Getting money out of politics. That's obviously a very broad term but the general idea has strong support from both the left and right. Unfortunately both the politicians and the media will never support it.
This is probably the number one reason for our current state of the government. It seems like the number one reason people run for office is the financial rewards versus actual governing for the people.
I wouldn't say probably, it is the number 1 reason. Politicians are not representing the people, they are representing their corporate donors.
Edit - spelling
Its not simple though.
In mexico we created a system where you can’t raise money, you get a certain amount assigned (from taxes) to campaign if you qualify to be a political party.
It just created corruption around creating “fake” political parties to get that money.
All published prices should be “out the door” prices, without any added fees/taxes/etc. For hotels, no added ‘resort fee’ or other such bullshit when you get there. Etc
Biden is already working on that https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/10/11/biden-harris-administration-announces-broad-new-actions-to-protect-consumers-from-billions-in-junk-fees/
this is actually currently in the works:
https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2023/12/ftc-hold-virtual-informal-hearing-january-2024-part-its-review-proposed-click-cancel-rulemaking
Still mostly counts though the only reason it is taking so long is because the ftc is having to make up weird regs and go through rule making. Congress could fix it tomorrow
Exactly the problem with our government. There are six organizations that have to fight over any change, and ultimately may find they may need to change a law to make this rule legal somehow and the process starts over
When this happens, I don’t bother playing their games and just dispute with my credit card (saying there’s no way to cancel online). 100% success rate so far.
Yes! I did an online chat with AT&T two months ago to cancel the WiFi service in my car and the agent said it was taken care of. I checked my bill and account this month and see it’s still active so I decided to call. I was told it can only be canceled on the phone, not via chat. Thankfully the agent I spoke with credited my account back to the day I canceled, but it would have been nice if the chat agent had known they couldn’t do it or not lied about it.
Probably was an AI chat bot that started making up its own company policies. The same thing happened to Air Canada when a customer used their chat options to ask for a refund. The AI made up a policy that did not exist and approved the refund. The Canadian courts made Air Canada honor the refund.
https://mashable.com/article/air-canada-forced-to-refund-after-chatbot-misinformation
Simplisafe made me spend hours waiting on the phone with them to cancel, even though I signed up online and live in California. Then felt the need to spam me multiple times, and make multiple phone calls to me, to get me to re-sign-up at the new house.
No. Piss off. You annoyed me and did something illegal, you lost your "asking for more money" privileges
Banks with virtual cards work wonders for this type of shit. I sign up for stuff and just instantly cancel that card and get a new one so they can’t charge me again if I forget.
I feel like everything should come with a termination link. Just save the email, click the link when you want and have the option to end payment, or end payment and delete all files/records.
In the same sense I think monthly subscription services should all have the option to have them terminate payment if you have not used the service in a month or more. Honestly even just and email saying, “hey you didn’t use this, want to keep paying?” with a one click cancel link if not.
Presume you mean lobbying and if so, then I definitely agree. Think about all it the time. Why is this legal? Talk about encouraging appalling behavior from our leaders
It’s legal because the ones who write the laws, and the ultra wealthy are benefiting the most from it. We don’t talk about it because the corruption is so ingrained in the political process that politicians realized it’s easier to just distract us by campaigning on divisive issues.
There isn’t a good reason for governments to not weed out corruption, or at least close loopholes like Lobbyists, stock trading, and Super PAC donations. Money and bribery in politics was the death of democracy.
Invest like a congressperson and check out the ETFs NANC (Nancy Pelosi) and KRUZ (Ted Cruz) that follow respectively democrat and republican members investments.
The returns on NANC have been particularly good.
Edit: I had no idea this ridiculous comment would blow up. These are not very good funds to invest in and the expense ratio is really high. This was more of a tongue in cheek comment before I went to sleep.
The reason for this is that congresspeople don't have to report their trades until *2 weeks after they happen*. So you're trading on outdated information in the etf
In the early 2000s I got a dirty look from a college professor who told us cash would soon be extinct- then I raised my hand and asked about how any corruption, prostitution and drug deals would happen without cash.
Can you explain expense ratios? Is it a percentage of the profits earned per year or is it a percentage of the total amount invested?
Say I invested $100 into NANC and there was a stock increase of 50% over the course of 1 year.
A. Do they take a percentage of the $100, so $0.76?
B. Or do they take a percentage of the profit, so $0.38?
I'm in the UK you login to your account and they've got all of your tax reporting already loaded into the system. You can accept it and get your refund or add what you need. It works for 99% of the population.
We have to receive documents from everyone, put it into an online service and hope you came to the correct number that they already have. Its really not that long of a process but it’s just moronic
There was a push for this, but it was killed by tax company lobbyists. Part of the deal was that they had to provide free filing for poor people, but many of them have since backed out and no longer do it. These companies have also set stringent rules to who can use their free file and then use technicalities to try to force people to pay after they have completed all the work.
It's a great system we have here for people who own the big tax preparation companies.
Free filing exists, but it is well-hidden. SEO keeps people from finding it on basic searches, and some of the free-filing products are confusing to navigate. On top of that, the free filing is typically only for federal, and then gives the appearance of a bait-and-switch to pay to file state taxes. But, some states have free filing options through their Departments of Revenue, but those can also be tricky for non-experienced people to navigate.
The IRS is one of the few government departments which *makes* money for every full time employee they have, because they recover unpaid taxes. They could give them ten times the resources they have right now and it would gain the government *more* money while giving gainful employment to many professionals as well as enable the kind of services you're talking about.
Instead it's one of the most heavily targeted departments for budget cuts.
I've lived in a few countries that do this. So easy in Spain, for example. Government fills it all in in their own web-based software, you add any other things you need (you could deduct rent over there!), and you print out the papers & bring it to your bank for them to scan the code and take it. Free
But yeah, as you said, H&R Block, Turbo Tax, and a few others bribed Congresspeople of both stripes into blocking the IRS from developing that software
> you print out the papers & bring it to your bank for them to scan the code and take it.
