It's time for another one of those threads, except this time I thought I'd spice it up. This will not be just a bunch of individual lists of ten policy proposals that we all think would work, allowing us to pat our backs with undeserved satisfaction that we've managed to list ten talking points.

Instead, there will be ten policy spaces in the OP. I will contribute five just to get the ball rolling, but basically your job is to get your policy on the top ten list. Accordingly, I will question and criticise your proposals. I also encourage everybody else to criticise both the original proposals and other users' proposals. If you defend your policy well-enough, it will get a spot in the OP. If you like, you can also just nominate a policy for removal and justify your decision.

They must also be actual policies, not bullshit vagueness like "Transition to a socialist economy".

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Policy One: Abolish income and payroll taxes, replacing them with progressive consumption and property taxes.

Policy Two: Transition social security towards private, mandatory and regulated retirement savings accounts.

Policy Three: Increase spending on infrastructure and R&D.

Policy Four: Make it easier for high-skilled immigrants to come, work and live in the U.S.

Policy Five: Incentivise marriage.

Policy Six:

Policy Seven:

Policy Eight:

Policy Nine:

Policy Ten:

but isn't it already easy?

Not compared to, say, Canadian procedures. U.S. policy in terms of immigration is more humanitarian, as opposed to economic, prioritising things like the reuniting of divided families over accepting highly-skilled labour. Specifically in terms of universities, it would be beneficial to automatically award foreign STEM graduates with green cards; there are also other potential policies floating around, such as the Dream Act and Startup Act.

I'd hope "decrease military spending" would be the corollary to policy #3.

That would depend on whether or not you can find a way to decrease military spending without harming international influence or the ability to emerge successfully from a conflict. The evidence I've seen suggest that we can, but in principle I have no issue with defence spending at ~4pc of GDP. Entitlements are a much bigger fiscal beast that need confronting.

Don't fix minimum wage

What?

Get rid of gerrymandering

I haven't seen a significant enough argument on any level which would justify expending political capital to remove gerrymandering.

Invest more in education and stop cutting teachers salaries

Why spend more money before pursuing structural reforms like giving more autonomy to secondary schools, increasing parental choice and switching to performance-based pay for teachers. All of these things have significant empirical backing, at least as far as my experience with the literature goes.

Quote from: Meta Cognition on February 16, 2016, 12:41:58 AM

U.S. policy in terms of immigration is more humanitarian

HAHAHA

Quote

prioritising things like the reuniting of divided families

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

I'm saying the priorities are weighted that way; I'm not saying the U.S. is successful in having a particularly humanitarian immigration policy, merely that the way in which it was designed turns the focus away from bringing in high-skilled labour.

Looking at the consequences, U.S. immigration policy is pretty shitty on both economic and humanitarian grounds.

Quote from: Meta Cognition on February 15, 2016, 11:26:08 PM

Policy Three: Increase spending on infrastructure and R&D.

When did you change your mind on infrastructure?

I wouldn't say I've changed it so much as come to understand it better. I was never opposed to more infrastructure spending per se, and I was always vaguely aware of the shortfall in infrastructure spending at the time. Mainly, it was skepticism of government's ability to pick out infrastructure projects, now the evidence I've seen suggests that we have to try regardless.

Sounds like Gary Johnson is your candidate, Meta. Spread the word about that tax plan. He likes a proposal that does something like that. 

Sounds like Gary Johnson is your candidate

lol

Quote from: DisturbedMind883 on February 16, 2016, 02:47:18 AM

Don't fix minimum wage

What?

Like don't make the minimum wage a constant thing make it flexible

Why should marriage be incentivized?

If anything, I think LESS importance should be put on it

Strengthens family bonding and reduces the prospect of poverty for one thing?

idk about you but I don't think it's a wild coincidence that there's a correlation between single motherhood, abject poverty and crime.

Religion has nothing to do with marriage

Sadly, most people would disagree.