u/Person_thatlikes-TOH

As someone who is about to turn 18 (tomorrow), I’m gonna have to start paying taxes, and be responsible for voting, and be more financially independent. So economical systems have been on my mind. I live in America, and my way of being patriotic is by doing my best to make the country I live in a better place for not only myself, but the generations after me.

I think the problem when people are trying to figure out an economical system is that people feel like they have to choose just one, and the whole one. 

I feel like things could be solved way easier if we picked the best parts of all sorts of things and stitched them together into.

For example; Taxes. Nobody likes taxes, but they’re necessary in order to keep things going. But the people paying taxes should have the right to choose what their taxes go into. 

Libertarianism has that down, as an *idea*, but it only works if 100% of the community is not being lazy, and has the interest of other people in their hearts when making these choices. A good example of this is an audiobook I’ve been listening to. “The Libertarian Bear”. 

We can fix that part by making taxes mandatory, but making sure the people have the choice of what they’re paying for. To do this, we could put in a system where they decide what their taxes pay for by deciding what they’re doing with their money. 

-The sales tax on gas goes towards paying for roads. If you don’t think roads are necessary, then just don’t drive a car. If you’re driving a car, you’re helping pay to build the roads that you drive on. 

-School fees (which are a little higher, but affordable for the general public, anyone who is unable to pay school fees for their child can still enroll their child into school, they just have to prove that they are not able to pay them) go towards providing the children with basic learning resources like textbooks, pencils, pens, erasers, backpacks, uniforms, etc. They also go towards maintaining the school, paying the teachers, feeding the kids a balanced and healthy lunch (not the prison food shit we get served in public schools in America), etc.

-Having kids. Benefits for having kids still exist, and should exist. (I’m still on the fence about if birth rates are actually low enough to become a threat, or if it’s propaganda spread by sexists and shit, because it looks to me more like we have a problem with too many people and not enough money and jobs and homes and food) But, you’d get higher benefits if you **adopt** kids instead, or first. Because there are so many children that don’t even have homes, children that are already alive. Money spent on paying adoption fees and such goes towards schools, as well as playgrounds and paying crossings guards, and funding childcare and protection services. So if you don’t have a kid, you won’t have to send em to school, and you won’t be paying for the education and facilities for kids that aren’t yours. But I mean, you *should* want to help any kid, yours or not. So There would be a lot of charity events, things that encourage people to spend a little bit of money to make their neighborhood a safer place for the littles. Adding onto this, the cost of things necessary to raise and care for a child should be reduced significantly from what they are. It’s ridiculous, nobody should be needing to spend that much money for baby formula or baby food, dear lord.

-Buying fresh fruits and veg, local produce. The sales tax on that specifically goes towards upkeep of the farmland and things related to it. If you think the farms aren’t important, then don’t buy produce. Sales tax on meat and animal products go towards upkeep of livestock and paying the people who make the food available. So, if you’re not buying animal products, you’re not paying for the products to be produced.

-Property taxes. Paying property taxes, owning a house or apartment, homesteading, etc. goes towards building more homes, paying the salaries of the fire department, and basic law enforcement. As well as maintaining a balance between city growth and protecting the environment around it. Like old growth forests. If you don’t think having a fire department is important, I dunno man, live in your car or something.

-Speaking of law enforcement, the punishment for abusing authority is higher than it is (where I am) if someone pulls strings to get a judge to give an improper ruling, then both that judge, and the string-puller, are punished. Either by fines, or jail time. Any judge that rules innocent for someone who obviously did a horrible thing to a child is immediately investigated and their hard drive is searched, because only a child predator would protect a child predator.

- A zero waste policy. Restaurants, buffets, and food businesses often make an excess of food, and throw a ton of it away at the end of the day. Since they’re throwing it away, they wouldn’t be making money from it anyways. So, extra food that is made and not sold by the end of the day, and that would have been thrown out, goes to the less fortunate, because people who are starving won’t care if a donut is a little bit stale. This does not mean that lower quality or ruined foods are given to the people who need it, and any buisness found guilty of doing so would be fined. Any food that can’t be sold, but can be donated, should be. Food pantries and all that. Adding onto this, factory farming would be illegal. With produce like fruits and veg, maximizing output and minimizing space should be a priority. But farming animals should mean they’re given the right amount of space to thrive and produce more product, because a pasture-raised, well-fed and happy cow probably tastes better than a VR-raised and bare-minimum-fed cow in a cage they can’t move in.

