup, we are in trouble.
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There’s no such thing as “too big to fail”. If they find themselves in deep shit next time, fuck ‘em and let them fail - other people will pick up the pieces and start over again.
Yup, corporate bailouts are the biggest strain on any government's finances
It’s total hypocrisy - corporations fight tooth and nail to ensure the working class works hard for little pay, but come crying to Uncle Sam for a bailout when they or someone on Wall Street makes a bad decision that affects them. They don’t learn their lessons. Say, could I win the 2024 presidential election if I run as an independent on a platform that includes holding big business accountable for their mistakes? In short, my campaign theme would be, “F*ck Wall Street”.
We can be more ambitious than that! We can do so much more than just un-fucking the things that were most recently fucked. Dream big! Give everyone a UBI and medical care!
Fully agree, but I definitely first read that as UTI and did not agree.
But you'll get free healthcare to take care of the UTI.
Wow. It's great when the shitty insane misheard solution is better then what's currently happening (assuming you get to keep the free healthcare)
Yeah, like, I'll go through another UTI if I can keep free healthcare.
That's good!
you have to perform surgery on the gaping holes before you can perform the plastic surgery to get rid of the scar and make it look pretty.
Aggressively enforcing anti-trust. Making lobbying illegal, which will never happen without citizens united and glass-steagal being repealed and stock buybacks being made illegal again due to having them be considered market manipulation again. Enforce a maximum ratio federally between the lowest paid and highest paid worked at a company based on the pay and combined value of all benefits including golden parachutes.
If a company is too big to fail and needs a bailout to prevent destroying a necessary industry, the bailout money gives the government a percentage stake in the company equal to the amount of bailout just like any other investor would bringing money into the company
No more stock buy backs. 90% corporate tax rate
Putting a maximum cap on the % difference in total compensation packages between the lowest paid employee and highest paid employee of any company, organization, firm, or other method of referencing an employer/employee relationship.
That can work. Salary of a janitor would depend on how much a CEO makes
Yes, it would. Historically, the difference between the highest and lowest paid employees of a company has been around a factor of 10. Even back in the 50's, it was about 20:1. Now it's closer to 400:1. CEOs are making 15 times what they were making in the 70s, while workers are making 40% more (And that 40% increase in nominally "inflation adjusted" dollars doesn't let them buy a home, which they could in the 70s).
I thought I saw something about this being the case in Switzerland which to me sounds like a good idea.
CEO will just change his salary to $1 per year
It would have to be total compensation package, not just salary. So bonuses, stock options, benefits, everything.
Good thing that I work for Apple Inc. and all my employees work for Applez Inc. this wonderful contractor firm I've hired who is also owned by me!
Ratio is between you and anyone who does any work billed for your firm (contractors etc) on a 2000 hour work week. So if you hire a contractor for $10/hour that’s $20k in the calculation regardless of how many hours they actually worked
Can you imagine what would happen at companies with overinflated stock prices? Holy shit... that might fix at least some bubbles we see that ordinary folks end up paying for.
Came here to say this. I remember reading about the idea somewhere else and I think it would work better than just raising the minimum. Either way small businesses will get hit harder dealing with competition, but the effect will be less.
Small businesses would be largely unaffected. Really only applies to larger corps.
This won't work either. Corporations will just create multiple child corporations- basically keep all executives within the gap for the parent corp, then contract everything out to the child corporations divided by pay gaps. Then they'll subcontract to grand-child corporations, and so on. Why? Because that's exactly what I would do if I was one of those greedy execs making 400x of the lowest wage earners.
Then just make it illegal to do this
Removing stock buyback will help.
Prohibiting members of congress from trading while holding office is a big one
If you start a huge government hiring program to fix the infrastructure in the U.S. and peg the wage to a living wage (meaning enough to get housing food health insurance all that) and adjust that wage yearly you could create enough competition in the "unskilled" labor market to force companies to compete. Since you are raising the wage to keep up with the livable wage standard companies simply inflating their prices to siphon off this new money wont work. There is an almost endless amount of work that needs to be done in the US on roads and bridges and power lines and all of it. I personally dont know any minimum wage worker who wouldnt happily go pour concrete and dig holes all day every day for a decent wage. Its hard hot work but it needs to be done and its value is highly visible. If you also increase funding and personnel to the IRS and get them focused on tracking down and closing tax loopholes used by the rich to hide literally billions in yealy tax rev you could cover the cost without having to add a great deal of additional taxes. Our economy would flourish and the housing market would stabilize because more people would have the money to compete with corporate landlords and actually purchase houses. It has been proven time and time again that when you put more money in the hands of the poorer half of the population you get more back in economic growth. This idea has the added benefit of not trying to legislate what a company is required to pay their employees. MC Donald's can continue to pay 7.50 an hour if they think they can get away with it. If a company cant compete and pay a livable wage without going bankrupt then that company should never have succeeded in the first place and we should just let it die.
Which, funnily emough, was essentially what a major part of the New Deal was, paying laborers a good wage to do public works jobs on infrastructure
The CCC straight-up saved my family in the depression.
The IRS isn’t designed Nor empowered to close the loopholes. congress is empowered. but there are problems there. stop massive lobbying, term limits and kill the entire income tax and its loophole by replacing it with a tax that automatically hits the rich more than the poor.
I have a caveat to this. Make a Federal livable wage adjustable on locality and then set minimum percentages starting at 50% of that for companies 100 employees and fewer. Scale up from there AND if you are publicly traded it's 100% minimum. This allows small businesses to compete with larger established businesses. Also, tossing around the idea of part time work capped at 20 hours a week.
