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Abortion: Nobody likes abortion, but conservative politicians love to divide us on emotional issues. Keep abortion safe and legal, otherwise we have back alley abortions which kill moms. Promote a sex education based on facts instead of christian morality. Teach kids how to have safe sex, and then provide contraception to all women for free. You'll have less abortion, less poverty, and a more productive population of women. All of my position is based on research which I'd be happy to cite. Plenty of states have tried everything and now we have the best solution.

When does human life begin and end?

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Fiscal responsibility: Government spends too much money, and takes in too little money. People are too goddamn selfish, and taxes are not evil. We should hike taxes on wealthy individuals, and run the government more efficiently. I think we should take a hard look at how much $$ we spend on corporate welfare, and high income welfare (thinking mortgage deduction). If we wanna let capitalism decide winners and losers, then we need to stop funding the losers. However I admit that I don't understand all of the details behind farm subsidies etc. Insurance programs to keep the country running may not be a bad idea. I would need to know more.

Nations do farm subsidies in order to promote domestic food production. If war starts and you're dependent on someone else for food, you're screwed.

Taxes: I'm in favor of progressive tax rates. But, there's no amount of increased taxes that will sustain our current expenditures and what we're on the hook for. Try it. Look up the numbers. Also realize that if tax rates on the wealthy get exorbitant, they will leave the country. We need jobs, plan and simple. If we don't create more jobs locally over the next several decades, it will be very, very bad.

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Defense: Cut spending dramatically. Use the gifts our research and development has created to run our military more efficiently. Reduce our presence around the world and isolate ourselves from unilateral engagements. Let the world decide together to do shit. Empathize with the folks who hate our guts enough so we understand what the fuck they're blowing us up over and then consider stop doing the shit (occupation, meddling, regime changing) that makes folks hate our guts.

I agree 1000%.

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Regulation: Smack the fuck out of wall street, banks, and companies who are abusing their position to fuck over Americans. Regulation is the only way that capitalism can be prevented from annihilating us. Make your shit, sell your shit, but don't be so fucking greedy. Look at helping out small businesses navigate regulations. I'd like to see a better checks and balances system invented. Regulation seems too reactive and shitty and harmful to business newcomers. Some regulations are shitty. Some are not. Again, not a simple problem.

I think some regulation is fantastic (e.g. getting rid of lead in gasoline). I think some regulation is killing the economy (Certificate of Need to open a doctor's office). I'm not sure how you think wall street and banks are fucking over Americans. The best regulation is an informed populace. How many of the regulation issues you see in capitalism could be solved by people taking a basic finance class that covers things like debt, interest, and depreciation of value?

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Education: Lots of people in America are lazy and want a fast solution for nothing. Education is the long term investment in the country's future. College has got to be cheaper. For-profit schools need to go away. Public schools need to be improved, and any private religious school who wants tax dollars can go fuck themselves. Any kid who applies themselves should be incentivized with cheap higher education, and quality job opportunities.

Let's be realistic here. Education isn't magic. What do you expect to happen if people go to college? Do you think we're suddenly going to start manufacturing lithium batteries, solar panels, or other innovations in the West? Going to college does not create jobs, except for the teachers and administration. We need job creation. Education is what we needed 100 years ago. It's not going to change our current economic trajectory in the face of globalization.

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Health care: Single payer system - people gotta stop abusing the system and going to the hospital for an MRI and a catscan whenever they get a splinter. Incentivize people who are making the right healthy choices with a smaller contribution. Let algorithms decide where and how to run hospitals.

This would ruin the quality of care. Maybe you're okay with that, if that means everyone gets healthcare whenever they want it. How about instead of going down that path, we make it easier for people to become doctors and to open more hospitals? This would create a subset of healthcare that is not as good as what we have today, similar to what you're suggesting, but it would also allow for us to keep the very high end healthcare we have now too. Think of it like car repair shops. Right now we only have dealerships, which do provide pretty good service. But they're expensive. What I'm suggesting would allow for there to be little mechanic shops all over as an alternative solution. Or think of it as restaurants. Our healthcare system right now is like only have Ruth's Chris all across the country, each with certified chefs. It's good food, but expensive. What if we allowed for there to be other, less expensive, restaurants too? I'm pretty sure going to a single payer system will end up like only McDonalds everywhere. That's what you see in Canada. Cuba is worse.

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Environment: We've gotta reduce human population growth (see contraception and sex education), and then we've got to figure out how to conduct a human life without destroying the environment. We've gotta figure out how to replace coal. We've gotta manufacture more efficient houses that cost less than 200k. We've got to generate more electricity. We've got to replace internal combustion engines with electric motors. We've got to manufacture with less pollution, and we need sustainable resources which we can extract to sustain our energy needs. There's a lot of room for R&D and capitalism to work its magic here.

I'm all for producing less harmful pollution. I think cleaning up lead is the lowest hanging fruit. I am okay with finding new ways to sustain current human population growth. Good luck finding a replacement to fossil fuels. Lord knows we need it. Nuclear has promise, but the waste is still pretty bad. Until we have alternative energy sources, there isn't much point to switching to electric motors.


I can't help but feel like all of these issues pale in comparison to the economic problem. Almost all your concerns will be much, much worse if we don't turn the economy around. This chart explains it a little bit, and it doesn't even include the last decade:



Discretionary income (not to be confused with disposable income) is declining for most Americans. The rich are still prospering, but it isn't at the expense of the poor. We're transferring enormous wealth out of the country for the pipe dream that is international free trade and slightly cheaper consumer goods.



- Paul



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/02/2017 12:36PM by PaulO.