Editing Social Enlightenment Thought (section)

== Self-Insert Agenda ==
(Note: SocLite is both a big-tent coalition and also supportive of decentralized governance. As a result, these policies are intended to be non-universal.)

=== Endorsed Economic Policies ===
(General concepts)
*"Trickle-up economics"
*Public healthcare option (additional to private)
*Food stamps/EBT/SNAP
*Higher social service funding
*Higher development of transitional homeless shelters (particularly in urban areas)
*Investment in affordable manufactured housing supply
*Zoning law reform
*Tax revenue re-allocated towards land value tax, corporate green tax, low-rate value-added tax (on nonessential goods), and progressive income tax (though abandoning the current logarithmic curve, favoring one more linear or sigmoidal), expanded on in below section
*A "social fiscal-conservative" budget (moderating expenditures to allocate towards welfare services, in addition to progressive taxation)
*Human resources as worker advocacy
*Labor union protection
*Promotion of small businesses and the co-op business model
*Targeted regulation
**Corporate welfare suppression
**Decentivization of shareholder value and private equity investment (over worker, consumer, and long-term sustainability interests)
**Incentivization of active over passive wealth accumulation
**Strongly regulating use-cases of corporate bailouts (particularly targeting exploitation/cronyism)
**Tax avoidance suppression (diversified taxation)
*Maintaining inflation-regulating monetary policy

=== Proposed Economic Policies ===
(OP-specific)<br>
'''Progressive Tax Syncretism'''<br>
1. Split-rate land value tax, priority over property tax, conscious valuation model<br>
2. Adjusted federal income tax brackets, starting at 1% for annual salaries of $14,000 or less, 10% for salaries of $14,001–$35,000, increasing linearly (flattening out the spike from 12% to 22% for salaries over $44,725 in the US, I mean what the fuck) until ~25% @ $150,000, then leveling out at ~45% @ $575,000 and up.<br>
3. Progressive sales tax/luxury surtax (in the same vein, decreasing tax rate on low cost and essential goods, discriminately increasing at a high-end of goods, thresholds TBD).<br>
4. Increased net investment income surtax, raising the cap from 3.8% to at least 7% (thresholds TBD).

'''Work-Opportunity "Loanfare"'''<br>
5. Introduction of state-issued (no-credit, interest-free) loan-pay account cards functioning as vouchers for specific sectors of goods/services (à la EBT) to enable immediate accessibility (when need is highest and affordability is lowest). Coverage would include "employment necessities" (excluding food, which should already be covered in EBT) such as drug rehabilitation, childcare, basic housing assistance (transitional housing, group homes, rent, etc.), basic transportation (bicycles, public transport fees, gas costs), basic communication/internet (prepaid phones and cards), basic education (ACT/SAT/GED exam fees), therapy fees, and personal care costs (professional clothes, grooming, gym membership, etc.). As with other welfare programs, eligibility would be contingent on need and verifiable job application (if not already employed). Unlike other welfare programs, its loan payment would inherently demand less obstructive vetting and circumvent the existing dynamics of dependency. Furthermore, repayment may be deducted automatically from income (in the vein of income tax) to circumvent accumulating unpaid fees, though late deadlines would only prevent further withdrawals, and a percentage of loan forgiveness may be implemented in proportion to income level. As intended, this would effectively provide a mutual benefit to both parties, functioning as an investment from state (receiving higher employment rates) to worker (receiving immediate necessities). 

'''"Social-Voluntary" Charity Reform'''<br>
6. Creation of a central hub to aggregate public charity programs (along with all welfare programs, which would also become open-donation to supplement funding, providing each some of the other's advantages), standardize the donation process, and provide a platform for application so that aid can be applied for with national accessibility.<br>
7. Addition of public charity programs created for the express purpose of directly funding the social services of the donator's choice.<br>

'''Distributist Reform'''<br>
8. Incentivization of more meritable (yet under-supported) business models by reserving more corporate privileges (i.e. subsidies, grants, tax breaks, etc.) for cooperative and small businesses.<br>

'''Promotional Cooperativism'''<br>
9. Equity compensation options (alternative to ESOPs, EOTs, or flat raises at employee's discretion) to be included in employee benefits, set at a growing maximum rate based on years worked or recommendation, subsequently shifting a percentage of decision-making from investor share-holders to worker share-holders (at their discretion) based on expertise.