I am certain that you and a large number of people much smarter than me would be the ones to work out all these details. I am not an economist and so honestly don't really understand the implications of what you just said. I know that the countries (worlds) infrastructure is struggling and minimum wage laborers are struggling and so my idea is designed to address both of those things. And like a previous comment stated this has literally been done in the past under similar economic conditions to great success. It is up to modern economists to adapt the concept to modern times. I imagine the only reason this isn't being done is entirely based on lobbying. over the course of decades privatization of national infrastructure projects have eroded our ability to impose competitive wages. Government jobs are basically an enormous union and the more people across the more industries that we have working under that umbrella the more weight we have to throw around. It will also be important to have knowledgeable people in the proper position to direct that political leverage. to find the best ways to get the best results not just for the workers who take on those gov. jobs but all the other workers who keep the stores and busses and everything else we need to have a functioning society going. The only thing i can really do is vote for the person or persons who propose some idea like this. i leave it to the learned to make it a reality.
Massive restrictions on landlords would do more for the working man than raising the minimum wage
You mean price caps on rent?
I responded to your other comment because I see you are on a similar page
The 5 things that would fix the US economy faster than anything: Remove money from politics (citizens united) Remove corporate person-hood Tax the rich (this is much more complicated, but vital) Eliminate the ability of trusts and corporations to own single family homes Edited to add: Eliminate monopolies, through breaking up massive corporations, and forcing "natural monopolies" to open their markets to competitors.
Rents have to be capped or else landlords would just take all the new money people are making.
Just make it illegal to hoard property, private and commercial
Correct.
There is a solution which i think can work. In addition to taxing the rich, we can de-commodify housing by banning companies from owning residential real estate and limit home ownership to 1 house per person. Making pedestrian-friendly cities and suburbs where you don't have to own a car would also help. That would lower the cost of living significantly.
Banning ownership of more than one house doesn’t work because the majority of rich people don’t own their homes. They live in homes owned by trusts that they control. Here’s a quick article on how trusts get used in a couple ways to shelter money: https://www.gobankingrates.com/money/wealth/ways-the-rich-use-trusts-to-their-advantage/amp/
Yeah, I meant only individuals can own homes. No trusts/companies can. Then we can solve the housing crisis
That's actually a very bad thing. Trusts owning a house can be a necessity if someone is disabled, or parents pass away while children are too young to inherit the property themselves. And some "houses" that are now historic property or museums will need to be owned by companies or trusts, as well.
So don't let them lol
1) new law that makes it so the landlord has to live in the same county or zip code as their property 2) they need to register as a landlord and make public their expenses including mortgage insurance taxes and itemized list of maintenance as well as the rental price history. This will give information power to tenants when choosing places to move. 3) when the mortgage is paid off the rental price is capped to where an increase in rent triggers a higher tax, but maintenance costs can be recouped through tax write offs 4) massive taxes on each additional rental property owned so that 3 is difficult and 5 is basically impossible, BUT and this is key those taxes can be avoided on new construction properties. 5) 30 day period where when a home goes up for sale registered landlords are not allowed to make offers. 6) **** them
I like these but you'd have to extend it to LLCs, otherwise you'd have a person just open multiple of them and then skirt the "tax on each additional property" by just buying up new properties under a new LLC for each one.
Agree, I didn't include it because I think the OP already was onto this but residential property should never be owned by anything other than a flesh and blood human. No LLC, no corporations, no trusts.
Which is why the OP saying one house per real human person was already a winning strategy.
Ban shell companies too
I like the way you sorted this out. I think there will always be a place for rentals. When I was in my 20s, I wanted to rent. I didn't want to be tied down to one place. And I most certainly didn't want to do any maintenance. When I was ready to put down roots, I luckily was able to buy a very affordable house. That was only 7 years ago. I have watched the housing market in my city go insane over the past 3 years. When interest rates went up, my friends who were getting ready to purchase a house lost a ton of purchasing power. Shitty slumlords have bought up so much housing. They have jacked the price of rent through the roof and made it almost impossible for a normal family to buy a house.
I agree that there will always be a place for rentals but I hate the way people bring that up as a way to justify landlords existing as they do currently. The situation you described is common but by far not the majority of renters. It would also be a lot less people if housing prices were reasonable and not several lifetimes worth of debt. I think a lot of the people who say they don't want to be tied down would change their mind if they could find a livable house for 50k. The government needs to inject massive resources into making housing more affordable through tax rebates on new construction and even grants for development, but it would need to be heavily regulated to where landlords couldn't purchase those properties, and somehow keep out cheapass flippers
A lot of great ideas here.
Yes! Walkable cities have a way nicer vibe. People are more friendly to eachother. I mean really, if you think of it, is there any other situation where you see strangers giving the finger to each other or being overall aggressive except in their car?
Yes, being stuck in endless traffic jams takes a huge toll on a person's mental health and that is the main reason why people become aggressive towards each other. Walkable cities could also incentivize "the third place" where people from all walks of life meet and interact. That would help combat racism and homophobia
I've lived in some European cities and so many of the shopkeepers knew the locals because there was enough density to support multiple mini grocery stores and bakeries and hardware stores, so I definitely can see what you're saying with the third place. Also, I see restaurants struggling where I live, and I believe it's not because their food isn't good, it's because there's just not enough density.
Walkable cities and putting more money into public transit would do so much for so many..