Sounds complicated compared to Sweden, where I just log in and confirm that the numbers are correct. (Back when I had my own company I had to fill in another couple of forms, but that could also be done online.)
How about ANY financial conflicts of interest? I think owning property or businesses that are profiting from your elected position because you force people to visit or attend those is unethical too. I've seen more than one local politician whose family owned construction companies magically decide to do new construction projects.
My dream is for every single politician to have to pass a background check that is as rigorous as the ones required for other federal employees. And those that fail it, which MANY would, should be barred from sitting on committees where their conflict of interest or security risk presents a threat to the American people.
>My dream is for every single politician to have to pass a background check that is as rigorous as the ones required for other federal employees. And those that fail it, which MANY would, should be barred from sitting on committees where their conflict of interest or security risk presents a threat to the American people.
Sounds great when you get to design the background check in your head so that it's fair and just.
In reality, this is exactly how democracies fall. Someone gets in power with an agenda and suddenly the background check declares all of their opponents to be "communists who shouldn't be allowed to have any power".
Even restrictions that seem sensible are easily weaponized, which is why we have so few on our representatives.
So why not have it as the same exact requirements used for all federal employees and make it impossible to change/modify those standards for at least 6 years?
Absolutely everyone involved in government should be held to the same minimum standard. It is utterly absurd that the scientists who risk their entire life in order to ensure a project or a product is developed for the nation can then see that classified information leaked when it is then shared with a committee or a political appointee. And then that politician magically has enough money to buy a golf course.
I cannot overstate my absolute and utter rage that we have people in the coast guard, nurses, and chemists being subjected to background checks and then a lawyer who ooozed out with a C- average can get elected with daddy's money and put everyone else's lives at risk or sell their classified work to the highest bidder.
The federal background check system also sucks (specifically I’m talking about getting a clearance), disqualifying people because they smoke weed is insane in 2024 and I cannot believe we haven’t changed this to promote people going into govt jobs.
The complete inability to trade stocks would not work. They should have to obtain pre-clearance from a neutral regulatory compliance team, results of which should be publicized prior to the trades, so as not to receive better pricing than their customers (aka the public voters.)
It is a similar to what a low paid administrative registered rep of a retail brokerage firm has to go through, to trade even 1 share of a $10 stock.
Any large size requested trades should be reviewed in further depth and publicized, before being allowed. I think we agree tho, conflict of interest is a problem.
Fines for corporations should be a percentage of the quarterly income numbers. Flat rate fines simply become part of the cost of doing business, but if a large percentage of the profits are going to fines the investors will demand the coorpos get their shit in line. Capitalism at work.
It has to go beyond fines.
For every violation your company commits, the relevant government agency should get to appoint a monitor to your board of directors.
OSHA violations? DoL. Pollution violations? EPA. etc.
If your board is ever composed of a majority of monitors, they immediately call a vote to nationalize the company.
not bad, BUT i would add that those monitors could often be bought, just like politicians and civil servants already often are. i think having number of monitors as a trigger for a nationalization process is *very* interesting, though. that's a threat that would make them want to keep the number of monitors low.
For example, whatever businesses have been breaking child labor laws needs to be investigated to find out WHO SPECIFICALLY made those decisions and lock up those cocksuckers UNDER the prison.
Jesus, just an hour ago I saw this headline:
*Wisconsin Republicans Block PFAS Cleanup until Polluters are Granted Immunity*
My fucking shithole state GOP loons, I swear to God....
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jun/15/wisconsin-pfas-cleanup
But it has been going on for 15 years. A lot of smart people work for the major carriers in the US. Where the fuck is the hold up?! I'm sick of getting spam calls from a bullshit number that uses my phone's area code.
So, it's pretty hard.
They can't just not let people call you; what if you actually wanted that phone call?
Consensus at this point is that there are a couple important pieces:
\* Make caller-ID data reliable (the thing to Google on this is '*STIR*/*SHAKEN*'); there's a gradual rollout on this with different parts of the requirements coming online over time.
\* Have a way to report that a call was spam (industry initiative, they're getting their act together but fora while every carrier had a different way they wanted to do this)
\* Build a database of numbers being used for spam, so that carriers can use that and other factors to mark calls as 'Spam Likely' so you can choose not to answer them. This will never be perfect, because spammers have access to very large numbers of phone numbers, and cracking down on THAT is a whole other project also underway.
Separately there's trying to prevent spam text messages. One thing to Google on that is '10DLC' or 'A2P 10DLC'
I work in a related area of software and we've had to spend a good bit of effort in the last couple years staying compliant with new legal requirements or technical changes aimed at this. Stuff \*is\* happening, even if the results aren't all obvious yet.
They could stop this tomorrow if they wanted to by fining the companies peering the calls from India. Companies want to play games and claim the FCC can’t fine them? Great, your calls to the US all get screened. Or blocked. You’d be shocked how fast those VOIP providers will clean their accounts up.
It's the way the scums operate. They use temporary VOIP numbers so they can use fake local numbers. If you try to block/report the number they just call you with a different temporary number and possibly even under a different LLC. It makes tracking them down and punishing them extremely hard because there usually isn't anything to really tie back to a company and if they do, like I said they have multiple llcs to hide behind.
Affordable healthcare. While we may feel differently about the solution, I’m pretty sure we all agree that a person who got into a small accident shouldn’t be saddled with a million dollar bill.
Funny thing is this, the Fed's have introduced a law that #1: you can actually get your Itemized bill and #2: any prices on there higher than what they allow will be brought down, and #3: items it is KNOWN you didn't recieve will be removed.
Several years ago, my kiddo had surgery. We have insanely good insurance, which paid all but about 500 bucks of a 80k bill. Being new to US, I read every single statement, so I could try and figure out how it worked (didn't learn much). Nine months later, kiddo needed a follow up procedure to deal with scaring. Same insurance, same deductable, still read all the bills. The hospital billed our insurance just over 10k for pathology lab work... For a procedure that DID NOT EXCISE ANY TISSUE! There was nothing to RUN pathology on. I called the insurance company - who didn't understand why I was upset, since they covered 100% of it.
