My Politics

Politics suck. People say when you go on a date not to talk about politics. Why not? Are politics so polarizing that you can’t have a level headed discussion about them? I think this perception is caused by the requirement that political views are black and white and not subject to change. I’m right and you’re wrong. If you get into any conversation like that, regardless of subject, things are going to get ugly.

I think this stems from the need to have labels that define a person’s view in one word. Democrat and Republican are just labels. They represent an overly generalized view of opinions on social, economic, and foreign issues. For the purpose of this post I’m not going to label myself as anything, just list my current views on a few common political issues. I stress when I say current because these opinions are very likely to change.

Taxes: The IRS should not collect taxes from individuals, its a wasteful way to collect money. A federal sales tax should be collected at point of sale and thats it. Anyone below the poverty line is exempt from this tax. This will create more individual savings and should stabilize our economy by allowing people to reduce their debt substantially. Additionally, a federal sales tax would allow unreported income to be taxed.

Abortion: The mother has 3 months to decide if they want to have the baby. They should also be required to provide a stable environment for the child or find foster parents if they don’t want to have an abortion. While this may sound harsh to some, contraception is too widely available to allow unintended pregnancy to be acceptable.

In general, I think life begins at birth and the argument that a fetus is potential life, while correct, also means that an egg or sperm is potential life. We might as well put women to death for killing a potential baby every month or men for masturbating. To me, this is all about personal responsibility and rights.

Health Care: Universal health care for everyone. Our society has come too far to leave people without proper medical care. To make this possible preventative care and education needs to be the focus. A healthier populous means lower health care costs for everyone. I have no interest in paying for someone who has a poor diet. Instate a diabetes tax on high fructose corn syrup. This should offset the crazy subsidies we give to corn industry for “ethanol production”.

Does anyone know what the actual cost of health care, not insurance, is in America?

Foreign Relations: We need to stop telling the rest of the world what to do. They don’t appreciate it and only pretend to listen because we give them money. This isn’t how you change the world for the better. You do it through respect and leadership. Once we’ve fixed our own issues then we can start helping everyone else.

Gay Marriage: According to the government, marriage is a contract to show the intent for two people to join their property and responsibility. That should be it. Who joins  in this contract and what sex they are is irrelevant. Religious organizations are free to decide if they want to acknowledge this contract.

Military: Get out of Iraq and remove the majority of stationed troops. Put them on our borders and ports as a national security force.

Drugs: Legalize marijuana and tax it like any other good. Prohibition hasn’t produced useful results, see the 1920s. Release all minor drug offenders from jail so we can stop wasting money on their incarceration. I recently heard a statistic that we spend more money on drug offenders than school children, huh? Legalization should also cut down violence on the Mexican border. I don’t do drugs myself but I  find the whole drug war a waste of money and effort.

Education: Incorporate career preparation earlier in the child’s curriculum, before college. Provide vouchers for students to create competition. Allow teachers to take free additional training and compensate them with raises for being more competent. Every student should have access to a computer. Create smaller and more focused career specific colleges that cost less and provide students with a degree faster.

Energy: Subsidize solar panels for individuals to  provide power into the grid and decentralize how we create power. Set a goal to have all combustion cars replaced with hydrogen based cars in 15 years. Replace gas stations with solar powered, self generating, hydrogen stations along the highway. These already exist in Sweden.

My overall view is that the government is there to pool personal assets at scale for the benefit of all, provide rights, and ensure physical safety.

These ideas seem to make sense to me and would love to discuss them with anyone. When it comes to most things, people are usually right and wrong at the same time and I would be happy to hear a point of view that makes more sense to me than what I think today.