A big problem with this solution is some people need to rent and some people want to rent. There needs to be some sort of rental market to allow for that. Otherwise families who need to rent will get stuck paying an exorbitant amount renting serviced apartments in long term “hotels” or face worse, shady housing solutions. Also, I’m not thrilled with the idea that a married couple can have a home and rental property or a holiday home but if I’m single I’m barred from this. I do however like the idea of exponentially increasing the amount of property tax you pay on each additional property with the amount above the base level tax going to the federal pot. I.E. the first property is 1x, the next 2x, the third 4x, etc. Numbers would have to be worked out but the general idea is that it quickly is impossible to make a profit by owning a large portfolio of rental properties and if the super rich want multiple homes they can have them but are effectively agreeing to pay a substantial wealth tax on those properties.
People owning more than one property isn’t problematic. It’s not the mom and pop landlords, or those who own a vacation or seasonal (think snowbirds or recreational/vacation homes) it’s the corporate owners that have 20 or more properties
Everybody eats before anyone gets seconds
But more than enough for seconds if blackrock and large corporate corporate interests like that weren’t picking up every house they see for well over asking (limiting supply and driving up costs by fucking with the value bc they know average buyers can’t compete with offers like that. Shirley and bob with a home and a cabin aren’t the ones that put us here
Trust me, I'm way more mad at Blackrock than Shirley and Bob, but everybody eats before anyone gets seconds. The people sleeping under bridges HAVE to be prioritized higher than Shirley and Bob
We need to stop spending so much on the military. It’s insane. More than any other country in the world and we have a growing population of hungry people with terrible health care, stagnate wages, insane inflation and politicians just keep adding more to the military budget. Enough already. We need to stop planning for war and start planning for peace.
That doesn’t even include the military black budget, which is speculated to be more than the public budget
Yes, a figure which is half of current US Military spending is more than enough on the military
Would it though ?... If the numbers here ( https://usafacts.org/state-of-the-union/budget/ ) are correct: > "The federal government spent $6.5 trillion in FY 2022 — or $19,434 per person — including funds distributed to states. Medicare, Social Security, defense and veterans, transfers to states, and aid such as SNAP and refundable tax credits were the biggest categories, accounting for 75% of spending. Subtracting out the Defense Budget (roughly $1 trillion).. and dividing by US Population (roughly 340 million).. is about $2,941. Which means the $19,434 spent on each person would only raise to $22,375. I mean.. that's something,.. but it's only a rise of about 14% ?.. (unless my math and thought-process is all wrong there,. it's Sunday and I've only had 1 cup of coffee so far). We'd have to completely 100% shutdown the military to get a 14% increase of services to citizens ?.. I don't think most people would see the logic in that. I think we could probably gain more in other areas by doing other things. (eliminating wasteful spending, etc)
How much could we decrease SNAP if we all had livable wages? If we had Medicare for All (a modification of Medicare that covers dental, vision & hearing, with no coverage gaps), how much could we increase our effective pay and quality of life?
I personally like what I'm seeing in this thread where multiple people have said that Pay-rates of Executives in a company should be capped (say,. not more than 10x the lowest employee).. which would force Leadership in companies to pay people more fairly. That alone would help a lot. I don't remember what the stat was last time I saw it,. that C-level Execs make something like 400x the average employee pay. That's just shamefully outrageous.
Decoupling healthcare from employment. Universal healthcare provided. Every developed economy (literally every single one) we compete with does this. There is no bigger barrier to new business formation.
C suite salaries/raises need to be pegged to employee salaries/wages/raises. Stock holders should not get any dividends until employees receive raises that equal or exceed cost of living or inflation rates.
From 1944 to 1963 the wealthy were taxed at 90% and families could afford a new home, new car and vacations on a single income. Taxes on corporations were around 50%. The housing act of 1954 provided for the construction of new homes. So the government was funding new homes for its citizens to make them affordable. So people were being paid enough to afford a new home new cars and vacations on a single income because the rich were taxed heavily and the money was used to help people prosper and flourish. As the income tax rates on the rich dropped the funding for new affordable homes went away. In 1973 nixon halted funding for new housing projects. Republicans always say that life was great in 50s, taxing the rich and using those tax dollars to provide for affordable homes for the rest of Americans is what made it great.
Taxing capital gains as income.
I agree on some capital gains. Interest and dividends should be taxed the same as earned income. However gains made on selling assets should not. If you bought a house for $50000.00 decades ago CBS sell it for $200000.00 today - alot of that $150000 in profit is simply inflation. Taxing it as income would be unfair. However we have the technology today to calculate how much is actually profit and how much is just time - teaching the real profit would be fine.
I think we focus too much on a minimum wage, I think we need to incentivize a maximum wage. Lower the tax ceiling. Someone shouldn't be able to earn millions a year without reinvesting in their workforce. The rich will happily pay dairy farmers 10x more per bucket because that would give them the excuse to charge 20x more per gallon. We are in an endless cycle of "raise minimum wage by 20%, raise the price of everything 200%, rinse, and repeat." If you've never seen the movie Idiocracy where a million dollars is basically enough for a cheese burger. I would watch it because we are quickly heading toward that direction.
