Social Liberal Modern Deal

As a fun weekend project, I decided to make a reform platform that would be suitable to social liberals (the European connotation) that finishes what the Roosevelts started with the Square Deal and New Deal. Note that this is just a rubric and not at all fully comprehensive!

The Modern Deal

Pensions

  • Make state and local pensions solvent
  • Strengthen and make fully solvent SS
    • Switch to CPI-E for COLA
    • 125% FPL benefit floor
    • Increase benefits for the extremely elderly
    • Allow recipients to deduct years that they took care of a child out of the workforce
    • Hike the bottom AIME bracket to 93%
  • Universal savings accounts to replace 401ks ran through the Thrift Savings Plan or Unions (see Ghent below)

Labor Market

  • Amend the Taft-Hartley Act to ban right to work
  • Move to the Ghent system for unemployment insurance and federalize all funding
    • Increase UI benefit duration to 52 weeks for all states
    • Uniform replacement rates with all states that starts around 80% and declines over time
    • Pass the ELEVATE Act or some other form of community jobs subsidies
  • Massively expand apprenticeship programs on an cost-efficacy basis for as many occupations that are feasible
    • Require that a certain percentage of public sector jobs be filled with apprentices
    • Establish a public-private partnership tasked with creating standards and working with industry to ascertain current private sector needs
  • Expand Reemployment Trade Adjustment Assistance (RTAA) as described in my last post
  • Turn EITC into a low wage subsidy

Education

  • Merge all general education into K12
  • Free at the point of use public college through income based repayment w/ total tuition subsidies for certain majors
    • Convert Pell Grants into living stipends and apportion based on need
  • Universal free school lunch for K12
  • Help states who cannot do so fund Early learning scholarships

Healthcare

  • Universal healthcare through Medicaid
    • Expand federal coverage mandated to cover all ACA health benefits + dental care with the option to get supplemental insurance for other things
    • Value based insurance design
    • No deductibles or premiums
    • Out of pocket costs capped at 2% of annual earnings
  • Universal catastrophic LTSS benefit

Family income security

  • Consolidate most assistance programs like TANF and SNAP into direct cash benefits (effectively a NIT)
    • Eliminate work requirements on all low income assistance programs; eligibility based on income with gentle phase outs
  • Universal Child benefit of $4000 per child that rises to $5000 for kids 5 years of age
  • 36 weeks of paid family leave with 70% wage replacement up to the national average wage and $300 a week floor, which is split between parents as they as they see fit
  • Employer mandate of 10 paid sick days
  • Subsidized childcare via childcare savings accounts, which give families full control over what childcare arrangements they choose.

Housing

  • Push for Zoning deregulation that reduces regulatory complexity to that of Japan
  • Repurpose public housing for recently released prisoners, rehab patients, disabled homeless veterans, and other at risk groups who need public services delivered to them regularly
  • Fully fund Section 8 vouchers so that all who are eligible can receive housing assistance

Electoral

  • Federal voting rights act to end voter suppression
    • Automatic voter registration
    • Make election day a holiday
    • Algorithmic redistricting
  • Expand the House of Representatives
  • Score voting (reweighted score voting where proportionality is desired) for all federal elections
  • Public financing of all elections via an equal voucher based on the Seattle model

Antitrust and Market Power

  • Delegate all antitrust authority to the FTC
    • Expand enforcement authority of state attorneys
    • Allow for public comment and input as with other federal regulatory agencies during rule proposals and merger reviews
    • The FTC shall make rules to define violations of the Sherman and Clayton Acts
      • Allow for public comment and input as with other federal regulatory agencies during rule proposals and merger reviews
    • Politically insulate the FTC like the Federal Reserve
    • Eliminate enforcement exceptions for common carriers, airlines, hospitals, , and foreign monopolies
  • Expand the Clayton Act to cover vertical mergers
  • Consider long term effects on market structure of mergers
    • In particular, take labor monopsony into consideration
  • Review past mergers and unwind previous ones now deemed anti-competitive with respect the these new rules
  • Make data a property right
    • Reduce transition costs of using different service based companies through data interoperability (especially for the tech sector)
  • Enforce non-discrimination clauses on all content platforms (especially for the tech sector)
  • Establish the Data Privacy Authority (DPA) under the FTC

Financial

  • Impose a financial transactions tax of 5 to 10 basis points (0.05-0.1%) on all financial instruments to reduce arbitrage and noise trading
  • Enact Kotlikoff’s limited purpose banking or The Minneapolis Too Big to Fail Plan
  • Setting up automatic fiscal stabilizers that kick in without any manual intervention on the part of Congress; these would be things like SNAP benefits increasing, unemployment insurance generosity and duration increasing, and direct cash transfers to households
  • Reform federal grants to make them more progressive for poorer states and give less of a windfall to richer states