- Joined
- Feb 4, 2012
- Messages
- 25,566
- Reaction score
- 36,346
- Location
- American Refugee in Europe
- Gender
- Male
- Political Leaning
- Independent
Well, my position hasn't changed. Until now, you were simply misunderstanding my rhetoric.
I'd do the following to fix it:
- Make higher education free and increase the number of technically oriented institutions.
- Establish independent workers' collectives.
- Replace the welfare program with a jobs guarantee program - see the Civilian Conservation Corps.
- Increase funding to regulatory agencies.
- Pass tax reform to make our brackets similar to those used in Germany.
- Set salary caps for executives.
- Put a hefty tax on inheritance.
- Increase funding to public high schools and require them to offer free tutoring for SAT/ACT.
Among other things.
1) Education is one of the few things I do think should be socialized. There is no better to way insure equal OPPORTUNITY (not outcome) than to provide standard education. This needs to be more like Germany though, where there are 3 levels of high schools, each designed to route kids into the right direction, whether that be job training, a technical school, or college.
2) I don't think the state should be establishing anything. If workers want to establish it and join VOLUNTARILY, then they should do that
3) I can get on board with that.
4) Disagree. We need better regulations not more.
5) The progressiveness of the German tax system is absolutely insane. Almost no country in the world ****s the poor and middle class harder with taxes than Germany. Someone making 1000 euro a month, barely enough to live on, still pays about 200 euro a month in taxes, an effective rate of 20%. I personally like the American version better.
6) Disagree on salary caps. I do think there should be better regulation to prevent them sacking retirement funds or raiding other parts of the company. I'm also against golden parachutes. They should be the first to be burned by the failure of the company.
7) I disagree on the inheritance tax but it's not that big of a deal. There's a million ways around it.
8) There are too many reforms for our high schools to even start on. I mentioned a few above. We need to stop trying to tell everyone to go to college. Not everyone belongs there. We need to be focusing on routing people into the right career training based on their capabilities and merit.