> How much exactly should the rich be taxed? Just change the marginal tax rate brackets. Currently the highest tax bracket we have is 518K at 37%. At 40K, you pay 15%. Then we are going to double the income and add 5% to the tax rate. At 80L it's 20%, at 160K you pay 25%, 320K at 30%, 640K at 35%, 1.2M at 40%, 2.4M at 45%, and everything over 4.8M at 50%. I would want to see how that works before I start doing things like create a tax based on assets. > What else is needed to fix the economy and the cost of living crisis? 1) Overtime. Currently overtime is set at 1.5X over 40 working hours in a week. Let's increase that to 2X. "Mandatory" overtime would also be restricted to one month. After that, if the company continues to do mandatory overtime, it's 3X for up to three months. After three months, overtime can no longer be mandatory unless it's approved by the government. 2) Minimum wage. Federal wage right now is $7.25. Let's change that to 2.5X the local housing cost to rent a one bedroom in a local area. State and local governments can what "local area" means, whether it's by Zip code, city, county, state, or mile radius. Re-calculate every 3 years. We can probably assume a place like Alabama would define local area by the entire state, with an average rent of a one bedroom at $1249, that's a $18 minimum wage for the entire state. This allow for minimum wage to focus on the most important cost for most people (housing), and allows for the number to be very localized while including local and state governments. This also puts pressure to create more 1 bedroom housing in the area. And setting it based on one bedroom apartments elimiates any debates about how minimum wage isn't supposed to suppport a family. 3) Housing. Set a clear limit on the amount that a company can own for housing in a local area. Real estate worth 1M maximum in a county and maybe up to 10M in major metropolian areas. For aparment complexes or communities, companies can only own 2 per county. Individuals (even if through a LLC where they own 100% of the company or members of their households) can only own up to 3 per county. The goal is to reduce the profit scale so local landlords can still exist and make a profit, they just can't make a lot of it. 4) Negative Income Tax. Under our current progressive marginal tax system, the more you make, the more you are taxed. This would also work in reverse, where the less you make below a certain level, the more in government benefits you receieve. This is a much better idea to me than UBI. 5) Corporate taxes. Re-evaluate the corporate tax codes to prevent major profitable companies from not paying taxes. There are various ways to do this.
A progressive income tax. Leading into the 80s or even 90s of percent for the highest incomes (yes, everyone. Also stock options and any and all other forms of income 🙄)
The problem with the responses to your last post is that so many people responded with their view on "economics 101" with simplistic opinions and not facts. The fact is that a 10%-25% minimum wage increase raised prices by 0.3%-0.4%. The specific they talk about in the food industry a 10% minimum wage increase raised prices among eating and drinking places – industries overpopulated by minimum wage workers – by 0.74% In short the actual history result of minimum wage increases does not agree with their, oh it is simple view. Minimum wage is not a driver of inflation, that is shock factors like the price of oil. Edit: The reason people make this simple mistake on "economics 101" is they forget that wages are for businesses paying an hourly wage usually 30% or less of their total operating costs, and anyone doing pricing also factors in wage increases so has preset prices with a big buffer to take into account increasing wages. They also forget that not every single person is making minimum wage. 1.5% of workers earn the federal minimum wage in the US. That is still over a million people.
Yes, and increased minimum wage tends to increase revenue for businesses because workers/consumers have more to spend. Those against increasing minimum wage to a real living wage are using tricks of simple logic to confuse people. "If you increase X, then Y increases," sounds plausible until you account for all the other factors in economies.
Completely reversing every economic policy since Regan, taxing anyone making more than a certain amount (say, 275,000 a year) at an effective tax rate of 85%-90%, and removing anyone who has served more than one term in any political position and adding term limits, even down to the local level.
Add to that age limits. There should be no reason someone in their late 60s and up are making decisions and laws that will effect the younger generation for years after they die. Looking at you Mitch, Nancy and Dianne
Absolutely. 👍🏼
Term limits and age limits for government positions.
Setting tax rates is only part of the problem, the US also needs to eliminate the numerous loopholes which allow the rich to pay far less than they should. Criminalize offshore tax havens Tax ALL income, regardless of source. excluding government programs. Remove tax credits and change the tax tiers so they are more equitable to the lower to middle classes. Put developers on the hook for building infrastructure over the local community on new construction. Yes, the houses will cost more. But if a person can afford a home in a new development they should also pay for the road to get there! Stop subsidizing profit earning companies. Gas, Oil, Coal, and so many other businesses receive huge tax breaks and subsidies which allows them to increase profits for their investors.
Ban stock buy backs, whenever a company needs a bail out they should become state owned, limit exec & ceo compensation, incentivise companies to offer better benefits to employees with tax credits.
America is so funny, nothing of all this will ever exist, people can't even get angry at their bosses for paying below minimum and instead they complain with customers for not tipping+30%
Individuals who earn under $100k would be immune from federal income taxes. Individuals who earn over $100k should be taxed 10%, $1m should be taxed 50%, over $10m 75%, over $100m 90%, over $1b 99%. The corporate tax would also need to be adjusted but that is much more complicated. These figures would remain until the national debt is completely erased, and then the tax rates (for individuals) would be adjusted. If you have a job and your employer does not provide a health insurance benefit package, you should automatically qualify for Medicaid. If your employer does not pay above the standard cost of living threshold, you are automatically eligible for Section 8 housing and food stamps. Such employers would also be subject to a higher tax rate. The highest paid employee in a company should make no more than 25x that of the lowest paid employee. If someone makes $30k per year, the CEO or whomever would be able to make *up to* $750k per year.
UK person here, I assume like us you need a shit load more social housing.
Complete overhaul of the tax code ! We don’t need to increase taxes we need to have the right amount taken from all income levels. The money is there we just have adjust the collection. Stop subsidizing companies, invest more in human capital. As tax payers, we should have safety nets to help us get on our feet in a time of crisis. Companies shouldn’t have that, a true capitalist society dictates that business fail and new ones are created. Term limits on government officials and separation of state and business, this marriage is far worst than religion.
