General Discussion

As a mathematician, I want to see this modified slightly (I will pair the original with my modification)

• Income up to $50k is untaxed

• Income up to $100k is untaxed (I have done the math, this would actually work with one of my other modifications)

• VAT tax for luxury items

• VAT for B2B sales based on the Value Added by their step in the production chain

• Remove sales tax

• Remove tax brackets - replace with a continuous function that has parameters to encapsulate the current credits and deductions, as well as new ones to encourage reasonable behaviors (green energy, having kids, not having kids, etc.)

• Addendum to the above: business taxes fall get the same treatment, with parameters for things like the wealth/income gap ratio between the highest-paid employee and the median for the company, % of employees who reside in the United States, number of subsidiaries, number of technology acquisitions made. Oh, and companies that make more than $1M/yr never get a refund, period.

• Require communities to cap rent, it is done by popular vote as a ballot measure, and the options are calculated based on local needs, cost of living, and median income for the town.

I have more, but I also have a headache.

Rather than abolish the Electoral College and merge the House and Senate, I would suggest massively increasing the size of the House. This would increase the size of the Electoral College too, reducing the distortion of the population while still protecting less populous states. This also has the advantage of being something that can be done through ordinary laws instead of Constitutional amendments.

I agree with most of these. Key differences that'd I prefer:

• Approval instead of ranked choice voting (easier auditing, simpler to explain)
• Get rid of pretty much all taxes, and replaced it with a land and carbon/pollution tax
• Mandate all companies be employee owned
• Abolish the stock market
• Ban on corporations from owning single family unit homes, every citizen capped to 3 residences, and all multi-unit homes must be non-market housing
• Massive public investment into housing construction

At the bare minimum force states to proportionally allocate electors. I know this is realistically impossible.

twenty year old me “heck yeah”

Forty year old me “never going to happen.”

Term limit for congress

Ban political donations, all political parties get the same, small campaign budget and allotment of advertising space/airtime funded by the government instead

You missed step one, which is to not live in the United States. Alternatively live in a parallel universe where any of this would be politically achievable.

Forced retirement of politicians at whatever the national retirement age currently is

You missed a very important one, fix the main reason billionaires don't pay any tax:

Using your unrealised gains (e.g. shares) as collatoral to take out loans should be considered realising those gains and thus subject to capital gains tax

ALL sales tax needs to be replaced with value-added tax. Zero tax on used goods, including cars, if you actually want to reduce waste and related harm to the environment.

I like almost all of this, but I disagree with merging the Senate and House as well as a VAT on luxury items. We already have tax on basically every transaction and the burden is on the consumer, that needs to change. What should happen is that all taxes on food items currently should be removed. I believe the separation of Senate and House, while burdensome and inefficient at times, really does an essential good for American society. We would fare much better if we had term limits and more than two (essentially one) political party.

Edit: I want to continue with strickening the UBI from this list as well in exchange for significanly improving social services to make sure that everyone is guaranteed food, housing, medical, and security. I get that income is important and some people cant work, but inflation is real and that money has to come from somewhere not just the ether. It would be better to create/improve upon existing social safety nets to make sure everyone can contribute to society in some way rather than just giving everyone money for nothing.

I think literally all you need is ranked choice voting and the abolishment of corporate personhood and for profit lobbying. The rest will take care of itself.

Out of these, unfortunately the only one that even has a chance of being realized is "IRS does taxes for everyone", and even that is more like "IRS provides official avenue to not have to pay a tax prep service"

The rest of these won't happen without a revolution, because the people with the power to make these things happen all directly benefit from them.

Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see even one or two things on this list become reality. Any two would make a ton of difference for a lot of people. But capitalism doesn't like it when you benefit the average Joe, and capitalism always wins here.

Term limits on SCOTUS should be 18 years, with one Justice retiring every other year.

Unless the court expands, then the term limits could be shorter

i think one small addition

1. decrease influence of ~~bribing~~ lobbying

100% yes!