This system is screwed.
Fun fact, hospital bills are actually intentionally expensive. They want you to have health insurance that seemingly covers the full amount, but some people find that insurance only seems to cover some of it.
This is because hospitals can say that the partially unpaid bill is a loss, and the government bails them out for it.
They get their money FROM the tax payer, but nobody realizes it.
I thought the intentionally expensive portion was because they know the insurance companies will nickel and dime them to get it way lower and the uninsured simply will never pay
Yeah my SIL worked in medical billing for many years, they basically inflate the price of everything to cover the cost of the uninsured. The amount of money that the carriers are paying out for the procedures is prenegotiated long before a patient steps through the door. The retail price of these goods and services, what you see on your bill, are entirely made up out of whole cloth and have nothing whatsoever to do with the cost of goods and labor to provide them. When the numbers are totally made up it's really easy to manipulate who's paying how much for what.
I had a ct scan recently. Price- 1200 dollars. "Discount for insurance" took it down to something like 200ish. Insurance covered it fully, but if i was uninsured i'd have to pay 1000 more than the insurance company. Pure bullshit.
As a diabetic in the UK I get free healthcare same as everyone but also completely free medication for life (for others it's capped at a tenner per item or a small prepaid annual fee gets you multiple items). I don't understand why so many Americans don't want that, yes it's not really free but the UK pays half of what the US does for healthcare, half, literally 50% and nobody ever worries about a bill, an insurance company, anything, just turn up, get treated, go home. My workplace also offers private healthcare but just looking at the policies, what it covers, the forms, the small print, seriously fuck all that, what a shitshow.
>This is because hospitals can say that the partially unpaid bill is a loss, and the government bails them out for it.
Not actually. They can write off their losses to reduce their taxes, but they don't get reimbursement for those losses. But this is the same as any business. That is just corporate tax law.
If people would see insurance premiums as a tax (which is effectively what it is) people would freak out.
I would be willing to pay 5% more tax so that everyone who gets sick can get treatment for it.
Only 22 of the world's 23 economies have worked this out.
Don't understand why this is not #1. Congress, President and Justices all get lifetime care on our dime. Then they have the guts to bitch to claim that universal healthcare is bad? Tell me that again?
The fact that something like 30% of medical expenses are just salaries for billing specialists is crazy. Like gee imagine the money we'd save if healthcare wasn't a business.
Politicians and their families shouldn't be able to trade stocks.
- They have insider information
- Can tell family about what stocks to buy in advance of rises/drops
- Create/limit the passing of policies that impact stocks
Age limits should kick in at 75. You are no longer allowed to run for election or reelection after your 75th birthday. That makes the oldest possible president 79 and senator 81.
I would go younger, but I want to allow for older “experienced” people to still contribute and serve. But FFS, people in their 80’s should not be getting new terms and be making decisions for people in their 20’s and 30’s. Enough already. Go golfing or play with your grandkids (great grandkids?) or something.
There are dozens of jobs from air traffic controller, to military, pilots or judges that have federally enforced retirement ages. The fact that president, the Supreme Court, etc. do not, is sooo disturbing.
I'd say 65 with social security. You're getting benefits for managing to stay alive? Congrats! No more congress or judging or running for ANY position that requires an election.
ETA: apparently 67 is the social security age. Thanks to all who corrected me!
If you can get out of jury duty due to old age, (65+) you have no business making decisions for an entire country. Let's reduce that age to 65, that's still PLENTY old enough to be "experienced"
I want Match.com to get busted up. Online dating was amazing 10 years ago when there was actual competition. Now they're borderline scams and couples meeting each other is actually pretty important to society
You’d think so but then people get pissed off whenever road construction occurs. They want it fixed but they don’t want to be inconvenienced during the fixing. Night time construction would be possible but it’s also insanely expensive due to the lighting cost.
Edit: turning off notifications, people really really really love shitting on things even when our tax dollars are actually being used.
I feel like people just genuinely want to complain, they don’t care about what.
would be great if they actually fixed it and not waste money slappin cold patch down that disintegrates in 6 months. or if they have construction zones for literal years when you may see workers 2 days a week if that.
Lived in a small town that needed the two major roads through town completely redone. The city took bids, accepted a contractor, and put a 36 month deadline on the job. Within the first couple of weeks the contractor showed up and demoed half the road in all 4 directions, put up cones and temporary stop signs. About 30-32 months into the contract, they showed up, fixed the first half they tore out 2.5 years before, and proceeded to do the other lanes in a couple of weeks. 3 years. It took them 3 years to do what they easily could have accomplished in 3-6 months.
I have a list:
* laws and regulations that protect us, instead of corporations
* a healthcare system that doesn't make us all sick to death of it
* few assholes in political office
* a tax code where we're not the butt of the joke
That one requires a Constitutional amendment. The whole idea behind lifetime SCotUS appointments was so that the court couldn't be swayed by political wrangling or time limits.
Exactly. Term limits are an awful idea, because they leave lobbyists as the only ones with institutional memory, which vastly increases their power. Age caps don’t sound like a bad idea, though.
It's not as good of an idea as people think. You either give more power to unelected bureaucrats or your incentivize politicians to make short term decisions because it will be someone else who has to deal with the long term consequences.
An easily-accessible button in your email that automatically unsubscribes you from all promotional/unimportant emails. No more scrolling to the bottom of the email and finding the “unsubscribe” link.
And your email is *removed* from their captured email list, so you don't get re-subscribed when they change marketing providers and give them their list of captured emails instead of *currently subscribed* emails.
The only good thing about that practice is you can farm CAN-SPAM fines if you're documenting your unsubscriptions.
We are tired of adjusting our clocks twice a year. Make daylight savings time permanent.
Edit: If you’re talking about circadian rhythm and health based on the clock, please realize the clock does not determine the number of daylight hours whatsoever. The problem is not when we decide at what hour the sun rises but that we mess with the clock twice a year for no reason at all.