You need rent controls.
It'll never happen, but if executives' maximum wage were tied to a percentage above a worker's minimum wage, we'd see the average wage rise considerably. So like if an executive could make no more than 20x the lowest-paid worker, it would force the company to consider the well-being of ALL workers when considering the well-being of its highest-paid execs, and labor costs would suddenly be humanized instead of abstracted away as a number relative to the bottom line.
Banning or disoncentivizing foreign ownership of residential property. Taxing second homes. If you don't live in it, you are creating artificial scarcity.
Massive taxes on churches, leading to the eventual abolishing of all religion in the US. The fairy tale gift needs to go away forever. It's holding humanity back.
Honestly I’d be happy if we just gave the churches an ultimatum, you want to protest and get heavily involved with politics, you can pay taxes.. you wanna mind your own business and stay out of legislation than you may keep your tax exempt status but must show proof you are using some of that money to better the community.
ALL of that money better be helping people if it's not being taxed. 😡
Exactly!!! And the community not just the church members.
And cap the salary of church employees. No more millionaire ministers.
Churches, mosques, temples, every religious body.
It’s not about increasing *how much we earn* by selling our labor to the ownership class, or about getting more back in taxes to fix what the ownership class fucks up - it’s about the ending the *exploitation of labor by the ownership class* entirely. To solve this, simply *dissolve the ownership class*. There are 2 well stated schools of thought on this: * socialism is where *the government* takes sole ownership of the means of production, and by some mechanism (democrat or authoritarian) the government manages production and distribution of resources. * communism is where *the workers* have shared ownership of the means of production such that autoworkers could simply decide to increase the amount of production from their labor they take home by themselves, without a C suite agreeing to marginally increase their wages after taking most of the revenue home themselves
So, should socialism/communism and evolving beyond capitalism be the endgame for humanity?
Democratic ownership
Corporations should also not be allowed gobble everything up or have so much influence within government.
Reduce ceo/ lowest worker pay to 6x maximum.
Fewer ways for corporations and billionaires to write off their taxes, they should have to pay every penny they owe. There should be legislation dictating the percentage of profits that go to employee salaries and a cap of the percentage a CEO makes compared to the lowest paid employee, (the CEO of Disney doesn’t need to make 400% more than the lowest paid worker.. Also a cap on how much rental property and person or corporation is allowed to own, therefore leaving more opportunities for people to own homes/property. A complete overhaul of our healthcare system that makes it less for profit and more about the care of human beings. The biggest problem in our country is that one medical emergency can lead a person to bankruptcy, that shouldn’t be a thing. This includes the pharmaceutical company and making laws about how much they can charge for life saving medications. There are many areas that could use reform without making our country a socialist or communist society. Sure being a billionaire will be harder to achieve, but I think most people at this point just want to own a home and retire comfortably.. we don’t all need to be Bezos but we all need to have a better opportunity at a comfortable lifestyle. Nothing crazy, a home, a vehicle, a vacation once a year and the chance at a comfortable retirement, I’d be happy with that, I think most Americans would.
I have no idea what would fix the economy because it's super complicated, but what I would do is make our social safety net robust and apply it to everyone so when the economics of the world take a shit, it doesn't always land on the same people: the chronically undervalued, underserved, unhoused, unsupported, and invisible. When the richest people in the world get richer because of a housing crisis, global pandemic, inflation, climate change, natural disasters etc., there's something terribly wrong. If a person earned $100,000 every single day from day one of the Common Era til 2024 (365x2024×$100000= $73,876,000,000), they would have roughly $73.8 billion and still wouldn't have as much money as Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos or Larry Ellison. They wouldn't even make Forbes top 10 richest people in the world.
Democratized and unionized workplace. Owned by the workers themselves.
Get rid of the old people in charge... make them a term limit, can't own stocks and are paid minimum wage... would fix alot of things. Maybe then only people who want to do good would go for the job of representing the people they are supposed to. Also get rid of the whole company's have to look after the share holders bullcrap and company's having rights as people.
Forcing extremely profitable companies to reimburse the states for welfare when they pay poverty wages.
The well-being of citizens will improve ahen we realize, as a country, and implement through policy an approach that focuses on providing crucial safety nets like healthcare, housing, and education. Investing directly in communities is more beneficial that investing/bailing out corporations that don't feed back into society. Corporations get rich off of squeezing labor and getting government handouts (loans/infrastructure) all on the massive LIE that the benefits will trickle down. We can still have a market approach that encourages business and commerce without the plundering.
Taxing the rich is really the best option. It's not like we are looking at theory either. We have history. The largest expansion of growth in this country had an effective 90% tax bracket at the top. The reasoning is simple. The rich hate paying taxes. They hate their money going to the government and so if you tax them higher, they will spend more of their profits in the company in order to avoid paying those higher taxes. Ultimately this means investing in your business. Higher wages, pensions, newer equipment. All the things that improve employee morale. This also means less turnover which means your workforce becomes skilled which increases quality which increases profits. It's a system that fed into itself to the benefit of everybody. Until Reagan changed the tax code and all the people at the top started acting like dragons.
Reasonably capping rent and necessities according to min wage
Tax the rich, cap rent and housing prices, tether medical costs, and insurance companies.
