Forum Post: What is your vision of America?
Posted 12 years ago on Dec. 16, 2011, 4:55 a.m. EST by randart
(498)
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I have posted a few times on this forum and gotten many different reactions to my posts. There are some who wish to discuss topics with some respect for others and there are some who feel the need to resort to name calling and insults. I have gotten these responses from both sides of the spectrum, some calling each other liberals and some calling themselves conservatives.
My question to all of you is this. What type of country do you all envision? If this is indicative of the population as a whole then all I can see is that it will end in violence from both sides.
How do we let the pressure in this pot drop before it boils over?
I have a number of different ideas about what I would consider an ideal state for this country, and a number of ideas about what we should or should not do about getting ourselves to that point. I've put up a great deal of different posts on here and a couple of other places that specifically outline policy directions I'd like to see us take, and I'd be happy to link you to them if you wish.
The wall I seem to have hit appears to be the same one you're struggling with: how to get people to slow down long enough to have a reasonable debate on a given set of policy issues, even if we don't necessarily all walk away with the same idea of what to do. Just getting that far can be quite a chore depending on who you talk to. I do what I can, generally by putting up replies that tend to be more like essays and that avoid inflammatory or insulting language, even when the views of the person I'm speaking to are seriously opposed to mine. In a number of cases this works, but there does appear to be a group on here (and in the real world as well) who are uncomfortable debating and would rather shout insults and fight, and I don't know what to do about that.
Thanks for the even headed response ARod1993.
Where should this country be going, socially and in governance?
Socially speaking, I feel like America isn't where it needs to be on issues like gay rights and abortion rights, but I would also say that we seem to want to move toward recognition of things like the right of gay couples to full legal benefits identical to those of straight couples, the right of women to have access to family planning services (including, where necessary, abortions), and the right of terminally ill patients to die on their own terms.
Beyond that, though, I feel like a lot of the really important social issues are in fact tied up in our current economic crisis and the failures that led up to it. As it stands right now we have levels of poverty and real unemployment (which I hold to be best reflected by U5, which includes people who have given up the job search or want work but haven't been able to look; if you want more information on it just Google it or ask me) that are far higher than we should, we have an energy infrastructure that's mostly dependent on foreign oil, and a lot of our basic infrastructure is either inadequate or in disrepair.
Those two problems can actually be considered to be easier to solve together than they would be if we had one but not the other, especially since a lot of the unemployment we're seeing is due to a systemic mismatch between people's skill sets and the positions they have available to them. We still have large groups of students coming out of school systems that are failing them badly, and before that could be dealt with because one could learn a trade or get a factory job, and then either stay comfortably at that level or work his way up the ladder to a better and more lucrative position. Now, a lot of those jobs are gone and the fight to get them back is going to be long, messy, uphill, and by no means a sure victory.
As a stopgap, what I'd suggest is a return to the CCC and the WPA, given a different name if you want but otherwise little difference. The list of individual projects that need doing is damn near endless and ranges from replacing decaying bridges to comprehensive urban renewal and reconstruction in hard-hit places like Detroit to putting massive solar farms in the Mojave to small local wind farms to getting the foundations of a fully national high-speed rail network (220 mph or better) in place to smaller local things like turning empty lots into community spaces. All of these things require a very broad range of jobs, including engineers and managers, but also a great deal of tradesmanship and manual labor. If the jobs start paying at $20 or so an hour, and onsite training is offered to those who want to learn a necessary trade, that could conceivably take up most if not all of the slack in the employment market to the point of causing some labor shortages.
On top of this, I'd replace welfare as we have it now with a new integrated rehabilitation program designed to get the poor off the dole and in jobs capable of providing them dignity and sustenance. I would continue providing monthly checks to people whose income falls below a certain level, single-parent or otherwise, with the checks designed to provide enough for them to get by until they could find reasonable employment.
On top of that, I would add funding for additional college and/or trade school, family and substance abuse counseling for those who need it, and some sort of busing or voucher setup for children born into poor families, and tie the whole package together. Thus, participation in the program would get you food stamps, money to help cover your rent, an education stipend for college or trade school if you wanted it, substance abuse treatment if anyone in your family needed it, either busing to a strong nearby public school or vouchers for private or parochial school if no strong public school is available, and a regular caseworker with a load of no more than three or four families sent to get to know you, keep track of how you're doing, and help out a bit.
