maxfield

one|chapter 3:

policy positions

Here is a brief list of my current policy positions on a variety of issues. I've posted this list for several reasons, the first being to clarify my own thinking on each position. The list is, of course, subject to change at any point. I'm often confused by why some people equate a changed position with weakness, when one's entire life is often spent learning the correct answers to problems. If you have the same exact stance on every issue that you did when you were in middle school, you'd eat ice-cream sandwiches for lunch every day and have multiple pinball machines in your house. Not the best long term decisions, to be sure:

Political Orientation: I'm a interventionist Democrat who thinks the government should regulate the economic sphere and stay out of the social sphere.
Free Trade: I'm in favor of free trade, for the entire world. Too often, protectionism is accompanied by bigotry, and I feel that the workers, the world over, are equally deserving of a job and a steady paycheck. To that end, I think that although a company should be free to relocate to another country, that workers in the other country should be equally free to unionize. Promotion of free trade should be done, hand-in-hand, with promotion of environmentally sound policies and unionization of the existing worker pool. Too often, one priority or the other is placed at the front at the cost of everything else.
Pro-Choice: I'm pro-choice, because I feel that the government shouldn't have the right to legislate a woman's control over her own body.
World Affairs: As the most powerful nation in the history of civilization, I feel it is up to America to lead by example. This means that we must convince other countries to join us in worthy endeavors that are right, despite their cost. America should be looked up to by the world, rather than dismissed as a reactive, unilateral threat to global peace. Instead of boiling down missions to "strategic interests" we need to focus on the long term effects of restoring democratic, open societies to most of the world. The fight for democracy shouldn't begin and end in the halls of the Pentagon, however. We need to use the State Department, our intelligence services and the NGOs centered in Washington to all promote the values that have helped America rise to the top. This means focusing on countries that may lack the funds to interest the private sector, but are nevertheless important. Specific examples? Well, I think countries ruled by maniacal dictators need to be stopped, like Iraq, North Korea and others. Counties that are promoting democratic ideals, on the other hand, need to be given a carrot. (Iran, perhaps?) Countries that mask totalitarianism behind the veil of democracy need to be given the stick. (Pakistan, maybe?) Regardless of the country in question, one can almost always tie benefits to a state's decision to foster the growth of democratic ideals. Too many times have we let countries of little worth slide into civil war by declaring their problems to be local, rather than global. But in this day and age, all problems are global. Until every country is at peace and respects human rights for all individuals, the United States cannot rest. It is our duty.
Taxation: I don't like the idea of taxing goods and services already purchased. I also feel the tax system should be smoothly progressive. To this end, I feel that all property taxes, payroll and sales taxes should be abolished and replaced with an increase in the existing income tax system. This would not only create a fairer system, but it would eliminate the multitude of tax overlaps that plague our current system. If people were taxed only twice, once for federal income taxes, and twice for state income taxes, it would be easier to see where tax dollars were being spent. Regrading the current progressive tax rate system to be a smooth curve rather than a series of steps would also increase revenue while preventing costly tax shelters from allowing individuals to manipulate the system in order to stay in a certain bracket. By eliminating property taxes on a state level, education monies could be more smoothly dispersed to those communities that need it most. Combined with the elimination of the sales tax, it also wouldn't penalize those individuals who went through a rough financial patch. If you earned less during a particular month, you'd be taxed less on those earnings, and wouldn't have to continue to pay high property taxes on your house or sales taxes on the food you consumed. Once you got back on your feet, your income would increase and your tax burden would increase as well. While I recognize that this could produce a dangerous cycle of falling revenues when times were tough, I think in the long run it would force budget planners to make more realistic revenue assumptions and build in proper rainy-day accounts into all projects.