Policies Most People Surprisingly Support
Framing matters
How would you vote on these propositions?
We should tax a broad group of people who are clearly relatively poorer than another group of people and give the proceeds to the clearly wealthier group.
We should put substantially more public resources into public (government) schools for the children of wealthy parents and not allow the children of poor people to access the schools. What’s more, where you live should determine how good your school is including but not limited to how much funding it receives. And we should subsidize poorly performing schools, administrators, and teachers insulating them from the discipline of competition and other performance metrics even though this comes at the expense of well performing schools, administrators, and teachers.
Wealthy people should have all of their basic health care needs paid for by the government while retaining options to shop for better services with some of these still paid for by the government while impoverished people should be strictly as well as informally limited to very basic care that although it is totally paid for by government is still highly inferior.
At every level of government (federal, state, and local) we should use tax and spending policy to directly fund and subsidize large corporations. This should include taxing the masses to direct massive amounts of money to wealthy people and companies. If small businesses are therefore funding their larger competitors, so be it. A direct aim of this is so the government can pick winners and losers industry by industry, business by business.
Constitutional protections of citizens' rights are great and all, but these should be curtailed if not ignored for U.S. citizens if they happen to be within 100 miles of an international border including the ocean and Great Lakes. Thus warrantless stops and searches are permissible—"papers, please". It is beside the point that about 67% or 220 million Americans live inside this Constitution-lite zone.
We should force banks and other financial institutions to judge their customers financial activity and report anything they consider suspicious to the federal government while being forbidden from allowing their customers to know this is happening. Additionally, all transactions above some small, arbitrary thresholds must be reported to the federal government. Any other desires the government has to see into a customer's private financial activity shall be allowed without constitutional protections simply because that customer shared that information in any way with a third party.
When it suits the desires of current politicians or when it is advantageous to those in power, the U.S. government should renege, reverse, or otherwise backout of prior agreements, policies, and conventions with foreign governments or groups. This is with no regard for how it might affect those allies and foreign partners including if it brings significant social and human cost. If it requires deadly military action to facilitate the change of heart, so be it.
The U.S. government should aggressively intervene into the markets within foreign nations including when two other nations (and businesses/individuals within them) pursue various economic developments. This should include using threats to remove trade status and access to the international banking system. When it comes to areas the U.S. government determines it has an opinion, foreign nations should have to ask the U.S. government for permission to act. Further, foreign nations, their businesses, and citizens should comply with U.S.-directed policies in transactions that do not involve the U.S. government, its corporations, or citizens.
The U.S. federal government should tax U.S. citizens for goods and services purchased from producers that in one way or another are international. The proceeds of these taxes either directly or indirectly should go to reward and subsidize businesses that are favored by U.S. bureaucrats and policy makers. This is despite the fact that these favored producers have obviously been failing in the marketplace relative to their competition; hence, the reason U.S. citizens are patronizing the international alternatives. These taxes should be aimed at making Americans pay more than they would otherwise pay while the subsidies should be designed to enrich owners of favored businesses even if these owners are non-U.S. citizens.
In a great many cases the government should determine if you are qualified for a job regardless of the nature of that job. Customers willing to pay you for services is not qualification enough. Firms willing to employ you is not qualification enough. You should have to get an official approval, licensure, before you can work. And in some cases this should entail continuing education as decided not by customers or employers but only as dictated by government bureaucrats and lawmakers. If this means a proven skilled hair braider cannot do this work until they pass all the requirements for cosmetology despite all the intendant welfare loss for these workers and their customers, so be it. There is no need for these requirements to match up to any logical or empirically determined framework.
We should legally bar any vessel from transporting goods directly between two U.S. ports unless it fits very restrictive conditions—conditions we wouldn’t dream of imposing on foreign vessels traveling to U.S. ports from abroad. Even though this will make goods very expensive in places like Hawaii and Puerto Rico and greatly limit options in emergency situations, we should still impose this hardship.
Taxes should be primarily designed to reward favored groups, punish disapproved behavior, and reduce the rewards to saving, investing, and working while encouraging excessive consumption. They should be excessively complicated, greatly expensive to comply with, arbitrary to the extreme of there not being a correct way to interpret their requirements, and a tool for the rich and powerful to exploit at the expense of the middle class and upper middle class.
We should make housing much more expensive than it would otherwise be by significantly restricting and in many cases prohibiting building housing. This development restriction should benefit incumbent owners at the expense of all others. It should reward the older and wealthier at the direct expense of the younger and poorer and indirect expense of everyone's long-term wellbeing. It should include zoning and other ordinances than will have detrimental effects on out-of-favor groups including minorities including in many cases intentionally. Property rights should be subordinate to the desires of powerful insiders and their influencers who stand to benefit from policy choices.
When grown adults choose to consume certain plants and chemicals, they should be harshly sanctioned and punished. While some legal substances might demonstrably cause more harm than other banned substances, we should still keep in place a policy of putting people into cages for the wrong consumption since it causes them harm which we don't think they can be allowed to choose for themselves. Criminalizing that which in some cases is a health problem while in other cases isn't even obviously problematic is the right approach.
Private, intimate activities between informed, consenting adults should be subject to disapproval by government. If disapproved, the people involved should face stiff fines and incarceration.1 This would include allowing police officers to lie to people (almost always women) getting them to have sex with them only to turn around and arrest them.
Because we just can’t be sure about what they will do once they arrive and because they very likely will in many cases take our jobs, use our welfare programs, commit crimes, change our culture, and vote for policies we don’t support, we should very, very tightly limit and restrict the ability of Americans to have babies. The bringing of children into the U.S. should be completely controlled and dictated by the federal government down to very fine details. America is full, after all, and we need to protect and preserve what is ours. Related: The U.S. should discontinue its historic policy of being a nation of immigrants and instead become a nation with one of the lowest rates of immigration.
If you chose “no”, you . . .
Rejected Social Security.
Rebuked how public (government) schools are funded and operated.
Opposed the Medicare and Medicaid systems.
Have just said "no" to corporate welfare encompassing everything from publicly-funded sports stadiums to favored energy firms to health-care oligopolists, et al.
Agree to let the terrorist win by opposing the 100-mile border zone and its search exception. As the ACLU reminds us, know your rights.
Apparently don't think the Bank Secrecy Act among other privacy intrusions by the government is desirable or legitimate. You probably don't think we should register digital wallets with the U.S. government either.
Are (ironically) turning your back on the conduct of the United States toward almost all current and former allies to one degree or another. This is especially true in the Middle East and throughout the developing world.
Don't think the U.S. government has a right to bully foreign nations and people into doing its bidding or following its decrees. One area of example is the IMF and World Bank.
Think that economic fairness and efficiency are superior to self-serving mercantilism.
Have adopted the "crazy" notion that central planning as a means to cronyistic benefit (aka, occupational licensure) isn't a good policy.
Have decided against the Jones Act.
Might rather have a logical, economically sound, and socially fair tax system.
Don't understand or don't agree with how housing "works" in America. You probably hate zoning in particular.
Are challenging the decades-long, unwinnable war on drugs. Perhaps you are trying to promote a concept of harm reduction.
For some strange reason don't want government officials deciding who can have sex with whom. Along with that you've disallowed a practice that by the government's own, broad definition would be considered (government-run) sex trafficking.
Have effectively rejected all arguments against broadly open immigration—even if just to historical standards. And if you don't like the part about discontinuing being a nation of immigrants . . . well then, you've rebuffed the last ~30 year’s of U.S. immigration policies.
Those who answered "no" really need to get with the majority on this—stop being a weirdo!
This is ironically sort of a government-imposed BDSM.