The Covid-19 Info thread (keep politics out please)

[Johnson85]

It's simple. We kill the batman. ***

(Then we kill the rest of the rich too.) ***

But no it starts with redistribution of wealth. Flat Tax. (Yes I know Bernie has a different plan. Mine would be a true flat tax with no loop holes. That goes for business income too (NOT NET INCOME)).

That sounds great, but defining business income is not easy. We certainly have some unjustifiable handouts buried in the tax code, but most of what people complain about being tax breaks are just normal, everyday accounting conventions. If you try to just convert it into a revenue tax, then you crush capital intensive industries, a lot of which are sort of important.

Also, this does not redistribute wealth. We have a progressive tax system right now, and moving to a flat tax would make it less progressive on average. Not necessarily a bad thing, just an FYI that it seems contrary to your stated goal.

Free Basic Healthcare (Ability to opt out and get better coverage).

OK. I would disagree, but Medicaid for all and people that want better coverage can opt out or buy additional coverage is fine.

Free College.

We don't need free college, it's expensive enough as it is. I can't imagine how many more productive years would be wasted chasing degrees that don't make people more productive if there was no economic consequence for it. Plus this is a sop to a minority of the population that are generally more privileged than average.

Erase Student debt.

Another sop to the relatively well off.

Ofc you can opt out and go private (just like primary education). Legalize marijuana and tax it too.

great.

The only real social issue we should be discussing is abortion. More research into what it means to be a human and what makes a human a human. I'm strictly pro-life, but what does that mean? What does it mean to be a human and alive. (And for the other side I do believe in self-defense and that some abortions are necessary for the mother's survival.)

I think there are relevant social issues in addition to abortion, and more research isn't going to meaningfully help resolve the issue, but yes, if people would actually respect the role of government and reduce it's scope, it would make a lot of the other social issues irrelevant or at least easier to deal with. Get out of the business of regulating marriage and just recognize civil unions and get rid of all the penalties for marriage and subsidies. For the tax code, let all allowances/deductions/income limits be double and people can choose to file as a civil union or individually. Get rid of ridiculous subsidies in social security for single earner marriages (and having multiple people claim spousal benefits for one spouse). Do that and same-sex marriage is really nobody's business. But for a lot of other social issues, and even the same-sex ones, you'd have to get out of the business of providing a lot of services (like public schools) to really get them out of the political debate.

Make the debate about actual economic policy and not stupid social issues. Guns is the only one that's really fair to be discussed and have as a part of government debate. (It's shocking to me how many people are pro-gun and anti-marijuana. The only argument for either of them is the exact same: I like it, so the government shouldn't take it away from me if I'm not misusing it.)

Well, that argument and the little insignificant detail where one is protected explicitly by the constitution and the other isn't. But pulling back Raich and Wickard v. Filburn so that the Commerce clause can only be used to regulate actual interstate commerce and not intrastate marijuana business would be great.

Once you start working towards redistributing wealth, creating a UBI (key word BASIC, this income would not help fund vacations to the bahamas for everyone), and advancing society to more and more automation, we'll be A. more productive as a society and B. be overall happier as we've decreased the workload for people and provider more people economic viability. The steps we take from there are TBD, but that's the basic outline.

It's extremely tough to make the numbers for UBI work even if you ignore away the political impossibility of getting rid of social security, medicare, and other welfare programs. You can't make UBI work with medicaid for all and definitely can't make it work while also taxing enough to pay for Medicaid for all and also having the federal government provide or pay for college educations.