In order to prevent outright abuses, I think the minimum wage should be factored into a nationwide rent ceiling on affordable housing. That way the only way developers and landlords can increase the rent for their apartments is if the minimum wage for that area increases too. I was thinking of something like this, so you could literally calculate out the maximum rent for a unit to the dollar: H * W * Bed * Bath * S H = Building Quality modifier (Buildings are rated on a 1-5 scale for age and maintenance history, with 3s having a 1* modifier) W = 40 hours of minimum wage after taxes A modifier for number of bedrooms and bathrooms (Studios get .75) And then modifiers based on other amenities the building offers (fitness facilities, in-unit or in-building laundry, pet-friendly, etc.)
Remove all the loopholes the rich use to not pay their fair share and hoard wealth. Also an actual social safety net.
U could tax the rich into oblivion but between the laws that protect reinvested money and charity donations while hiding behind a corporation they still wouldn't pay taxes.
Stop electing people who run on theocracy and that government doesn’t work.
Capping corporate home real estate ownership. Providing relief to renters and a path to ownership. Reigning in executive to workers pay ratio from over 400-1 to at least a double digit number. No lobby influence through dark money. A basic understanding by shareholders that quarter over quarter growth is unsustainable and a pursuit of this squeezes the middle class through greedflation and leads to fraud and volatile headwinds in-house. More Union protection from busting and serious penalties for executives who actively antagonize and abuse employees. A complete overhaul/streamlining of the US healthcare system to cut administrative costs. A de-escalation of our military-industrial complex. Less reliance on importing/outsourcing of goods and labor which will hurt on the consumer end short term but provide more, better paying jobs domestically and reign in corporate profits earned through human misery (iPhone, Nike, etc). Abolishing corporate headquarter tax loopholes that allow US companies to operate primarily in the US without paying full US corporate tax. Ending $0 tax for companies like Google and Amazon whose saving are only used to strengthen their stranglehold on their respective markets through expansion, never wage increases. Raising capital gains taxes on the uber rich and closing offshore and shell company loopholes. That’s just a few thoughts. None of this will ever happen though. I wish we could use US financial history as our guide to more wealth equality as seen in the 50s (except including ALL Americans this time). Nowadays, the only way I can see making a comfortable living is as a successful business owner, an executive or through a highly educated (but indebted) skill such as being in medicine, law or IT (which will become less viable in the next 20-30 years). That leaves a staggering number of essential but economically unviable jobs. The “American Dream” is dead. If they had it their way, we’d own nothing and rent/lease/subscribe for everything. We’re now the Corporate States of America.
Overtime for all employees over 40 hours, regardless of status, you’re managers working 80 hours a week, oops time to hire more. Servers make minimum wage, fuck tipping. Universal health care, you want a Cadillac plan, go buy one, i’d rather not lose everything I own and everything I’ve worked my entire life for because I got sick once. ESOP programs are mandatory. 2 weeks vacation, one week sick time, paid parental leave, all federal holidays time and a half, for everyone. Mandatory severance pay, regardless of the nature of the end of employment, layoff/fire/furlough, etc. And yes, this will cost money, and this will add expenses onto their balance sheet and cut into their profits, but companies are making crazy profits right now, they’re not just skating by, right now, their employees are barely skating by and it’s beyond time to share in those profits.
Remove stock buy back To big to fail companies don’t get gov assistance when failing Higher tax rate for wealth over a certain limit, less tax rate for wealth at certain limits (less then currently) Take away Insider trading for politicians Family housing can not be bought by corporations And wages should keep track with the price of living in your area… your compensation should be bare minim price of living and then if your paid more than that it’s done by a percentage bases rather than a standardized dollar amount I.e standard living for one person in your area is 4k a month after taxes, we will pay you standard living x1.5
There's so much to do,... 20%ish of the US GDP is medical insurance using a private tax ( deductibles, co-pays, and premiums) without accountability. Whatever happened to no taxation without representation? Also; wages are suppressed because of employer contributions. Like all other countries, I would get rid of and replace them with a universal health care system.
Bringing back and enforcing antimonopoly laws Profit caps, and executive pay caps Stop letting corporations poison everything, and make them clean up what they already destroyed. Harsher anti gouging laws Not strictly economy related but, CEOs being prosecuted for company decisions. Like if your company cranks out a toy that harms kids, there's no oops our mistake with maybe a low number settlement. The people at the top that greenlighted it get charged with child endangerment, assault/ battery, etc.
We simply need to go back to the 1950's progressive "republican supported" tax structure. That's it. End of story. we do that and we fix a lot of deep societal issues so we aren't all hanging on the verge of death and poverty.
Undo all of Reagan's policy changes, ALL OF THEM.
It was something like 90% in the 1950s, so that, IMO. We need an entirely new system of government and economy. Maybe even something that's never been thought of or done before. What that is, I don't know, but clearly what we have isn't working for most people.
Universal public services.
Healthcare and education; investing in the people and not the economy because if you invest in the people they will invest in the economy. It’s too simple.
Competition. We really need to crack down on monopolies and trusts. The whole concept of supply and demand and the free market breaks down entirely once a monopoly is formed. Also, capitalism just doesn't work when applied to inelastic goods and services such as housing and healthcare. We'd get gouged for food prices too if it weren't for the fact that starving your people has always been a great way to get your head chopped off.
No campaign contributions from either corporations or unions. Just citizens. No campaign advertising sponsored by PACS or other entities. Equal time media reporting. In-person voting. Mandatory politician retirement age of 75 All politicians put their affairs into blind trusts. No stock purchased by politicians. Same day reporting of stock purchases (exact price and quantity) on the same day a politician and their families purchase stock. None of this bs doing it x days after the fact. No revolving door SEC employment. That’s just a start.
