Complaining is fun, easy, and cathartic. I for one do more than my share of it.

So how about some solutions? If you were the President/Prime Minister/Guy-with-a-Burger-King-Hat, what would be on the top of your list? Forget about pragmatism. Pragmatism (or better "pragmatism") is what makes the Democrats suck, it's what makes "Labour Party" an oxymoron, it's what convinces the middle America "silent majority" that Bush's lack of brains are made up for in pretend spine.

So forget about that, just go nuts; the more specific, the better. And remember, the more defensive you are, the more ammo the crazy conservatives have for their commercials.

As for my platform...

First, outlaw or at least deter abusive global investment practices, such as the "hot money" phenomenon through which billions of dollars can be withdrawn from foreign investments literally overnight. Place an international tax on all withdrawals that occur too soon after initial investment. The countries who see these games played with their economies rely on those investments to know the limitations of their budget. Therefore, a progressive tax system should be put into place, much like stock options and retirement benefits with American's nine-to-fives: only after a certain point, when your investment has grown and matured and really let things actually use it to get a return, can you cash in at full price. Investors will be taxed harder with a combination of time and growth in the invested country, with practices amounting to gambling with exchange rates being taxed so hard that it is not only unprofitable, but threatens the business's existance. (this is much like the "Tobin Tax" talked about with European cross-country affairs).

GDP will no longer be used as an economic growth indactor. GDP grows the more we destroy our environment, the quicker we turn our resources into garbage, and the more stress placed upon workers. The only economic growth indicator that will be used in law and legislation will be something that takes into account the health of all involved, something showing people's disposable income, and something that lowers when the environment is destroyed. Costs won't be externalized onto people or ecological systems, at least not with legal arguments.

CEO salary cap. Tie it to the worker's pay. Perhaps the cap can raise if benefits are provided. I'll be nice to CEO's for transition's sake and say, how about, only 20 times the lowest paid employee. This means all workers involved in the company, whether on the official payroll or on another company's payroll that's been contracted for a job. This would prevent things like Wal-Mart denying involvement in paying unprotected immigrants something like $2.00/hr. because they contracted some other company to do.

Since Forbes-like assholes always complain about restrictions to business because it will make them simply pull out of already struggling local economies (and they have a point), corporate limitations should be made in sweeping blankets more often than in tiny pockets, unless some sort of strategic movement of industries is desired. Globally, this would manifest in a law stating that any regulations of corporate practice follow that corporation wherever they go. If you are an American CEO, you cannot revoke your own citizenship to get around this as long as your company has any form of outsourcing (it would be considered an outstanding federal tax), and therefore you are governed by the same worker's rights laws whether that worker was an American or not.

Cut suburban sprawl. The suburbs are huge drains on energy (drive distance; home utilities), political awareness (the white flight phenomenon when blacks moved into cities led to a long tradition of selfish property tax laws that consolidate, among other things, education resources), and mental health (this needs no explanation).

City planning must plan so that any resident anywhere in a city of, I dunno, over 1 million people, can get to anywhere else with public transportation or vehical-restricted pathways (pedestrian bridges, bike pathways). This would result in not only a more insulated local economy (a community in The Netherlands tore up all roads downtown and put in bike paths, and despite the business district's initial opposition, they now love the increase in business it has brought), but less in health care costs (more exercise, fewer pollutants), longer life spans, more efficient use of space (when you include the space any one car needs in a town for parking and adequate driving space, each car takes up more space than the average suburb house), and fewer vehicular deaths.

--I always thought a good idea for a city layout would be to build it in rings from the city centre with spokes coming out from it. The bus/rail routes would go along every other ring and every spoke. There would be a diversity requirement for zoning, so that you couldn't simply pack all business into a single area, you couldn't pack all unrelated industries together, etc. This would hopefully limit the occurance of packing all the ghettos next to the polluting industries, take away the annoying existance of directional rush hour patterns, because circles are the most space efficient shape, and mixing all the residential neighborhoods in with the places of employment would keep people's directions spread out, but also unconsolidated.

Any company that employs over 5% of a single city's population must pay into an insurance fund to protect workers against any abrupt decision to pull out and downsize.

%50 of all television and radio space will be taken for non-commercial, public use. %50 of that will be for country or global-focused use such as a non-lying CNN network in which the emphasis is placed on delving into single issues for an hour at a time, and a national forum that would be reserved for unrestricted political debate. The other %50 of it would be reserved for local use, and would involve local politics, a citizen action board, local art, etc.


So here's your chance to stop just complaining and solidify your views on effective societal change.

P.S., refute people if you think someone's idea is shortsighted.