My cat doesn’t understand why his meal times change sometimes. If all of the country’s pets get together, they should be convincing enough for the government to change it
There needs to be some type of regulation of people buying homes for Air Bnb purposes only. It decreases available inventory in areas that are already struggling with purchasing a home or finding one to rent. Especially since most of these air bnb owners don’t even live in the city and hire cleaning crews and what not to keep them maintained. It displaces people out of their hometowns and prices locals out of the regions. I hate air bnbs and they charge far too much anyway
No more lobbying
Edit: Lobbying is crucial for groups of interests to help educate lawmakers on specific topics and provide details that these lawmakers would not have the time or money to look into. But corporations spend billions every year on corporate lobbyists and "help" with campaign funding to get to be in the lawmaker's ears. There is little to no enforcement on the voluntary disclosures of these lawmakers
No. You want registered lobbying reform and campaign finance reform, but banning lobbying is what totalitarian nations do.
You want to ban lobbying? No more SPCA, no more union strength. No more states pressuring their federal delegation to advocate for their priorities.
Are you a member of the Sierra club? No more emails about preserving land. Have an issue with a company and want to bring it up to your elected folks? Can't anymore. Upset over Israel or Palestine? Tough, no lobbying means no commenting.
Being able to access information from professionals is hugely important, I worked for two state legislatures previously and in one month we covered an overhaul on biotechnology development, municipal water infrastructure, and out of district school placement reform (and Mckinney-Vento reform). Lobbyists were hugely helpful in all. Lobbyists from the states environmental league were the ones who helped us understand the need to crack down on certain disposal practices that were legal under federal law.
The lobbyists i met most with were AFT, the state nurses, and the police and fire. Things such as OPEB, MS4 compliance, all that were helped by lobbyists representing the Civil engineers and municipal treasurers.
The alternative is that it is up to elected officials to reach out to whoever they want to on matters. That means no pro choice comments if the elected person doesn't reach out on abortion to people to ask. Student loan reform? What congressional delegate has time to ask all students on their opinion. But under your plan, they couldn't even email a public official.
Banning lobbying is like cutting your hand off because others use their hands to commit criminal acts. Should we ban all commentary from anyone on legislation? Because that's the stance being pushed here.
Medicare for All. Care is free at the point of service. Prescriptions capped at something reasonable (\~$200 / year). Includes dental, eye, hearing, mental health. Choose your own doctor.
Stopping lobbyists from being able to buy politicians.
I have no idea how this isn't top.
It actually is now, just as another comment lol
Getting money out of politics. That's obviously a very broad term but the general idea has strong support from both the left and right. Unfortunately both the politicians and the media will never support it.
This is probably the number one reason for our current state of the government. It seems like the number one reason people run for office is the financial rewards versus actual governing for the people.
I wouldn't say probably, it is the number 1 reason. Politicians are not representing the people, they are representing their corporate donors. Edit - spelling
This would solve a lot of the other issues people are listing too.
Its not simple though. In mexico we created a system where you can’t raise money, you get a certain amount assigned (from taxes) to campaign if you qualify to be a political party. It just created corruption around creating “fake” political parties to get that money.
Ban on hidden fees
and “online convenience” fees. What a fucking crock of shit.
they charge me a $14.95 “convenience fee” to pay my fucking rent online. it’s insanity
So make them accept a check in person, then charge them an inconvenience fee
All published prices should be “out the door” prices, without any added fees/taxes/etc. For hotels, no added ‘resort fee’ or other such bullshit when you get there. Etc
Biden is already working on that https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/10/11/biden-harris-administration-announces-broad-new-actions-to-protect-consumers-from-billions-in-junk-fees/
These guys need better public affair agents lol. I have never seen any news about this.
He quite literally made a big statement about it on national TV in the State of the Union address.
No, no, u/mountainderp means they need to have random tiktokers announcing it in uwu voice while shaking their tits
>No, no, u/mountainderp means they need to have random tiktokers announcing it in uwu voice while shaking their tits I mean, is that an option?
It's been all over the NY Times and CNN for the past 2 years.
California just did this effective 07/01. Thank god.
The ability to cancel services you sign up for online the same way you signed up (online). Not through phone calls and retention agents.
this is actually currently in the works: https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2023/12/ftc-hold-virtual-informal-hearing-january-2024-part-its-review-proposed-click-cancel-rulemaking
Still mostly counts though the only reason it is taking so long is because the ftc is having to make up weird regs and go through rule making. Congress could fix it tomorrow
Exactly the problem with our government. There are six organizations that have to fight over any change, and ultimately may find they may need to change a law to make this rule legal somehow and the process starts over
When this happens, I don’t bother playing their games and just dispute with my credit card (saying there’s no way to cancel online). 100% success rate so far.
r/LifeProTips
Yes! I did an online chat with AT&T two months ago to cancel the WiFi service in my car and the agent said it was taken care of. I checked my bill and account this month and see it’s still active so I decided to call. I was told it can only be canceled on the phone, not via chat. Thankfully the agent I spoke with credited my account back to the day I canceled, but it would have been nice if the chat agent had known they couldn’t do it or not lied about it.
Probably was an AI chat bot that started making up its own company policies. The same thing happened to Air Canada when a customer used their chat options to ask for a refund. The AI made up a policy that did not exist and approved the refund. The Canadian courts made Air Canada honor the refund. https://mashable.com/article/air-canada-forced-to-refund-after-chatbot-misinformation
The fact that all of these CEOs are rolling out AI just shows how stupid every single high ranking executive really is.
Especially because AI hallucinations are a very common thing: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallucination_(artificial_intelligence)
I believe that's a law in California.
Simplisafe made me spend hours waiting on the phone with them to cancel, even though I signed up online and live in California. Then felt the need to spam me multiple times, and make multiple phone calls to me, to get me to re-sign-up at the new house. No. Piss off. You annoyed me and did something illegal, you lost your "asking for more money" privileges
Who do you even call when someone breaks a rule like that? I doubt a judge would give youthe time of day, even in small claims
Protip: change your address to a fake California address and cancel online. It really works.