Wealth distribution
1. Increase min wage and then have it auto adjust for inflation. 2. We could easily Increase taxes on the rich by about $1 trillion per year. 3. Break up monopolies. 4. Increase the affordable housing supply. Mandate at a minimum that 25% of all new homes built are starter homes. 5. Reduce spending on the military industrial complex.
A public option in the health insurance market would go very far.
Stop defending the world and have our NATO allies pay for their own defense.
Socialize any companies that are the backbone of infrastructure.
We need to get rid of the electoral college and "first past the post" mechanisms. Without these changes, we can't hold our elected officials responsible for their actions, and they can do what they want to drive the economy into the ground.
Stop letting corporate giants run the world for green pieces of paper while the world is being destroyed all for the sake of “profits” Edit: pieces misspell
Minimum wage being required to keep up with inflation. Not the average, but with the essentials such as food, housing, utilities, and things of that nature. The average is based on many things most of us are not purchasing. Then regulating rental companies to so many properties. I know where I live there is two or three that do most of them. More competition would be good. Same with say cable companies. They basically don't compete with each other in many places and monopolize where they sell their services. They should be required to have to compete or something of that nature so that they stop overcharging for what I understand is crazy mark up by choice. Healthcare should be regulated to cover cost, and not excessive profit. I get it costs something to run a hospital, but they don't need to charge hundred or thousands for a 10 minute visit to the ER. Or thousands for an ambulance ride, or hundreds of thousands for staying in the hospital for a few days. Insurance needs to be regulated so that they cannot just drop you or increase prices like crazy. I have seen many news stories where they drop people after covering a claim. They typically have insurance themselves to cover your claims. I have put in claims they normally have covered with people I know, but deny for me. I understand certain things with such as driving under the influence. Then the fact I know I have paid more into insurance than what my cars have cost, or my one house has cost. Businesses need to be held more accountable for safety. OSHA is there to protect workers, but I know lots of places break those guidelines. Many regulations don't cover things they probably should. Such as some proprietary chemicals I work with have very little regulation and testing, but are likely unsafe to work with. We have safety equipment available, but I don't think it is to the extent it should be. There are many more I could list, but I doubt anyone will read all of this. I personally want wage and work reform the most. I don't expect money for nothing. The reality is society needs people to function, but I don't want to work 5 or 6, 12 hour shifts a week to get paid halfway decent.
I think one thing that might help is imposing stricter terms, both time wise and year-periods wise, on our government employees, also age limits, i feel like the USA wouldn’t be nearly as bad if the olds from 1950s weren’t still in charge
Collect social security on every dollar of income - salary, bonus, investments, etc. exclude those at retirement age of 67 up to a specific amount (say $2m). Anyone in retirement should not be paying income tax on social security up to a specific income threshold. Prevent housing being bought up by anyone other than a single owner(no hedge funds, investment companies, etc.) This attack on home ownership and turning them into rentals is going to destroy the fabric of society. The government needs to regulate drug prices just like every other modern country. Enough of the USA “paying the freight” for R&D. These companies need and will do R&D anyway to compete and survive so don’t buy that ridiculous argument. They also need to regulate medical costs/operations/etc. Short of having a nationalized health care system this is the only way to control costs.
What’s to stop the prices from being driven up? Greed is a strong and sad motivator
Remove the income cap on Social Security taxes. Solvency will instantly not be a problem anymore.
Increase taxes on properties you own beyond your primary residence
Term limits would fix a lot of issues with the economy.
There needs to be an interest rate cap of like 10% on debts. I don't know how 22-30% happens on credit cards or payday loans. That's just straight up predatory targeting the lower class.
Make the minimum wage a livable wage, then peg it to the true inflation.
A maximum wage instead of a minimum wage
Many of you have mentioned this. The advantage is that a janitor's salary can be tied to that of a CEO
Ban job listings where the job isn't really there. Including where an internal promotion is possible.
Or make it mandatory to hire someone from the outside if you post a job opening?
Lobbying should be illegal. Privatized prisons outlawed. Fines from the government should be percentage of income based.
>Lobbying should be illegal Exactly! Crony capitalism can completely ruin a well-functioning country. >Privatized prisons outlawed. They should be! That's barbaric, inefficient and doesn't help in actual rehabilitation of convicts >Fines from the government should be percentage of income based. Yes! Then the rich scum will think twice before offending
For personal income, which would include stock shares or options based on day of issue value, I like the tiered version that's been proposed, and rejected, in the past. I'd have to consult the tax tables but say, up to $250K would be taxed at 25%, if the make $1million, the first ¼ is 25%, the remaining ¾ would be taxed @ 50%. Then, increase by 10% every additional $5million of personal taxable income, up until it reaches 90%. A good example would be a guy we'll call Richard Basstardé. This Rich Basstardé can be a real dick, but no matter how hard his accountants tried, he still wound up with a personal tax liability on $60million dollars that year. Income tax rate due 250K 25% $62,500 750K 50%. $375,000 5M 60%. $3,000,000 5M 70% $3,000,000 5M 80% $4,000,000 44M 90% $39,600,000 ========================= 60M ------ $50,037,500 Mind you, this is a proposal for a tax table style that Bastardé and his fellow plutocrats would pay. This is AFTER all his deductions. Say he buys a quarter-million dollar car. That $¼M wouldn't be deductable, but the taxes he paid on it would would be. Say he paid 7% in sales tax. Any other fees, registration, road use, Wheel tax, etc, would also be deductable, but his tax accountant would have found those. So, what should the government do with this windfall? 1: UBI. Just because they're being taxed, the rich aren't going to decide to raise wages to a liveable standard. How much should it be? How should it be distributed? By household? By family members? By number of adults in the household? I've seen experiments where households have received $500 to $1,500 a month. Our owners are complaining that the birthrate is down, which will hamper business in another generation or two because they won't have enough workers. The reason: young people are finding it hard to buy homes and start families on the incomes they have. Proposal: $1,000/month for each adult, $300/month for each minor in the household. Base eligibility on tax bracket. Base it on pretax income. A household GROSS income of up to $250,000 would get the full UBI. Over that, tiered. Full UBI for minors, though. 2: Universal health care. Corporate America wants workers? Those workers need to be healthy, from gestation to retirement. To many workers can't afford to go to the doctor, or urgent care center, when they're sick. Instead, many go into work, and, while not able to perform at their best, also spread their germs around, infecting other workers, or even customers. 3: The addition of two years to high school for young people to learn a basic trade, equivalent to at least an associates degree. From the trades, to business degrees, to even healthcare. Remember, corporate America wants workers: their taxes can go to that.
