SIXTEEN AMERICAN FIXES
- Immigration: 1) Immediate unconditional citizenship for all persons brought here as children, the only life they have known; 2) a one-time last-ever amnesty and citizenship offer to the millions of longtime illegal immigrants who willingly apply and comply with all requirements of the amnesty; 3) deportation and lifetime debarment for any immigrant who enters our nation illegally or otherwise violates our fair and just immigration laws and procedures; 4) severe fines for U.S. employers who hire illegal immigrants, with truly vile penalties for employers who exploit poor, vulnerable workers and pay slave wages while bleating that they can’t find Americans willing to work; 5) new U.S. Regional Population Carrying Capacity Assessments to guide regional planning and policies of federal and state agencies through this century.
- Living Wage: Every entity doing business in the USA shall pay every employee at least a Living Wage. By federal law, living wages will correspond to the cost of purchasing Economic Rights in each US region, updated annually by the federal government. The “minimum” wage, which merely ensures poverty, will be abolished forever and good riddance.
- Economic Rights as a benefit of American citizenship: Assurance in federal law of enough income to buy adequate 1) food; 2) clothing; 3) shelter; 4) health care; 5) transportation; 6) insurance mandated by law; 7) college education or savings but not both at the same time; and 8) an economically secure retirement. Political liberty is meaningless for any American lacking enough money to purchase these economic rights, or forced to choose between food and medicine.
- Domestic Employment with Fully Restored Jobs: With 327 million Americans and rising yearly, we are our own best market—the third largest in the world. We can and shall create millions of new well-paid jobs with these initiatives and more: 1) make everything we need right here in the USA; 2) rebuild domestic manufacturing on a wartime footing as we did in 1942; 3) ban foreign ownership of any business in the USA; 4) abrogate every international trade agreement that permits any disadvantage to American consumers; 5) initiate massive infrastructure renewal (following, this list).
- Rural and Urban Employment: 1) A National Family Farm Restoration Initiative transferring hundreds of thousands of farm acres at reduced prices from corporate ownership to young farmers, with federally sponsored training and loans to buy affordable good used farm equipment; 2) A National Urban Truck Farming Initiative creating thousands of new jobs and organic crops, with massive recycling of compostable wasted food and leftovers; 3) An Appalachia Leads America Initiative creating thousands of new entrepreneurial enterprises suited to mountainous terrain, with unemployed coal miners receiving priority for a million new jobs; 4) A National Cisterns Project to capture naturally distilled rainwater for every home and building in the USA, to fullest extent feasible, beginning in arid areas now experiencing water shortages most severely; 5) Conversion of industrial rust-belt wastelands into modern neighborhoods with residential variety, ample retail outlets, schools, parks, entertainment, new entrepreneurial employers, urban farming and new governments.
- Transportation: A nationwide high-speed rail passenger system will be incrementally brought into use during the next ten years. Massive maintenance needed on Interstate highways, bridges and associated infrastructure will use tax dollars that would otherwise have been spent building new interstates. A ten-year moratorium on construction of any new interstate highways, effective immediately throughout the United States, will be automatically renewed unless amended.
- Cheap Continuous Sustainable Energy: Extremely low-cost electricity constantly generated by horizontal tube turbines submerged along both banks of America’s thousands of miles of rivers, turned by their constant river currents, and more than ample to meet our nationwide energy needs for centuries ahead on a decentralized national smart grid, all implemented within five years. Massive federally-sponsored R&D on 1) long-charge cheap batteries and energy-storage alternatives, 2) on exponentially increasing the efficiency of riverine tube turbines, and 3) efficiency of solar and wind power generation. Conversion within five years to renewable energy at all U.S. Government facilities and all military bases, and within seven years at state-owned facilities in all states that accept federal matching funds.
- Stop Global Warming: 1) Dismantle fossil fuel power plants, coal first, as fast as equivalent energy from tube turbines, solar and wind comes online; 2) phase out fracking; 3) by Congressional fiat totally restore all energy- and environmentally-relevant federal regulations that were abolished or degraded from 2017 through 2020; 4) convert all new US cars and small trucks to electric motors within five years; 5) develop heavy-lifter dirigibles within six years to start replacing millions of long-haul semi trucks. Outlaw new oil and gas wells, new coal mines, and burning coal in the USA.
- Public Oversight and Regulation of Private Business will be instituted exactly like civilian control over the military, for the implied dangers to democracy are the same. Any corporation controlling more than 5% of the U.S. market for whatever it sells will be subdivided, with employees enabled to buy and run the new entities as non-profit cooperatives mandated to compete and constrain consumer prices. All natural monopolies will be placed under direct control of a government—local, state or federal. Citizens United and “corporate personhood,” will be abolished, reinforced by Constitutional amendment. Federal and state initiatives/programs to stimulate and support new business entrepreneurs are a high national priority. Suppression of new entrepreneurs by larger established businesses shall be prosecuted as a felony.
