>Fiscal responsibility: Government spends too much money, and takes in too little money.

Aside from creating the basic framework with which we all work together (contract enforcement, stopping murderers, etc.) it would be better for the government, especially on the federal level, to stop doing anything. Government should also play a role in forcing externalities into the market where they might otherwise be avoided. Pollution here is a good example. There should be taxes on pollution. Mostly government takes money out of your left pocket only to put it back into your right pocket after taking a 20% cut. Programs like social security are already starting to be a disaster for us financially. The question is whether or not to end these programs, but how to do so before they completely destroy our economy.

>Defense: Cut spending dramatically. Use the gifts our research and development has created to run our military more efficiently.

I lean towards isolationist too. We subsidize most of the world's military spending by having bases all over the place. Further, our international activism is flatly immoral. It helps to understand that the military is a massive jobs program for the poor and nominally educated. It's worth noting, however, that our military spending as a percentage of GDP is not totally out of wack. We're not even in the top 10. So those stats that show us spending more than the next X countries combined are kind of misleading.

>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.

Regulation is the tool the big banks do to crush the little banks. Take a look at the Dodd-Frank regulations that were supposed to fix the problems that led to the Great Recession. Instead it has led to a massive dying out of small banks while the bigger banks got bigger. I feel like you have this juvenile idea of how government works. If government has the power to control something of value, then the monied interests will pretty soon take control of it.

>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.

College would be cheaper if the government stopped subsidizing it. Fewer people need to be going to traditional colleges. The high price of college is the result of artificially inflated demand. For some dumb reason we told every kid in the country they just needed to go get a degree in any old thing and they'd have a cush life with a great job. That's just not true. Public schools are monopolies. Why do you think a school monopoly is going to be better for consumers than a bank monopoly? The voucher system seems like the only reasonable answer here. Most of the concerns about the voucher system can be solved with two stipulations. First, private schools that accept vouchers must meet the same educational criteria as public schools have today. Secondly, any school that accepts a voucher cannot charge any additional $ for tuition. If you wanted to go a step further start taxing schools that do not accept the vouchers, encouraging the upper-middle class to move their kids into the voucher schools and making sure they maintain decent funding. I'm a pretty staunch atheist myself, but I've come around to supporting private religious schools. Why? Because some of the best private schools are Catholic schools. I might be okay with regulating voucher schools to say they can't have a litmus test for admission, meaning a Catholic school must admit any student even if they're not Catholic. Secondly, if religious primary schools result in worse outcomes because of bad science education or whatever, then the market will sort that out because those people will not be able to get good jobs.

>Health care

Here again the government is the cause of the increased cost of health care. The government let the AMA stop our country from opening medical schools for literally DECADES. Further, the AMA continues to artificially keep the number of all forms of medical practitioners low so that wages stay sky high. I generally support unions, but the AMA is the most dangerous union in our country because the government has given it too much power. As I said I'm generally fine with unions, because the free market may result in the creation of unions. What I don't support is the government giving unions (such as the AMA) special consideration.

>Environment

All of these problems would largely be solved by doing what I already suggested: tax externalities such as pollution. Further, stop trading with countries that don't similarly tax pollution. We needn't bother subsidizing contraception or anything else. Let's just start by not giving people more money to have children. No deductions for children. No welfare for extra mouths. If you can't care for your children either don't have them or give them away to someone who can take care of them.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/20/2017 12:09PM by Rade.