Life, Death, and Autonomy Should your right to autonomy extend to terminating a living being? This fundamental question is the crux that divides tens of millions of Americans. The imminent Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization makes abortion more salient in the public sphere than it’s been in recent memory. A necessary question we must all ask ourselves and others is this: What normative ethics inform your policy preferences concerning abortion?

A Good Problem At the time of writing, Minnesota has a $9.253 billion surplus for Fiscal Year 2022-23. This marks the ninth year Minnesota has ran a surplus: This surplus, however, is higher than any Minnesota has had in its history. Why is the surplus over 5.5 times higher than it was last year? Primary Factors Most of this increase came from unexpectedly high tax collections: But where did this come from?

An Unfounded Assertion In 1798, a British scholar wrote an essay—Principle of Population. In it, he asserted that the population grows exponentially while food production grows linearly. His corollary of this assertion was inevitable and perpetual famine, war, and suffering until the population decreases. This scholar was Thomas Malthus. Unfortunately for his academic reputation—and fortunately for everyone else—this assertion turned out to be completely unfounded. 224 years later, the world is wealthier, safer, more educated, and more prosperous than at any point in human history.

Political Expediency The White House and Congressional Democrats are considering a tax holiday on gasoline to appease voters that are angry about high gas prices. Tax holidays are laws that exempt specific goods and services from taxation for a limited time. They aren’t new—17 states had sales tax holidays last year. Legislators like tax holidays because they think it’s an easy way to influence voters. Unfortunately, it also serves to distract legislators from profound tax reform.

Re-weighted Methods Are Suboptimal In a post I made in November 2020, I argued for a multi-winner variation of range voting called re-weighted range voting. I’ve since rescinded this view—closer analysis showed me that all re-weighted variants of range and approval voting are more vulnerable to tactical voting. I shall demonstrate this with an example. A voter loves the Plaid Party, but thinks some representatives from the Checkered Party aren’t awful.

Inflation is Through the Roof! The January Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) numbers showed a 7.1% seasonally-adjusted year-over-year increase from December 2020 to December 2021. But what does that actually mean? The United States government measures inflation by measuring changes in a metric called the Consumer Price Index (CPI). It aggregates household consumption data across the United States and sorts consumption into expenditure categories. The CPI represents an average person’s consumption bundle.

Why it Exists The Filibuster in the US Senate was an accident. In 1806, per Vice President Aaron Burr’s advice, the Senate eliminated the move to the previous question motion from their rule book. This was because Aaron Burr viewed the motion as redundant. With it’s repeal, the filibuster became possible. Alteration Senators barely used the filibuster until the 1880s. In 1917, President Woodrow Wilson implored the Senate to create the cloture motion, which ended filibusters with a two-thirds majority vote of all Senators present.

The Current State of US Taxes The US tax system is a messy patchwork of taxes that raises revenue inefficiently. This manifests in two ways: Distortionary taxes that discourage savings and investment IRS regulations that impose high compliance costs In 2016, the center-right Tax Foundation estimated that the total tax compliance costs to the US economy was approximately 2.18% of GDP. Additionally, Americans spent 8.9 billion hours filing their taxes in the same year.

Unsustainable Debt Many pensions for state and local public sector workers have amassed large levels of debt. The aggregate level of unfunded pension liabilities (the gap between future promised benefits and future revenues) across the US was $4.998 trillion USD in 2019, assuming a 3.25% discount rate. For perspective, that means the total pension debt in the US is slightly higher than Germany’s PPP-adjusted GDP as of 2021. As a proportion of the 2019 economy, the pension debt was 23.

Market Failure Many Americans pay too much for slow internet with terrible customer service and poor coverage. In local markets, where market concentration matters most, there is often only one broadband provider; in 2018, the FCC found that 30% of Americans have only one broadband provider, and 13% have zero. The telecommunications sector is a natural monopoly: fixed costs are high, marginal costs are low. It’s expensive to start an internet service provider and cheap to add a new subscriber, giving the incumbent provider a huge advantage.

Where Are We Now In 2020, the number of people age 65 and older was about 16.6% of the population. By 2050, that proportion will rise to around 23.2% and continue to increase as time passes. According to AARP in a 2017 report, the proportion of people who turn 65 who will require long term supports and services at some point during the remainder of their lives is 52%. These figures make it clear that the issue of long term care will have heightened salience as the 21st century progresses.