'''Automation Reform'''<br>
10. Requirement for corporations to disclose if the introduction of automated machinery will be supplementary with employees' positions or replacative, in the case of the latter then requiring an agreement with employees to either offer another position or provide compensation as scheduled severances to last through reasonable lengths of transition time.<br>

=== Justice ===
*Legalization of recreational marijuana (unless in case of DUI), amnesty of those incarcerated for marijuana possession and sales charges
*''Possession'' of "hard" illicit drugs treated with mandatory rehab, hard drug ''sales'' met with full penalization, maintained suppression of gang/cartel activity
*More varied spectrum of penalization in proportion to severity of crimes (lighter charges more rehabilitatory, higher-damage/higher-malice crimes more punitive), higher prison accountability to maintain proportionality of penalization
*Facilitated pathways to exoneration and compensation in cases of wrongful conviction, support of and cooperation with organizations such as the Innocence Project
*Amnesty for government whistleblowers (i.e. Snowden, Assange) within good-faith conditions (excluding cases of treason, sedition, direct aid to foreign enemy intelligence, etc.)
*More rigorous enforcement of stalking crimes (allegations met with more serious investigation and more actively treated with protective/restraining orders)
*Public support of the police force's role and fundamental existence, maintaining funding, nonetheless massively reforming for police accountability, restricting conditions for "qualified immunity", lifting protections over all errors resulting in damages, holding equal standards for self-defense (in cases of voluntary/attempted manslaughter and assault), more rigorously enforcing charges for breach of duty/omission, more rigorously enforcing charges for tampering with evidence, write-ups issued for the deactivation of body-cams, and massively bolstering the internal affairs department (with zero tolerance for corruption)
*Applying equivalent accountability measures for the CIA, FBI, DHS, ICE, etc.
*Public surveillance made passive, maintaining coverage and technology while narrowing use-cases to access (limited to sanctioned investigations), suppressing corporate data-collection and internet surveillance

=== Domestic ===
*Usage of the internet and mail to include citizen volunteers in opinion-polling/policy deliberation, as well as publishing polling data (along with charts, context notes, bias-checking, etc.), cabinet-collected research and statistics, political fact-checking, and declassified information (that is, in a central accessible hub in the vein of social media), increasing transparency and information between citizens and government
*Cultural interventions to mitigate violence-antecedent factors, including economic policies to alleviate poverty dynamics (mitigating black market demand, gang/cartel activity), cultural interventions (keeping potential meth/crack-heads on weed at most, converting current drug addicts to alternative sources of enrichment, making straight-edge cool again), school bullying interventions (higher guidance counseling intervention, mitigating antecedents to school-age domestic terrorism), sane spiritual guidance (mitigating antecedents to destructive cults), and sane political guidance (mitigating antecedents to political violence)
*Lifting bans on classifications of weapons and weapon accessories considered arbitrary, protecting castle doctrine/stand your ground laws, diminishing political power of both the ATF and NRA, continuing to rigorously background-check for firearm sales, maintaining prohibition upon violent charge or psychotic diagnosis, delegating public safety to armed security in high-risk environments
*Maximally protecting freedom of speech (up to the point of inciting violence or terrorism) and right to peaceful protest, security to protect protest (rather than deter), maintaining enforcement towards violence, vandalism, and public obstruction in protest
*Decriminalizing practice of sex-work, rigorously regulating the industry, mandating high security, regular inspection, and safe-sex standards (i.e. STD testing and contraception) to meet standards for legal approval, illegality of violations
*Maintaining education and publicly messaging against higher-risk life practices, maintaining sin tax
*Accessible nutrition facts, higher investment in health education, heart disease awareness
*Mandatory driving retests to renew drivers license, at least once every 10 years (TBD), possibly taking effect starting at age 60 (TBD)
*Maintaining support of both public and private schooling options, strongly protecting equal standards for ideological representation in public schooling (full diversity or full apoliticism outside of directly political subject matter), restricting age-inappropriate or politically motivated content in elementary-middle school
*Reforming high school curriculum, adding government/law/political science and home economics/personal finance to core curriculum, re-designating higher mathematics as elective (or alternatively adding more math alternatives such as statistics), shifting credit requirements towards from core to more electives, introducing more career-specialized elective classes
*Maintaining grants for college tuition (in place of universal free tuition), extending grants on out-of-state tuition, including grants for textbooks (potential gouge-capping TBD), hands-on facilitation of financial aid and scholarship application in high school
*Refraining from (anti-meritocratic) quota-based affirmative action policies while continuing to prohibit (also anti-meritocratic) discriminatory policies
*Maintaining protection of universal same-sex marriage rights, maintaining same-sex adoption under the same standard of qualification, eliminating discrimination (regarding gender, sex, or sexuality) in military participation under equal standard of qualification
*Maintaining gender-transition surgery for sound-mind adults, rigorous consultation for vulnerable adults to meet surgical approval, continuing to prohibit transition surgery for minors (dysphoria-centric therapy instead), leaving use of puberty-blockers to discretion of teenager-parent-doctor consultation (over minimum age thresholds), lifting bathroom bans (incoherent concept in practice regardless), leaving "trans sports issue" to discretion of sports associations (ostensibly leaving divisions based on given sex at birth)
*Decriminalizing doctor-consulted abortions within rigid guidelines, publicly messaging emotional weight of abortion (disavowing "celebratory" rhetoric, favoring "safe, legal, and rare" sentiment)
*Public support of doctor expertise and vaccination, continued penalization of child endangerment due to medical negligence, deference to parents' cost-benefit analysis for "less-essential" vaccination, higher education on the cost-benefit nature of pharmaceuticals, higher education and transparency regarding pharmaceutical process, restricting exploitative pharmaceutical practices within the industry (negligence, corner-cutting, exploitation of inelastic demand, etc.)
*Maintaining individuals' tax incentives for eco-friendly practices while limiting anti-environmental ''penalties'' (such as green tax) to higher-impact industrial plants/factories, investing in alternate energy sources (particularly nuclear) as additive to conventional energy sources, maintaining extraction of oil and gas (necessary by criteria of cost) while aiming to phase out demand long-term
*Infrastructure reform with Western European-inspired urban planning, higher accessibility to public transport and cycling lanes, expanding passenger railways and subways, supporting expansion of existing highways/interstate lanes, adhering to preservation of forestation and protected land
*Cooperating with indigenous reservations and minority communities to improve quality of life, respecting cultural solidarity while supporting (voluntary) cross-cultural exchange and national unity

