So....I gotta say, there's some stuff going on about the democratic primary I'm not huge on, but there's a lot going on I absolutely LOVE. This primary is SO much better than 2016, and the overton window seems to be moving left very fast. We have all of these candidates pushing all of these ideas, and it's just glorious. This is what our discourse should look like, and what it was missing in 2016.
The problem is, it's almost too much, at least if we tackle all of these ideas at once. Let's be honest, we only have limited amounts of money, we can't pursue every idea that people come up with. You start with Bernie's 2016 platform that included a $15 minimum wage, universal healthcare, and free college, and that sounded pretty good. Now we have people pushing minimum wage, universal healthcare, and free college, but also stuff like free day care, reparations for slaves, universal basic income, a green new deal, a jobs program. For every problem, there is a solution. I mean this sounds great, but we gotta think holistically going forward. We need to think, what ideas would be best to implement, and how do we focus on them. We need to weed our redundancy. A jobs program and a UBI might overlap. UBI and green new deal might conflict with one another. Reparations for slavery might be divisive and we might be better off pursuing other avenues.
It's kind of like the debates of the 1960s again, which is great, don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining, but there are disadvantages here. The last time the democrats had this much power, they implemented tons of programs and they made peoples' lives better....but they kind of left things half way done and didn't think in terms of the big picture. Which is where we started seeing debates about UBI. Because during the 1930s to the 1960s, the democrats pushed tons of ideas, but they always did so in a piecemeal way. They created dozens, if not hundreds of agencies, with dozens, if not hundreds of programs, and they kinda left the root causes remain. In other words, they just basically fixed capitalism by applying generous amounts of duct tape, that became undone once it was neglected in the 1980s on. And now history is repeating itself.
Rather than focus on all of these different programs, it is my opinion that we should pursue a focused, targeted effort on a few programs that would have the widest effects, do the most amount of good, and would be hardest for the government to actually screw up and botch. This is why I am so gung ho on universal basic income as a solution. It isn't quite a silver bullet, but it's as close as one that exists in my opinion. Want childcare? Buy it with UBI! Or heck, instead of pushing single moms into the work force to get a job, making them need to hire a whole different person to take care of their kid, maybe they should just take care of their kid and there is no shame for doing work that isn't profitable in the market like raising children. This is why I like a lot of Andrew Yang's ideas, he seems to understand this kind of thing, and seeks solutions that actually would work. UBI would resolve the reparations thing in a less divisive manner because rather than focusing on fixing the system for some people who were screwed, it fixes the system for everyone, giving everyone a floor with which they can springboard to more success. UBI would be a good program to replace food stamps as well. It is a program that would solve many many problems, in a holistic ways, and fill in some obvious gaps in the market based system we have.
We should also focus on universal healthcare. If there's anything that can't be bought adequately with UBI, it's access to healthcare. Just as medicare complements social security, medicare for all would complement UBI. We would be giving all of our citizens the same good deal (more or less) seniors get in their advanced age. A nice safety net to live on, that may not lead to a glamorous life in itself, but probably takes care of most basics and with some mild work effort could lead to a quite comfortable life.
Free education is my third pillar. Education is a key to acquiring skills to succeed in the job market. It is the key to economic mobility. This has some under question in an age where many college grads fail to find meaningful work, but without it, I see college as only a real option for the rich, unless you want to fall into tons of life ruining debt. Moreover, who says free education can't apply to say, trade school too? You want to learn an in demand trade? That should be covered! The point is, people should have access to whatever tools they need to succeed in the economy.
Going into 2016, this is what my dream platform was. I have advanced a bit since then, but I do think it's a good springboard on which to start a broader discussion about our needs as a society. I believe if we take care of the basics via a UBI, free healthcare, and free education, we could solve 90% of the problems in this country related to economics in the short to intermediate future. From there it's just a matter of figuring out what else we need. Perhaps housing, to which solutions could exist. Maybe we do, after figuring all that out, we decide universal childcare would allow some women get ahead. Maybe we can then figure out if affirmative action is needed to fix structural racism, while giving people displaced by it a softer landing. Maybe we can then figure out how to decarbonize the economy around a green new deal focused primarily on fixing the environment, not providing jobs for their own sake to people. Maybe we can then decide market socialism is a good idea and implement codetermination to make workplaces more worker owned and democratic. The sky is the limit.
Right now the country is finally in the mood to think big about things. That's a very good thing, but it's also something that could determine the future course of the country and what we value. Rather than implementing tons of programs in a piecemeal mass duct tape like fashion, maybe it would be better to focus on a few of the largest ones with the most widespread impacts, and then work from there. Otherwise we might be ballooning the size of government, without really getting to the root of the problems, which sounds to me like a recipe for the right to come back with a vengeance like they did in the 1980s.
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