-Of course more money is put into environmental safety and conservation. Paying your water bill pays both for the company to upkeep the pipes and allat, but also goes into keeping up-to-date on the most energy-efficient ways of treating sewage and keeping the natural water pollution-free (or minimized at least) Paying the electric and heating bill does what it regularly does, but also funds research into more clean power sources, like geothermal power like Iceland, hydroelectric, and nuclear power. Yes, believe it or not, nuclear power is much safer than the media has led people to believe. In fact, there was an entire smear campaign against it done by big oil companies, in the 50’s I think. Most meltdowns (that I know of) were as a result of poor management (3 mile island) or a previous natural disaster (fukushima).

-Socialized healthcare. Healthcare should not be so expensive that insurance companies even need to exist. It was insurance companies in the first place that lobbied for healthcare to become more and more costly. And on the topic of insurance, it should be illegal for insurance companies to deny coverage based on nonsensical arbitrary rulings by people who don’t have a medical license. They cannot say shit like “well you haven’t had a seizure in a while so we’re gonna stop covering your expensive anti-convulsants”. Going back to healthcare itself, lifesaving drugs like epinephrin or insulin or narcan should be freely available, and at the very least, very affordable. People who don’t need insulin shots aren’t going to just take insulin, because having too much insulin can also be dangerous, and as far as I’m aware, insulin can not get you high. Life saving and emergency surgeries like appendectomies, organ transplant, blood transfusions, cancer treatments, anything involving damage to important bodily structures, should be far more affordable, and if the patient is unable to afford it, and they can prove that they are unable to afford it, then the cost is reduced significantly. Reproductive care should also be very affordable, and should be invested and studied equally between the sexes (the three biological sexes, mind you sex is different from gender. Trans affirming healthcare after a transition is included in this). Surgeries that are not necessary to save a life, or immediately deal with a serious illness, would cost a little more. Like a surgery I had when I was ten, my life was not in danger, but the surgery would improve my quality of life if done. It’s called a bilateral femoral de-rotational osteotomy. Cosmetic surgeries for trauma patients (burn victims, massive facial scars, missing parts of the nose or ears and all that, any massive and obvious damage that makes the individual unable to carry on with daily life without feeling like they’re supposed to hide) would be more expensive than the previous kinds, but still more affordable than it is (at least where I am). Cosmetic surgery like botox, lip filler, BBL, breast implants, hair removal, tanning, etc. Would cost more, but definitely not more than they cost right now (again, applied to where I am at least). Dental care and ocular care should be included under the same category as medical care, because your teeth and your eyes are still a goddamn part of your body. The money that you’re paying for healthcare goes towards the upkeep of hospitals, paying the staff, and providing essential care for those who are unable to afford it.

-Last additional things that I want to mention but haven’t completely formulated. Government is not allowed to fund terrorists, I can’t believe I even have to say it, but here we are. Also not starting ears over petty shit. We’re at the point where we do not need to seize land with combat, so we oughta stop doing that. Corruption is more heavily punished, idk how we’d enforce that, but it oughta chance soon cause I’m real tired of the moldy tangerine that’s in charge where I have to live. Sex crimes have harsher punishments, I will not be taking any debate on this one. People who have been convicted of tax evasion, (i’m not talking about someone who fudged the numbers a little bit, i’m talking about big corporations) do not get to be in the government. Why should our taxes go to you if you wouldn’t bother paying taxes when you were supposed to? After someone in the government’s term has ended, a poll is held to determine whether or not the people think they did a good enough job to be allowed to run again the next time. Lobbying (at least in the context of lobbying votes and government shit) would be illegal. I don’t understand why it’s legal in the first place, because as far as I’m aware, it’s rich people paying politicians money to do certain things, and that seems to go against one of those really important rules that says you can’t pay people to vote a certain way, idk.