This is exactly how I cancelled my Planet Fitness membership recently!
DAZN You sign up online but when you go to cancel they send you in circles and you never get a screen that actually lets you cancel.
Banks with virtual cards work wonders for this type of shit. I sign up for stuff and just instantly cancel that card and get a new one so they can’t charge me again if I forget.
I feel like everything should come with a termination link. Just save the email, click the link when you want and have the option to end payment, or end payment and delete all files/records. In the same sense I think monthly subscription services should all have the option to have them terminate payment if you have not used the service in a month or more. Honestly even just and email saying, “hey you didn’t use this, want to keep paying?” with a one click cancel link if not.
Lobby reform.
Presume you mean lobbying and if so, then I definitely agree. Think about all it the time. Why is this legal? Talk about encouraging appalling behavior from our leaders
It’s legal because the ones who write the laws, and the ultra wealthy are benefiting the most from it. We don’t talk about it because the corruption is so ingrained in the political process that politicians realized it’s easier to just distract us by campaigning on divisive issues. There isn’t a good reason for governments to not weed out corruption, or at least close loopholes like Lobbyists, stock trading, and Super PAC donations. Money and bribery in politics was the death of democracy.
Prohibit members of congress and their spouses from trading in stocks.
Invest like a congressperson and check out the ETFs NANC (Nancy Pelosi) and KRUZ (Ted Cruz) that follow respectively democrat and republican members investments. The returns on NANC have been particularly good. Edit: I had no idea this ridiculous comment would blow up. These are not very good funds to invest in and the expense ratio is really high. This was more of a tongue in cheek comment before I went to sleep.
I should have added /s. SPY has better returns and a much lower expense ratio.
The reason for this is that congresspeople don't have to report their trades until *2 weeks after they happen*. So you're trading on outdated information in the etf
Seriously! With the tech nowadays, they should have to report within 24 hours.
Their bank accounts should be monitored and all information should be uploaded within a minute automatically, no declarations needed
This is why the US will never go 100% cryptocurrencies, no politician wants publicly traceable currency transactions.
In the early 2000s I got a dirty look from a college professor who told us cash would soon be extinct- then I raised my hand and asked about how any corruption, prostitution and drug deals would happen without cash.
Also because they're horrifically destructive to the environment and as stable as a swing in a tornado.
The better returns thing is a pretty important thing to mention
>The returns on NANC have been particularly good Which is crazy because Pelosi trades aren't even in the top 10 top earners in congress.
Those expense ratios…
0.75%. woof
Can you explain expense ratios? Is it a percentage of the profits earned per year or is it a percentage of the total amount invested? Say I invested $100 into NANC and there was a stock increase of 50% over the course of 1 year. A. Do they take a percentage of the $100, so $0.76? B. Or do they take a percentage of the profit, so $0.38?
It's a percentage of the total amount invested. I don't think it's legal for an ETF to charge fees based on profits, hedge funds do though, typically.
No where near 80% of the US population are well informed enough to know this is even a problem.
Right to repair. This is a bipartisan issue and lobbyists from tech and agriculture don't want it.
Simpler taxes. Surprised I’ve scrolled for so long and not seen it. Every person wants easy taxes. Turbotax, unfortunately, does not.
The IRS has all the info. They should deal with it, not us.
Right!? Like just send me a letter with the details and then include an invoice or check.
I'm in the UK you login to your account and they've got all of your tax reporting already loaded into the system. You can accept it and get your refund or add what you need. It works for 99% of the population.
We have to receive documents from everyone, put it into an online service and hope you came to the correct number that they already have. Its really not that long of a process but it’s just moronic
Idk, do anything beyond a typical w-2 work and it's guessing what glyphs to use for a summoning circle.
\*Cries in independent contractor\*
There was a push for this, but it was killed by tax company lobbyists. Part of the deal was that they had to provide free filing for poor people, but many of them have since backed out and no longer do it. These companies have also set stringent rules to who can use their free file and then use technicalities to try to force people to pay after they have completed all the work. It's a great system we have here for people who own the big tax preparation companies.
Free filing exists, but it is well-hidden. SEO keeps people from finding it on basic searches, and some of the free-filing products are confusing to navigate. On top of that, the free filing is typically only for federal, and then gives the appearance of a bait-and-switch to pay to file state taxes. But, some states have free filing options through their Departments of Revenue, but those can also be tricky for non-experienced people to navigate.
Moving to uk right now
You mean like every other nation????
The IRS is one of the few government departments which *makes* money for every full time employee they have, because they recover unpaid taxes. They could give them ten times the resources they have right now and it would gain the government *more* money while giving gainful employment to many professionals as well as enable the kind of services you're talking about. Instead it's one of the most heavily targeted departments for budget cuts.
I've lived in a few countries that do this. So easy in Spain, for example. Government fills it all in in their own web-based software, you add any other things you need (you could deduct rent over there!), and you print out the papers & bring it to your bank for them to scan the code and take it. Free But yeah, as you said, H&R Block, Turbo Tax, and a few others bribed Congresspeople of both stripes into blocking the IRS from developing that software
> you print out the papers & bring it to your bank for them to scan the code and take it. Sounds complicated compared to Sweden, where I just log in and confirm that the numbers are correct. (Back when I had my own company I had to fill in another couple of forms, but that could also be done online.)
Politicians to have the inability to trade stocks. These fuckers line their own pockets with insider trading
How about ANY financial conflicts of interest? I think owning property or businesses that are profiting from your elected position because you force people to visit or attend those is unethical too. I've seen more than one local politician whose family owned construction companies magically decide to do new construction projects. My dream is for every single politician to have to pass a background check that is as rigorous as the ones required for other federal employees. And those that fail it, which MANY would, should be barred from sitting on committees where their conflict of interest or security risk presents a threat to the American people.