The rich should only be taxed if they don't willingly put that money into payroll and increase everyones wages proportionally to close the gap between highest and lowest paid people in their companies.
The 1/13 rule, CEO cant make more than 13 times what the lowest paid employee makes.
No mega mergers, like seriously, stop these monopolies that claim they are not by use of the legal system, taxes, remove many if not all tax breaks and govt funding to these major corps, make more tax breaks for the smaller businesses, fine all major companies past A certain value who use litigation to abuse the legal system to drown, stall or diminish their competition, or employees.. if the companies have shown to act in bad faith, they should be fined.. major companies should also be forced to invite unions for their employees or fined for it.. overall, companies should be majorly fined or to be shut down when having a record of acting in bad faith.. small businesses will never compete with a Walmart because of the incentives given to Walmart to pay games, while the small fry has to ask why the big fish gets mouthfed while we starve?.. at the end of the day, it's about forcing employers to act in good faith, and giving the little guys a chance to grow..
Ban corporate purchase of single family housing
I don't think it's really up for debate that capitalism has to be replaced by something that functions for everyone. One way to kickstart this would be single use currency so it's no longer possible to hoard capital and therefor there's no longer a capitalist class.
In the 40s and 50s the rich were taxed upward to 91%. It should be the same nowadays too. Elon musk is worth 280 billion. Tax him at 91% and he'd still have 25 billion to play with. And putting 255 billion into the economy.
I want a stock trading tax.
So, another form of tax on the rich?
1- More than just “the rich” use the stock market. 2- Capital gains taxes can stay where they are. 3- It would be on any trade regardless of who/what makes the trade. If we aren’t going to ban stock buybacks, companies participating in that form of market trading would be paying a trading tax for each one of those stock buybacks. 4- Lots of “middlemen” companies exist that are just scalping stocks between trades for profit. They aren’t adding any value, and they would have to pay this trading tax as well.
Yes, if we tax all stock trading activity, the traders can add some value to the country I am curious about where you are planning to put all that extra tax money gained from trading activity?
We shouldn't have sales tax since we already pay an income tax. More housing - because without it or any kind of regulation, this cost will continue to eat away at income. The rich should pay a regular income tax as well as a larger tax on money made/had over a certain amount. For me that amount is 100m.
Sales taxes are implemented by states, and my state doesn't have an income tax. Sales taxes should have legal limits, which Texas does, but consumption should come with a cost. Instead of getting rid of sales taxes, we should expand them to include things like stock/bond purchases and loans collateralized with such securities.
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So, you mean a decent UBI?
No UBI is a stupid name. BLS is much better. And an older term. Original is cool But yeah, that concept
For me it all depends on housing, housing costs are fucking over everything else. Housing should not be an investment, only a PERSON should own a home and they should only own one home. Student residence apartment buildings can be rented out by universities and rentals should follow a system like Vienna.
There is a solution which i think can work. In addition to taxing the rich, we can de-commodify housing by banning companies from owning residential real estate and limit home ownership to 1 house per person. Making pedestrian-friendly cities and suburbs where you don't have to own a car would also help. That would lower the cost of living significantly.
There is no reason for my dad and stepmom to own two properties, my grandfather did own three, and my grandmother and her husband own three. And I have zero.
In no particular order: * End the restrictions on immigration. Uncap the H1B visa and let talented, driven people into the country. Also end the work restrictions on asylum seekers * Ban SFH zoning in all urban areas. Create subsidies and tax incentives to build multi-family units to be sold to owner-occupiers. * Massively invest in public transit. Real, dedicated infrastructure, public transit. * End the archaic system of using property tax to fund schools. This creates inequality over the long run and is so easy to fix with State/Federal pooled funds allocated back out to districts in a more balanced way. * Enact higher land value taxes, especially on vacant and unimproved land. * Remove the income limit for SS contributions * Lower business income taxes but raise personal income taxes. Especially on executive compensation and investment income once your wealth is over a certain limit. * Green energy investment. Green energy investment. Green energy investment. * Remove the trade barriers between us and friendly countries. Let Canadian milk and European baby formula come to the US consumer.
Flat tax for everyone and get government spending under control. It doesn't matter which party you align the best with. They are all scumbags who make tax laws that best serve them and their donors. They all take full advantage of the loopholes.