That’s all I can think of at the moment, and it already took me a few hours to draft this up, but I think it’s a good start, and if we work together, maybe we could actually make a meaningful change in our world. Please add on any suggestions, I’d love to hear what you think might help. Any genuine solutions to problems you face in daily life, or that affect the country you live in, are welcome. And please, be respectful. This is here so we all can actually have an intelligent discussion.

And, remember, the point here is to at least *come up with ideas* about the ideal system to live in. Even if it seems like it’s not feasible due to the current state, at least share something. It could do more than you think.

EDIT: Yes, these things might make taxes higher, but we would also tax the rich 70% (could go higher for sure, but yk) and work to make minimum wage the same as living wage. And make it so that a house cannot be owned unless the person owning said house is actually living in it for at *least* half the year. So yes, people can have vacation homes and rent them out, but they can’t rack up the price like crazy. Also landlords have a basic list of things they’re required to do, no more of those ridiculous landlord dictators

It started when I watched FMA-B for the first time, I loved it so much that I had to rewatch it. But, rewatching it in english again was getting repetitive. So I rewatched it in Japanese with english subtitles/captions(?). When I watch anime in english I turn off the subtitles cause it gets my goat when the words on the screen don’t match up with the words I’m hearing. I’ve done this with every other anime I watch ever since. I’m currently rewatching it for the second time in Japanese, and I’m already almost finished. I’ve actually started picking up a little Japanese because of it! I like the way the language sounds.

Also, since it’s just the way I am, I decided to put some OCs in there and turn it into an AU, cause fuck it, I do what I want.

That’s it. I just wanted to yap.

I’m so fucking done with this subreddit actually. It was supposed to be a better place for teenagers to feel safe existing, but instead, there are predators lurking, bigots being allowed to spread their hatred, and fucking morons saying shit like “ur an extremist and ableist bc you say rapists r bad ppl and that you dont feel safe around ppl who defend them” ARE YOU KIDDING ME? Of course I hate rapists, anyone with a BRAIN does! Of course I don’t feel safe around people who defend rapists, they’re probably gonna do the same thing because apparently it’s all fine and dandy to them for a rapist to be allowed out in the general public where they will undoubtedly do it again, because that’s how they work!

It’s become a hub for transphobia, homophobia, and predators. Ya’ll better fix this shit quick so that the teens who remain here can feel safe in the space that claims to be specifically for them. Cause I certainly haven’t felt safe, I’ve had several predatory DMs sent to me, I’ve been sent rape threats, and I‘ve seen the people who did it posting here again later, so I absolutely know that nothing was done about. I don’t remember the usernames of the ones who did it, it’s probably my brain blocking out that traumatic moment, which I wish it would do to the thing that caused my PTSD in the first place. Moderators here may as well be useless AIs like on other social media sites that don’t do shit about Nazis and predetors on insta but ban me because my thumbs-up in front of a picture of food was mis-identified by an AI as NSFW, (idk if that’s what happened for sure, but that’s the only thing I can think of that might have possibly been the reason cause I barely posted there, and I only posted stuff that I’d be comfortable showing to my mormon grandma. The only other possible thing I could think of is me commenting on my own girlfriend’s post about a drawing collab we did, and her saying her art is shit compared to mine, and me saying “no babe yours looks great I promise”) and because I hadn’t even opened instagram in two months, I wasn’t able to figure out what to do.

I’d be leaving soon anyways because my 18th birthday is coming up and I feel like I just wouldn’t belong anymore, because although I’d still be a teenager, I’d be an adult, and this subreddit is *supposedly* mostly minors, and I don’t want to be a hypocrite when I say I think it’s weird that adults are lurking around on a subreddit specifically for teens. Idk I’m just really mad, and it’s making my Fibromyalgia flareup. Remember, you have no obligation to stay here if you feel unsafe. This place is falling apart and I’m getting out before the ceiling collapses and crushes me.