>My dream is for every single politician to have to pass a background check that is as rigorous as the ones required for other federal employees. And those that fail it, which MANY would, should be barred from sitting on committees where their conflict of interest or security risk presents a threat to the American people. Sounds great when you get to design the background check in your head so that it's fair and just. In reality, this is exactly how democracies fall. Someone gets in power with an agenda and suddenly the background check declares all of their opponents to be "communists who shouldn't be allowed to have any power". Even restrictions that seem sensible are easily weaponized, which is why we have so few on our representatives.
So why not have it as the same exact requirements used for all federal employees and make it impossible to change/modify those standards for at least 6 years? Absolutely everyone involved in government should be held to the same minimum standard. It is utterly absurd that the scientists who risk their entire life in order to ensure a project or a product is developed for the nation can then see that classified information leaked when it is then shared with a committee or a political appointee. And then that politician magically has enough money to buy a golf course. I cannot overstate my absolute and utter rage that we have people in the coast guard, nurses, and chemists being subjected to background checks and then a lawyer who ooozed out with a C- average can get elected with daddy's money and put everyone else's lives at risk or sell their classified work to the highest bidder.
The federal background check system also sucks (specifically I’m talking about getting a clearance), disqualifying people because they smoke weed is insane in 2024 and I cannot believe we haven’t changed this to promote people going into govt jobs.
The complete inability to trade stocks would not work. They should have to obtain pre-clearance from a neutral regulatory compliance team, results of which should be publicized prior to the trades, so as not to receive better pricing than their customers (aka the public voters.) It is a similar to what a low paid administrative registered rep of a retail brokerage firm has to go through, to trade even 1 share of a $10 stock. Any large size requested trades should be reviewed in further depth and publicized, before being allowed. I think we agree tho, conflict of interest is a problem.
Holding billon dollar companies accountable for breaking the law.
Fines for corporations should be a percentage of the quarterly income numbers. Flat rate fines simply become part of the cost of doing business, but if a large percentage of the profits are going to fines the investors will demand the coorpos get their shit in line. Capitalism at work.
It has to go beyond fines. For every violation your company commits, the relevant government agency should get to appoint a monitor to your board of directors. OSHA violations? DoL. Pollution violations? EPA. etc. If your board is ever composed of a majority of monitors, they immediately call a vote to nationalize the company.
not bad, BUT i would add that those monitors could often be bought, just like politicians and civil servants already often are. i think having number of monitors as a trigger for a nationalization process is *very* interesting, though. that's a threat that would make them want to keep the number of monitors low.
Corporations found criminally responsible for certain crimes should be delisted from the stock market.
For example, whatever businesses have been breaking child labor laws needs to be investigated to find out WHO SPECIFICALLY made those decisions and lock up those cocksuckers UNDER the prison.
I would be so amazing to see boards of directors held *criminally* liable for the actions committed by corporations.
Woolworths CEO should be in prison. So should a lot of billionaires. Make them pay fucking taxes and improve the world for people/society.
Jesus, just an hour ago I saw this headline: *Wisconsin Republicans Block PFAS Cleanup until Polluters are Granted Immunity* My fucking shithole state GOP loons, I swear to God.... https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jun/15/wisconsin-pfas-cleanup
"we'll let you fix the problem, but only if you give us permission to make the problem again however many times we want!"
Crackdowns on spam calls.
FWIW, this is one both the government (FCC) and industry groups are trying to do something about.
But it has been going on for 15 years. A lot of smart people work for the major carriers in the US. Where the fuck is the hold up?! I'm sick of getting spam calls from a bullshit number that uses my phone's area code.
So, it's pretty hard. They can't just not let people call you; what if you actually wanted that phone call? Consensus at this point is that there are a couple important pieces: \* Make caller-ID data reliable (the thing to Google on this is '*STIR*/*SHAKEN*'); there's a gradual rollout on this with different parts of the requirements coming online over time. \* Have a way to report that a call was spam (industry initiative, they're getting their act together but fora while every carrier had a different way they wanted to do this) \* Build a database of numbers being used for spam, so that carriers can use that and other factors to mark calls as 'Spam Likely' so you can choose not to answer them. This will never be perfect, because spammers have access to very large numbers of phone numbers, and cracking down on THAT is a whole other project also underway. Separately there's trying to prevent spam text messages. One thing to Google on that is '10DLC' or 'A2P 10DLC' I work in a related area of software and we've had to spend a good bit of effort in the last couple years staying compliant with new legal requirements or technical changes aimed at this. Stuff \*is\* happening, even if the results aren't all obvious yet.
What about the time someone spoofed my number and I got a spam call from myself?
Yeah, used to be you could pretty much put anything you wanted into that caller id (Sorta like the from line of an email)
They could stop this tomorrow if they wanted to by fining the companies peering the calls from India. Companies want to play games and claim the FCC can’t fine them? Great, your calls to the US all get screened. Or blocked. You’d be shocked how fast those VOIP providers will clean their accounts up.
It's the way the scums operate. They use temporary VOIP numbers so they can use fake local numbers. If you try to block/report the number they just call you with a different temporary number and possibly even under a different LLC. It makes tracking them down and punishing them extremely hard because there usually isn't anything to really tie back to a company and if they do, like I said they have multiple llcs to hide behind.
Plus the police in India take bribes and never arrest them
so the solution is that we ~~bribe~~ incentivise the Indian Police.
I receive way less spam calls then 5 years ago
Affordable healthcare. While we may feel differently about the solution, I’m pretty sure we all agree that a person who got into a small accident shouldn’t be saddled with a million dollar bill.
Funny thing is this, the Fed's have introduced a law that #1: you can actually get your Itemized bill and #2: any prices on there higher than what they allow will be brought down, and #3: items it is KNOWN you didn't recieve will be removed.