What is it? As part of President Biden’s primary initiatives that he campaigned on, him and his advisors created a large legislative proposal aimed at infrastructure improvements. This bill totals a sum of 2.142 trillion USD and contains four primary focuses: Transportation Caregiving Utilities, housing, schools, and other miscellaneous expenditures Research, development, and manufacturing To fund this, the White House proposes a slew of business tax increases to cover the costs of the bill.

Endless Contention Anyone who has followed my previous posts will know I’m an ardent proponent of range voting and it’s multiwinner analogue reweighted range. What I have not spoken to as much, however, is the issues surrounding election procedures and security. These things are in many respects just as important as the voting method employed. Unfortunately in the US, such issues have been relegated to vociferous partisan squabbling. Fortunately, I think there exists a set of proposals that would satiate the concerns of both parties that upholds the principles of universal suffrage in practice as well as election integrity.

Preamble For the purposes of creating a robust state that in all times shall uphold the principles of liberty, independence, openness, democracy, tolerance, the rule of law, egalitarian treatment, consensus, peace, and prosperity for all, this Constitution shall herein be adopted and respected to the letter as the supreme law to be held sacrosanct to all other law. Article I - Fundamental Rights Basic rights of all persons within the borders of this nation are incontrovertible and will not be infringed upon.

The Motivation Our political institutions (especially in the United States) have atrophied considerably over the last several decades and aren’t accomplishing their purported goals due to being attacked by elected officials, lack of adaptation to new circumstances, and sometimes a combination of both. This has resulted in profoundly negative ramifications such as increased socioeconomic inequality and political polarization. Trying to change these things through reform within the confines imposed by our existing governance structures proves a highly apocryphal path to rectifying our many problems.

The Financial Sector in the Modern Economy The financial sector is often seen (and in some regards rightfully so) as a haven for an upper class filled with avarice to speculate and gamble their fortunes in order to further bolster their wealth. It is a highly misunderstood sector whose purpose needs to be clarified succinctly. First and foremost, the financial sector is like the metaphorical circulatory system of an economy. It serves several primary functions, including:

Call to Change The United States and its respective states is one of the only democracies in the world other than the UK and Canada to use plurality or FPTP (first past the post) voting. I wrote on proportional voting in a white paper earlier this year. It solves the issue of legislatures whose compositions don’t closely mirror the vote share for each party and encourages more political parties among other positive ramifications.

Where We Are As has been said ad nauseum, the United States is the only major country on Earth with no federal level paid family leave program. The only federal level leave program if you can even call it that is the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993. It permits up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave from work for the birth of a child, caring for a severely ill family member, or recovery from serious illness if the worker has been employed for at least 1,250 hours over the last 12 months in a company with no less than 50 employees.

Sclerotic rot Many cities in the US have been captured for decades by big Democratic political machines (I talked about this here). Under their watch, cities have become increasing unlivable due to high costs associated with housing, transit, and a failure to deliver government services effectively and efficiently. Furthermore, a gallimaufry of onerous regulatory barriers have been erected that discourage business formation. Elucidated below will be prescriptive policies imperative to the flourishing of an urban center

The Impetus for Change Our Constitution, while it has been an enduring and provided fairly robust constraints on the ability of government to infringe upon the liberties of its people, is imperfect. The crux of the issue is primarily the changing circumstances society is subject to with the passage of time and the fact that the framers couldn’t account (understandably) for all new developments or possible unintended consequences. Thankfully for this, they provided an amendment process.

Tonight, I have made the final edits on the Electoral Reform white paper that expounds upon a number of policy options that America needs to strengthen our democracy and ensure all voice are heard.

It has been a little while in the making, but this is the first policy brief for Watchdog. This lays down what we’d like to see change in criminal justice. In no way is this fully comprehensive and may be subject to various updates in the future as new suggestions are made and previously unseen evidence comes to fruition. Take a read here.

Decided to make another public policy list as my Modern Deal was well received. There is a bit of overlap with a few policies from the previous post, but these are mostly unrelated otherwise. Without further ado, here is a list of what I believe to be the most important policy changes (from a largely US centric standpoint) for boosting economic freedom and growth. State & Local Note that some of these are already set in place in some states

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.