- Ensure business loyalty to United States interests with legislation requiring that all entities doing business in the USA shall first and foremost serve the best interests of the American people—conditions and penalties to be specified. Multinational business entities, entities of foreign or indeterminate ownership, and U.S.-based corporations avoiding taxation through offshore machinations shall be permanently banned from doing business in the United States of America.
- Universal responsibility. Every grade in every public school will be progressively taught that all Americans share responsibility for our mutual wellbeing. All personal income above the cost of the basic Economic Rights is a privilege of being an American citizen privileged to live in the USA. All privileged incomes and accumulated wealth are taxable in the best common interest of All The People of the United States, in support of each other and in loyalty to our national commonwealth. This includes fully funding the budgets for federal agencies’ mandated duties. When we have a fair and just U.S. economic system, labor unions and welfare will no longer be needed. Our national purpose is to help each other.
- Tax reform: Reset the top federal tax bracket to the 1945 rate of 94% for all income over [about $2.5 million, equivalent to $200,000 in 1945]. Taxes on individual citizens shall always be bracketed lower than taxes on businesses. Sales taxes—which fall most heavily on the poor—are abolished forever throughout the USA and good riddance hoorah.
- Defense policy: The overriding purpose and highest priority of the U.S. Department of Defense and all armed forces jointly including the Coast Guard and Customs, of all U.S. intelligence activities of every nature, and of all federal law enforcement agencies of every nature whatsoever, is to defend the citizens and residents of the United States of America, its territories and possessions from aggression, attack or hostile action 1) by any foreign nation, or 2) by any other entity foreign or domestic that opposes or seeks to overturn or control our American constitutional government, our democracy and the freedoms guaranteed to every citizen. Their purpose is not to force our will upon any other nation, or to make the world safe for corporations’ inroads into foreign markets. The Department of Defense exists to defend, not to aggress. All for-profit sales of American-made or brokered military weapons are banned and outlawed; the President may, with prior consent of Congress, direct the lending or leasing of weapons for purposes of conducting diplomacy.
- Defense budget: We shall bring home the enormous, costly, unknown numbers of U.S. forces now deployed at more than 1,000 locations around the world and station them in military bases established along the entire Mexican border, with any overflow going to the Canadian border. We shall mandate U.S. military capability to deploy in force anywhere on earth within 24 hours, and in full force within 48 hours, provided that in event of such deployment the Congress shall within five days enact into law a termination date by which all such forces shall be returned to their U.S. bases. We shall launch a number of new state-of-the-art submarines and aircraft carriers to patrol the world oceans. Each year for the next twenty years not less than five percent of the 2020-equivalent Defense budget shall be shifted to combat global warming.
- Fair and democratic elections. One Person One Vote with Civic Responsibility: A new independent agency shall establish demographically fair and equal voting districts for all federal elections immediately after each decennial census. Gerrymandering will be declared a felony and outlawed forever in the USA. A new Responsible Citizen Law patterned exactly after the military draft will impose fines for unexcused failure to be registered and to vote in any federal election. State governments will be presented with compelling incentives to adopt comparable laws for all in-state elections.
- Reverse population growth. Too many people, everywhere, are fast using up all the earth’s natural resources that all our lives depend on—including mined ores and minerals, fertile soils, the oceans’ food fish, clean fresh water, wildlife habitat, species diversity and much more. Our combined sheer demand is fast driving it all, everywhere, toward collapse, and we shall reverse demand by engaging every peaceful means at our collective disposal to reduce human population.
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Details on these and numerous other fixes to the U.S. economy appear in bill-ready language of the Capitalist Free Market Corrections Act (CaFMaC) under the title “Populist Corrections” at fixypopulist.com. Our new president’s inaugural address for January 27, 2021, titled “My Fellow Americans,” also appears under this blog site’s Essays—it announces many major new innovations in U.S. lifestyle, and is highly recommended for persistently curious and activist readers.
INEQUALITY, UNENDING POVERTY AND HARDSHIP, RACIAL PREJUDICE, DISCRIMINATION AND HATE BASED ON SEX, ETHNICITY, STUPID IDEOLOGIES—THESE AND MORE ARE ENABLED BY OUR UNFAIR, DYSFUNCTIONAL ECONOMIC SYSTEM. IT IS SUPER EASY TO SET UP A CORPORATION. LET’S MAKE IT EASY TO TAKE THEM DOWN AND ELIMINATE THE ROOT CAUSE OF ALL THESE SOCIETAL PROBLEMS.
WE DON’T NEED CAPITALISM OR SOCIALISM—OR A LIBERAL-CONSERVATIVE DIVIDE BETWEEN EQUALLY LOYAL, COMPASSIONATE AMERICANS. LET’S LOOK AT THIRD OPTIONS FOR A CHANGE!
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