Since four of the first five answers I’ve seen are so mild, let me give you what my list would include and tell me if I’m wrong or if I’m missing something:
- Imprisonment and possessions seized for all those known to have committed child sexual abuse from the Epstein files
- Imprisonment and possessions seized for all those related to Trump’s corruption schemes which are:
- Stealing oil from Venezuela
- Insider trading during the current aggressive unprovoked full-scale genocide against Iran, Lebanon and possibly all nations in the Middle East, including US all allied nations in the Middle East except for Israel.
- Cryptocoin frauds
- Imprisonment and possessions seized for all those involved in war crimes
- Designate all detractors of these demands as rape, murder, thievery, and pedophile protectors
- Establishment of an independent Commission of Inquiry to investigate allegations of ICE brutality
- Retraction of any designation for this protest made as anything other than peaceful
- Release of every political arrest made during this protest and any protest prior that are still in prison with exception of the Jan 6th Capitol storming
- Reimprisonment of every pardoned criminal during Trump’s presidency
- An amendment that abolishes the first past the post winner-takes-all system.
- Instead it should have indirect elections to prevent campaign fraud (so you only elect local leaders, who elect those above them) and an approval voting system, but if that is deemed to radical here, then at least have initial proportional representation, with a majority amount of seats shuffled towards the winning coalition in order to prevent lame duck governance.
- An amendment that guarantees all citizens, including prisoners universal basic income
- An amendment that guarantees all citizens ownership of basic housing
- An amendment that guarantees all citizens ownership a basic amount of land that can prove themselves to be Indigenous First Nations US-soil Native American
- Rewrite the 13th amendment to abolish of slavery in prisons
- An amendment that secures roaming rights by making any vagrancy and loitering law illegal
- Have the amendment above include making it illegal to restrict access to gated communities. So no walking or driving around 10-meter-high, kilometer-wide walls.
- Amendment that guarantees continuous slower traffic paths through faster traffic paths, so walkways > bike lanes > roads.
- Repeal the Patriot Act
- Universal Health Care
- Nationalize all casinos except those owned by native Americans
- End all sanctions and embargoes on other countries
Representatives pay would be capped at a salary of the average of their constituents + a stipend for DC (maybe a little above average, but not terribly). Medical would also be that.
Also, term and age limits. If 35 is the minimum, 70 for first term should be maximum!
Term limits are antidemocratic and largely unhelpful as they disincentivise long term thinking. There’s a reason Amerikkka only put them in place in 1951 after FDR.
How would a term limit or especially age limit be anti Democratic? If someone “in power” abuses that power, there’s a limit to the damage that can be done. Even more, the system of checks and balances is not working as Trump is basically doing whatever he wants.
Long term thinking would be getting out of the broken 2 party system that the media and billionaire-controlled propaganda are spewing to keep focus on division rather solutions.
Both current “parties” are corrupt-whether equally or not it’s irrelevant. The argument of minimum wages is a joke because Democrats held office for 12 of the last 18 years it hadn’t changed.
We need to not only elect independent candidates for various offices positions, we need to fight to change the law eliminating corporate overreach by funding their campaign pets who will change the laws to their donor’s benefits (like Elon and Trump)
A. Stop using big tech it shrinks their hold over there American people as all as their buying power. B. Choose independent candidates who actually fight for the people. Not “a side” you mostly align with. C. Vote vote vote as much as anyone can. D. DO NOT BRING YOUR DEVICES to any protests as their often tracked, monitored, etc.
Term limits are anti-democratic as you are removing popular choices from government.
Imagine a politician who is competent and serves the public, the public keeps re-electing them, so you … block them from serving again? To replace them with an untested politician?
Term limits also limit long-term thinking as a politician in their last term has no real accountability or incentives.
I didn’t say anything about age limits. My point was about term limits: they reduce voter choice based on an arbitrary claim that they function as some kind of harm-reduction mechanism, which is hard to take seriously given how obviously dysfunctional the American system is. Term limits do not solve elite capture, corruption, or institutional failure; they just act as another inertial mechanism that constrains democratic choice and blocks the kind of massive structural change the U.S. clearly needs. Most of your reply was a rant about broader problems I never said anything about, but none of it actually answered the point I made.
Term limits also limit positive change. They are meant to prevent change in general.
You’ve told us you think all the ideas others had aren’t good. What ideas do you think are good?
Money out of politics. We need a constitutional amendment that money is not speech, and that it’s in the interest of the people to control how much influence money can buy.
Having a domain name and access to some kind of basic text and video hosting should be considered speech. (But that doesn’t need to be in an amendment.)
Corporations should be required to serve the public interest, even if that public interest is just providing a useful good or service. It should be made clear that persuing profit in a way that’s counter to the public interest (see Fallout) is illegal. (Note that prohibition under this would become an interesting discussion.)
I’m fine with disallowing people over X age to run for office. Term limits outside of the very highest office are generally a bad idea.
Clearly we need to patch some of our biggest vulnerabilities, the pardon process, the independence of the judicial branch, and the ability of the President to wage war without congressional approval.
Gerrymandering is a problem that needs to be addressed. Perhaps proportional representation should be encouraged here.
I’m not against stopgaps in themselves. If you do not have the power to force real change, then immediate achievable demands make sense. Working people need relief, and there is nothing wrong with fighting for rent caps, wage rises, debt relief, public housing, or stronger labour rights.
What I object to is pretending those things are the solution. They are not. They are stopgaps. They can ease the pressure for a time, but they do not remove the system that produces the crisis in the first place. They do not end landlordism, finance capital, monopoly power, imperialism, or production for profit. They manage the symptoms.
Fight for reforms where they are all you can win. But understand them for what they are. Temporary measures, not emancipation. The crisis of capitalism does not have a reformist solution. Its only solution is the overthrow of the system itself.
When the system is so awful and corrupt as it is, I’m not sure it matters if you call something a solution or not (which in any case I don’t think many people think “the solution” is any one given mediocre change). What’s important is improving lives, not criticizing anything short of perfection
Improving lives is generally good. The question is whether people are clear about what they are winning.
I was replying in this very thread to someone calling higher minimum wages and taxes on the rich the solution. That is the problem. Measures like that can be worth fighting for, but they are not a solution. They are stopgaps within the same system that created the crisis.
That matters because without that understanding people mistake temporary concessions for lasting change. They win reforms, are told the problem is solved, pressure drops, and then those reforms are rolled back as soon as capital regains the initiative. We have seen that repeatedly, including in Europe where social protections were swept back once the political balance shifted.
That is not criticizing anything short of perfection. It is insisting on political clarity. Fight for every immediate gain you can win, yes. But understand that unless the system itself is broken, those gains remain limited, fragile, and easily reversible.
Representatives shouldn’t make any money at all. We don’t need poor people trying to represent us.
It’s a job, they should get paid.
They can get paid through insider trading. Why do we need to pay them an honest salary?