Well said. I was caught up in the “what is good” trap and didn’t think to question how valid being fundamentally anything was.
Nuffle
Karma: −5
I would first nationalize all industries directly tied to welfare and national security. Farming, domestic logistics, PG&E, healthcare, and ISPs. Agricultural Exports would continue to be sold for profit and domestic sales would be sold at cost calculated quarterly by region. The goal of this program would be to free up labor productivity for use in experimentation, R&D, and entrepreneurship.
Public education would be expanded to include either 4 years of University education or 2 years of University and 2 years of trade education. After every 10 years of employment the option for another round of the same would be made available. The primary goal for this program would be to raise average labor productivity among the entire population.
A national pension at 70 would be implemented at 80% of the average annual income between the top ten years of work up to a cap at 2x the mean of all workers’ annual income. This retirement would be compulsory.
Petitions with more than 1% of all citizens’ signatures would enter a mandatory legal arbitration and given two years to reach a resolution between whichever parties involved. In the event a resolution could not be made a selection of circuit court judges would be called to review the proceedings and form a compromise which would enter Congress as a bill to be voted on immediately.
I’ll have to come back and edit this to add a couple of pages on civil rights and prison reform.
Personal political philosophy aside, I think appearing socialistic might be unavoidable given the prompt.
Maximizing productivity and each person’s earning potential comes to mind as the most effective way to guarantee leisure time and career mobility so every citizen can engage in artistic and humanities hobbies and careers. In such a system by age 40 a person could have degrees and training in both a STEM/business field and an arts/humanities field, either being an artist through their 20s before having the option to retrain into an engineer in their 30s or the other way around.
With tax revenue boosted by a generation of professionals, grants to support public arts endeavors would eventually help start up those careers. Murals on buildings, sculptures and statues, architectural marvels in cities or beautiful buildings at rural meeting places, perhaps even a project similar to the Дворец культуры undertaking from the Soviet era.
The final state of things I’d imagine working towards would be a country more full of opportunity, less full of suffering, maximized for each person’s professional fulfillment and comfort. Each person would be able to see over the course of their lifetime a renewal of their city or town to a more beautiful and inviting space.