=== International ===
*Common-sense border control, facilitating green-card and citizenship process, heavily reforming (funding, vetting, moderating) asylum-seeking process, opening refugee camps at national border, disavowing xenophobic rhetoric, zero-tolerance for deportations without due process, wrongful deportations (citizen deportations/green-card/visa deportations, deportations outside country of origin, "administrative errors"), deporting directly to criminal imprisonment (especially in combination with lack of due process, maintaining standards of "innocent until proven guilty"), etc., (totally @ nobody in particular haha)
*Highly discriminant fair-trade protectionism, restricting exploitation of third-world labor/sweatshops, economically sanctioning/decreasing import-reliance on specific nations that are relationally adversarial or ethically intolerable domestically, continuing to maintain mutually beneficial global free trade with allied nations, minimizing frivolous tariffs, disavowing "trade-war" theory, forced industrial regression, and autarky aspirations (totally @ nobody in particular haha)

=== War ===
*Message: Violence is an occasionally necessary evil that pacifists will argue isn't necessary and jingoists will argue isn't evil. If the aim is peace, you cannot tolerate injustice (and you certainly can't become it).
*Means: "Big Stick diplomacy"— diplomacy first backed by a present defense second (though focused on efficiency over abundance, allocation towards ABMs, MRAP vehicles, UGVs, UAVs, and high-precision drone ballistics i.e. AGM-114R-9X kinetic missile)
**Aiming for a minimum of spending over the threshold of maintaining military superiority
**Regulating the military industrial complex's influence on decision-making (basing criteria on principle over profit)
**Weighing foreign and domestic needs at all given times, lending support to allied causes based on national ability and foreign need (primarily aid as supplies, trades, loans, etc.), fully withdrawing cooperation with bad-actor nations (initiating breaches in cease-fire agreements, breaches in conduct of war), situationally moderating military ventures when national economy is in higher crisis and geopolitical climate is in lower crisis
**Maintaining counter-terrorist reconnaissance, intelligence, and special operations (favoring foreign internal defense/unconventional warfare)
**When crisis absolutely demands, maintaining kill/capture orders for hogh value targets, maintaining counter-proliferation for national threats
**Nonetheless prioritizing "soft" to "hard" intervention, maintaining humanitarian aid and endorsing liberal democracy globally (via hearts and minds), refraining from offenses of aggression, refraining from regime-change operations that may result in equal-or-worse dictatorships
**Public support to troops individually, actively improving veteran care
**Ultimately posturing the international role of America as a "quiet giant", made strong by its domestic strength first (sound in spirit), on the path to lead the world to peace (sound in heart), by way of respecting its capability (sound in body)

=== Basic ===
*<s>Abolition of pennies from US mint</s> (okay maybe Trump can do one thing right)
*Abolition of daylight savings time alternation (permanent orientation TBD by polling, permanent DST leaning)
*Inclusion of metric system conversions into standard notation