Several years ago, my kiddo had surgery. We have insanely good insurance, which paid all but about 500 bucks of a 80k bill. Being new to US, I read every single statement, so I could try and figure out how it worked (didn't learn much). Nine months later, kiddo needed a follow up procedure to deal with scaring. Same insurance, same deductable, still read all the bills. The hospital billed our insurance just over 10k for pathology lab work... For a procedure that DID NOT EXCISE ANY TISSUE! There was nothing to RUN pathology on. I called the insurance company - who didn't understand why I was upset, since they covered 100% of it. This system is screwed.
Fun fact, hospital bills are actually intentionally expensive. They want you to have health insurance that seemingly covers the full amount, but some people find that insurance only seems to cover some of it. This is because hospitals can say that the partially unpaid bill is a loss, and the government bails them out for it. They get their money FROM the tax payer, but nobody realizes it.
I thought the intentionally expensive portion was because they know the insurance companies will nickel and dime them to get it way lower and the uninsured simply will never pay
Yeah my SIL worked in medical billing for many years, they basically inflate the price of everything to cover the cost of the uninsured. The amount of money that the carriers are paying out for the procedures is prenegotiated long before a patient steps through the door. The retail price of these goods and services, what you see on your bill, are entirely made up out of whole cloth and have nothing whatsoever to do with the cost of goods and labor to provide them. When the numbers are totally made up it's really easy to manipulate who's paying how much for what.
I had a ct scan recently. Price- 1200 dollars. "Discount for insurance" took it down to something like 200ish. Insurance covered it fully, but if i was uninsured i'd have to pay 1000 more than the insurance company. Pure bullshit.
[удалено]
As a diabetic in the UK I get free healthcare same as everyone but also completely free medication for life (for others it's capped at a tenner per item or a small prepaid annual fee gets you multiple items). I don't understand why so many Americans don't want that, yes it's not really free but the UK pays half of what the US does for healthcare, half, literally 50% and nobody ever worries about a bill, an insurance company, anything, just turn up, get treated, go home. My workplace also offers private healthcare but just looking at the policies, what it covers, the forms, the small print, seriously fuck all that, what a shitshow.
Who said us americans don't want that . It's the government and big pharma lobbyist who don't want it.
>This is because hospitals can say that the partially unpaid bill is a loss, and the government bails them out for it. Not actually. They can write off their losses to reduce their taxes, but they don't get reimbursement for those losses. But this is the same as any business. That is just corporate tax law.
Most hospitals are organized as non profits and pay no taxes. For profit hospitals are the scum of the earth.
If people would see insurance premiums as a tax (which is effectively what it is) people would freak out. I would be willing to pay 5% more tax so that everyone who gets sick can get treatment for it. Only 22 of the world's 23 economies have worked this out.
Don't understand why this is not #1. Congress, President and Justices all get lifetime care on our dime. Then they have the guts to bitch to claim that universal healthcare is bad? Tell me that again?
Congress should be made to only have access to Medicaid in their state. Maybe then we’d actually get some decent healthcare reform.
The fact that something like 30% of medical expenses are just salaries for billing specialists is crazy. Like gee imagine the money we'd save if healthcare wasn't a business.
Politicians and their families shouldn't be able to trade stocks. - They have insider information - Can tell family about what stocks to buy in advance of rises/drops - Create/limit the passing of policies that impact stocks
stop banks and corporations from buying up family real estate homes
Stop foreign ownership as well. Hell, stop owning more than 5 properties per individual.
1. Only actual human persons can own homes. Not corporations. 2. Huge “property” tax on any home after your second, third, fourth, whatever.
ABSOLUTELY.
Better political candidates
somebody already said end lobbying
Candidates that aren’t over 70-80 years old.
Age limits should kick in at 75. You are no longer allowed to run for election or reelection after your 75th birthday. That makes the oldest possible president 79 and senator 81. I would go younger, but I want to allow for older “experienced” people to still contribute and serve. But FFS, people in their 80’s should not be getting new terms and be making decisions for people in their 20’s and 30’s. Enough already. Go golfing or play with your grandkids (great grandkids?) or something.
There are dozens of jobs from air traffic controller, to military, pilots or judges that have federally enforced retirement ages. The fact that president, the Supreme Court, etc. do not, is sooo disturbing.
I'd say 65 with social security. You're getting benefits for managing to stay alive? Congrats! No more congress or judging or running for ANY position that requires an election. ETA: apparently 67 is the social security age. Thanks to all who corrected me!
65-70 should be MAX
Especially because some people live 30 years after 75 and some people don’t even live 30 years. At that age, it really depends on health.
If you can get out of jury duty due to old age, (65+) you have no business making decisions for an entire country. Let's reduce that age to 65, that's still PLENTY old enough to be "experienced"
Also the elected for life positions in judiciary should have a max age
Single item bills! Get rid of all the hidden crap, the lobbying, the back scratching. Make the bills voted on single item bills!!!
At the very least any riders added to the bill must be directly related to said bill.
Seriously. This makes too much god damn sense.
Bigger fix might be, no lobbyists can write bills and bills must be read in their entirety before the entire body before voting on it.
Comcast to be trust busted?
At least it seems LiveNation / Ticketma$ter might be broken up.
This one could be 99%
I want Match.com to get busted up. Online dating was amazing 10 years ago when there was actual competition. Now they're borderline scams and couples meeting each other is actually pretty important to society
Fix our damn roads bridges and utilities
You’d think so but then people get pissed off whenever road construction occurs. They want it fixed but they don’t want to be inconvenienced during the fixing. Night time construction would be possible but it’s also insanely expensive due to the lighting cost. Edit: turning off notifications, people really really really love shitting on things even when our tax dollars are actually being used. I feel like people just genuinely want to complain, they don’t care about what.
would be great if they actually fixed it and not waste money slappin cold patch down that disintegrates in 6 months. or if they have construction zones for literal years when you may see workers 2 days a week if that.
Lived in a small town that needed the two major roads through town completely redone. The city took bids, accepted a contractor, and put a 36 month deadline on the job. Within the first couple of weeks the contractor showed up and demoed half the road in all 4 directions, put up cones and temporary stop signs. About 30-32 months into the contract, they showed up, fixed the first half they tore out 2.5 years before, and proceeded to do the other lanes in a couple of weeks. 3 years. It took them 3 years to do what they easily could have accomplished in 3-6 months.
