Comment on Why is gun violence lower in Switzerland than in the US?

• Rivalarrival@lemmy.today ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  Indeed. Systemic problems need systemic solutions.

  Home Ownership is the single largest factor affecting poverty rates. We need to drive everyone toward home ownership rather than renting. Renting should only be feasible for small-time landlords who live on one unit of a duplex, triplex, or quadplex. Apartment buildings should be converted to condominiums. Land Contracts (basically rental agreements with fixed monthly rates that automatically convert to mortgages after three years) should replace traditional rental agreements with their annual rent hikes. All that is easily achievable by offering owner-occupant credits to property taxes, then jacking up the tax rate on investment properties beyond a rate where renting could be profitable. With renting generally infeasible, landlords will be pushing tenants to become buyers instead, mostly through tenant-favoring land contracts instead of landlord-favoring rental agreements.

  We desperately need universal healthcare replacing our employer-sponsored healthcare standard, including optometry and dental coverage.

  Prison reformation: Prisoners need to earn at least minimum wage for their labor. Their spending can be restricted while in prison, and their saved wages released as a monthly or weekly allowance after their release, but their labor needs to lead to economic gains, or we are just creating recidivism.

  Universal Basic Income needs to be phased in. We can start with $20/wk for every man, woman, and child in the country, and increase it periodically.

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