To stay in the program you'd need to stay out of trouble with the law, deal with substance abuse or domestic violence problems promptly should they occur, and either apply for a reasonable number of jobs per month (if you choose not to take the education money) or make satisfactory progress in whatever educational program you enrolled in (if you do take the money). Any determinations about issues that could lead to loss of benefits, would be made first by the caseworker after consulting with the family, with the right of appeal in the event of expulsion from the program. The idea of doing this would be to use the program as a universal safety net to assist the temporarily down on their luck while simultaneously attacking the problems that contribute the most to generational poverty,
I would also change up the way our government taxes and spends. I tried to copy and paste the rationale behind it into here but it wouldn't fit with everything else I already wrote. The link is at the end of the paragraph; underneath my post is a great little debate with someone whose handle is Geekonomics7, and that should help clarify some of the things I put in there and answer some of the questions you may have: http://www.themultitude.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=47&t=585
I'm fully in favor of banning all non-individual campaign contributions and limiting individual contributions to a couple of hundred bucks per candidate (which puts a large portion of this country on a roughly even footing as far as the ability to contribute to campaigns is concerned) and restoring the Equal Time Rule so that all candidates have a right to equal airtime for ads, messages, debates, etc. This would by definition mean a repudiation of Buckley v. Valeo and Citizens United: corporations are not people and do not have Constitutional rights.
The same goes for lobbying reform; anybody wishing to move from elected office to a "consulting" or lobbying position at a corporation, industry-funded think tank, etc. has to wait twenty years to do it. Anyone looking to move from a regulatory position to a position in one of the firms that fell under his or her jurisdiction or vice versa would again have a twenty-year cooldown period. I want to see Glass-Steagall be reinstated, I want to see derivatives and CDOs placed under far greater scrutiny, and I want to clean house at the SEC and other major regulatory agencies.
I would also start actively recruiting environmental science/ecology and chemical engineering students to the EPA, nuclear engineering students to the IAEA, etc, medical and Pharm. D. students to the FDA, etc. so that Uncle Sam has a source of talent and knowledge independent of the private sector. There are already ROTC scholarships and financial assistance from places like NASA-JPL (they pay your tuition and you agree to work for them for a certain number of years; similar programs for students in fields relevant to regulatory agencies is a great way to get and hold new talent.
Finally, I want to see a return to protectionist policies where appropriate; there is no reason that we should be rewarding corporations for laying off American workers to move overseas for cheap labor. This would most likely mean a combination of direct tariffs on the goods to bring the costs in line with those of American-made goods, and the elimination of all tax deductions granted to companies that would refuse to manufacture things here.
I'm not sure if it's explicitly clear what kind of America I want to see based on what I wrote above, so I'll try to sum it up. Take the good economic parts of the 1950s and 1960s (the infrastructure boom, the robust social safety net, and the high availability of dignified working- and middle-class jobs for whites), change "for whites" to "for everyone," and incorporate environmental sustainability, energy independence, and full equality for all people and all groups.
Thanks for the response. I would add that those who are able to maintain a 3 point grade average and wish to be doctors should have the opportunity to have free education in exchange for a ten year commitment to public service at free clinics. They wouldn't be saddled with huge student loans and they would receive a fair salary during their public service. After the ten year commitment they can then move on to private practice and specialize in whatever field they choose. By doing this we would be assured that the doctors we see have at least a B average from med school and it wouldn't be a huge burden on the poorer people who need medical attention.
Again, thanks for having a rational thought process and not hurling insults and name calling. You are one of the people I vote for as a representative of the OWS general assembly.
Thanks! Incidentally it turns out that there are a few programs that are starting to run in that vein (Google CUNY Sophie Davis; I know about it because I know a few people who applied there), but you're right that they need to get a lot bigger than they are now in order to have a meaningful impact on our society as a whole.
I envision a country working to reclaim its Constitutional rights...doing away Orwellian legislation like the Patriot Act and the National Defense Authorization Act.
What type of country do you envision? Congress is for sale, so I see only the rich being taken care of.
Parents are afraid of their children, so the children being raised today are worthless. Go to any public place and watch.
I am glad I will be dead soon and not around for the invasion by China.
Merry Christams.
I think we have to stop limiting ourself by national thinking. If humanity is to survive and prosper, it has to be the whole world or it won't work. We are one human race and we are all brothers and sisters.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGaRtqrlGy8
Here are the kings of inhumane values! They are the Lords of the Dirty Fucks!
http://occupywallst.org/forum/stop-the-evildoers/
The Revolution starts here!
A new red flag with crescent, moon and or sickle/hammer It will have a blue rectangle and the 50 stars on a white stripe going through the middle ;) this is a joke people