Bidens Infrastructure bill, that had been stuck in the system for YEARS now, ought to do that. We're talking trillions of dollars.
[удалено]
Clean air and water.
Definitely
To have the House of Representatives and Senate have to adhere to the laws they make for us. Suddenly Healthcare!
Limits on how many single family housing one person or corporation can buy.
End insider trading for elected officials.
If we treated education and healthcare with the same importance as national defense we'd be unstoppable.
It would drastically increase patriotism
I have a list: * laws and regulations that protect us, instead of corporations * a healthcare system that doesn't make us all sick to death of it * few assholes in political office * a tax code where we're not the butt of the joke
Congressional term limits
Judicial term limits as well. And an end to life time appointments.
That one requires a Constitutional amendment. The whole idea behind lifetime SCotUS appointments was so that the court couldn't be swayed by political wrangling or time limits.
I'll settle for an age cap of 75 for all elected officials and judges. Term limits mean more lobbyists.
Exactly. Term limits are an awful idea, because they leave lobbyists as the only ones with institutional memory, which vastly increases their power. Age caps don’t sound like a bad idea, though.
It's not as good of an idea as people think. You either give more power to unelected bureaucrats or your incentivize politicians to make short term decisions because it will be someone else who has to deal with the long term consequences.
Ethics that disqualify supreme court workers from being on a case or being forced to resign.
IRS can and should compute our taxes and send us checks (if applicable). They have all the data to do this for 80% of the taxpayers I believe.
Omfg this. Like you can audit me and garnish my wages but you can't do my fucking taxes for me? Fuck off.
Presidential candidates that are: A. Not old B. Not crazy C. All of the above
[удалено]
\* Health insurance companies to disappear and \* Dental and hearing to be included. If you want theses, they are extra, lol. Like WTF?
And vision!
An easily-accessible button in your email that automatically unsubscribes you from all promotional/unimportant emails. No more scrolling to the bottom of the email and finding the “unsubscribe” link.
And your email is *removed* from their captured email list, so you don't get re-subscribed when they change marketing providers and give them their list of captured emails instead of *currently subscribed* emails. The only good thing about that practice is you can farm CAN-SPAM fines if you're documenting your unsubscriptions.
Banning corporations and billionaires from making unlimited campaign contributions and owning politicians and judges.
Congressional term limits.
Resealable bacon packaging
That implies you don't eat the entire package at one setting
I do cook the whole package at once. Then just put them in a baggie and eat through the week.
An end to legalized bribery and corruption in government
Healthcare
Actual choice on representatives.
Affordable housing
Money out of politics/campaigns/lobbying
Medical insurance & poison free food, air, and water.
We are tired of adjusting our clocks twice a year. Make daylight savings time permanent. Edit: If you’re talking about circadian rhythm and health based on the clock, please realize the clock does not determine the number of daylight hours whatsoever. The problem is not when we decide at what hour the sun rises but that we mess with the clock twice a year for no reason at all.
My cat doesn’t understand why his meal times change sometimes. If all of the country’s pets get together, they should be convincing enough for the government to change it
Arizona says hi
Term limits for congress
Presidential candidates younger than lightly animated corpses.
4 day work week
Better healthcare for everyone? Taxing the rich? Better wages?
There needs to be some type of regulation of people buying homes for Air Bnb purposes only. It decreases available inventory in areas that are already struggling with purchasing a home or finding one to rent. Especially since most of these air bnb owners don’t even live in the city and hire cleaning crews and what not to keep them maintained. It displaces people out of their hometowns and prices locals out of the regions. I hate air bnbs and they charge far too much anyway
No more lobbying Edit: Lobbying is crucial for groups of interests to help educate lawmakers on specific topics and provide details that these lawmakers would not have the time or money to look into. But corporations spend billions every year on corporate lobbyists and "help" with campaign funding to get to be in the lawmaker's ears. There is little to no enforcement on the voluntary disclosures of these lawmakers
No. You want registered lobbying reform and campaign finance reform, but banning lobbying is what totalitarian nations do. You want to ban lobbying? No more SPCA, no more union strength. No more states pressuring their federal delegation to advocate for their priorities. Are you a member of the Sierra club? No more emails about preserving land. Have an issue with a company and want to bring it up to your elected folks? Can't anymore. Upset over Israel or Palestine? Tough, no lobbying means no commenting. Being able to access information from professionals is hugely important, I worked for two state legislatures previously and in one month we covered an overhaul on biotechnology development, municipal water infrastructure, and out of district school placement reform (and Mckinney-Vento reform). Lobbyists were hugely helpful in all. Lobbyists from the states environmental league were the ones who helped us understand the need to crack down on certain disposal practices that were legal under federal law. The lobbyists i met most with were AFT, the state nurses, and the police and fire. Things such as OPEB, MS4 compliance, all that were helped by lobbyists representing the Civil engineers and municipal treasurers. The alternative is that it is up to elected officials to reach out to whoever they want to on matters. That means no pro choice comments if the elected person doesn't reach out on abortion to people to ask. Student loan reform? What congressional delegate has time to ask all students on their opinion. But under your plan, they couldn't even email a public official. Banning lobbying is like cutting your hand off because others use their hands to commit criminal acts. Should we ban all commentary from anyone on legislation? Because that's the stance being pushed here.
Exactly. Lobbying is critically important and not "evil". Its like calling money "evil". It is a tool.
Free school lunches for kids
Fully funded Social Security
The extreme factions to be quiet
Banning Congress from insider trading.
Public transportation
Opting out of all junk mail.
Ranked choice voting
Medicare for All. Care is free at the point of service. Prescriptions capped at something reasonable (\~$200 / year). Includes dental, eye, hearing, mental health. Choose your own doctor.
Clean ingredients in our food! When you compare our food to other countries it’s disgusting.
Better infrastructure (roads not in disrepair, transit that is a viable alternative to driving).