The US’s Path Forward

A few things that would solve a lot of problems:

1. Make Medicare and Medicare supplemental insurance available to all citizens, and then let insurance companies sell whatever product they want. If you choose private insurance, there will need to be a waiting period after switching from private insurance to Medicare to prevent people from dropping their private insurance as soon as they become sick, but let them sign up if they lose their private insurance. There should be open enrollment once a year.

2. Free or low-cost higher education to everyone who can do the work. This is done by excellent public institutions and trade schools that are properly funded. Private schools can still charge for their services as they see fit, but no need for student loans, as students will either pay from their family resources, get scholarships, private grants, or private loans if they want to attend private schools, or go to the public institutions (which I reiterate must be excellent schools at a low cost).

3. Shore up Medicare and Social Security so people don’t live in fear of being without income and health care when they are old or sick.

4. Shore up Medicaid so that people will not live in fear of being bankrupted by long-term care, or possibly offer a Medicare long-term care policy, for a reasonable price, with lower prices the earlier you take the policy. Possibly provide a tax credit for children who help their low-income parents pay for the policy.

5. Free or very low-cost Child care for working families (single-parent families or two-parent families where both parents work). This simply has to be. You can’t work if you can’t care for your children.

6. The most controversial is to raise the minimum wage. At least to where it would be if it had kept up with the rate of inflation. This is simply absurd. In other countries minimum wage is much higher, while in the US, it has been frozen for decades now. The cost of a McDonald’s burger is only about 10% more in Denmark than in the US, and the minimum wage is much higher. So it’s not minimum wage.

7. Finally, to the extent we have an immigration crisis, it is our own policies that are making it happen. The belief that getting cheaper and cheaper goods is the road to success and security as opposed secure income that keeps up and or exceeds inflation. Why do you think construction companies turn to immigrants? To build cheaper buildings. Start paying higher wages, and increase the criminal penalty on people who hire illegal immigrants; and yes, I know Trump and a lot of his Republican buddies in the construction industry have made hundreds of millions on the backs of illegal immigrants.

This is not all, but it’s a great start to solving our problems. Will this increase taxes? Not a lot, but yes some. But we have been cutting and cutting and cutting taxes on the richest Americans and richest corporations for decades now, and all that has resulted is higher and higher deficits, a shrinking middle class, a growing working poor class, and a massively richer upper class. We have greater wealth disparity between the richest Americans and average Americans than at any time since the late 1800s Gilded Age. It’s not working for the vast majority, and it’s not getting better. Trump’s greed and corruption has only made it worse. We have to refocus the country on making the average American successful and secure. We have to stop the fixation on billionaires and “trickle down economics,” which is not even a real thing. Nothing trickles down. That is why we are in a new Gilded Age.