The platform
How I'd fix the things that are broken: government, the law, healthcare, defense, education and taxes. Every idea traces back to a value, and every one is open source. Take any of it and use it.
A living document. I keep adding to it, and I change my mind when someone shows me a better answer.
How to read this
1
What's wrong?
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2
What's the root cause?
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3
What's the fix?
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4
Which value drives it?
The map so far
If I were in charge
Government and the law
Healthcare
Education
Defense and foreign policy
The economy and taxes
Money and financial literacy · coming
Energy and the environment · coming
Technology and AI · coming
Community and family · coming
Government and the law
Most of what's broken in Washington comes back to the same root cause: power and money pile up in the same few hands, and they stay there. These fixes break up the pile.
$100
Cap on what any one person can give to politics, about what most Americans can afford
$0
Political spending allowed from corporations, unions and super PACs
~10 yrs
Total time anyone serves in elected office, about 4 to 5 years per position
10–20 yrs
Wait before an ex-official can lobby
Value: justice
Voters should pick their politicians, not the other way around. Drawing district lines to lock in one party's power ends.
Root cause: the people who benefit from the map are the ones drawing it.
Value: freedom
Cap individual donations at about $100 a person. Ban political spending by corporations, unions and super PACs. Win on ideas, not on who has the biggest megaphone.
But isn't money speech? We tried that, and it does more harm than good. Concentrated money drowns out everyone else's freedom to be heard.
Value: integrity
Citizens, company and association staff, even people using AI tools: anyone can tell lawmakers how a policy affects their people. The professional lobbying industry, firms paid to trade on connections, gets treated as the corruption it is.
Root cause: access is for sale, and ex-officials are the ones selling it. They wait 10 to 20 years before they can lobby.
Value: leadership and accountability
About 4 to 5 years in any one position and about 10 years total in government. Then back to private life, living under the laws you made.
Root cause: the longer power sits still, the more it builds up and the harder it is to check.
Value: integrity
Officials earn around their constituents' median salary, on a GS-style scale with cost-of-living adjustments. No bonuses, no kickbacks.
Root cause: when leaders live a different life from their voters, they stop seeing their voters' problems.
Value: freedom and order
Career staff hold the long-term expertise. Elected officials hold power only briefly, so it can't build up. And we make public service honored again, the way the military earned back respect after Vietnam.
Root cause: we've mixed up expertise, which should last, with power, which shouldn't.
The test for what government should run
“Anything where someone's life can be held hostage for money or power can't be left to the market.”
Justice system
Military
Healthcare
Taxation
Education, with nonprofits
Everything else, the market does better. And government itself needs strong checks, on its power and on its spending.
Healthcare
A public base system, in the style of TRICARE, the VA or the NHS, that covers about 90% of what people need. Private care stays legal, but it should never be necessary. My own experience with TRICARE and the VA was good. It can be done.
Value: love, and the hostage test
Who covers what
Public base system, ~90%
Private
1 month
Guaranteed maximum wait to see a specialist
1 hour
Guaranteed maximum wait to be seen in the emergency department
Measured
Quality judged by actual health outcomes, published for everyone to see
Root cause: when your life depends on care you can't afford, you'll pay anything. A market can't be fair when one side's life is on the line.
Education
A blend of government and nonprofit academia. Public funding makes it open to everyone. Nonprofit institutions keep it independent and keep the quality high.
Value: work outward, and fairness
Government
+
Nonprofit academia
=
Great schools for everyone
Defense and foreign policy
I served. I believe in a strong defense. But we spend more than the next six countries combined, and a lot of that money buys overpriced contracts, not safety. Cut defense spending in half and put the savings into peace.
Military spending, 2025
United States
$954B
Next 6 countries combined
$905B
Source: SIPRI 2025 data, via Peter G. Peterson Foundation.
Defense's share of federal spending, FY2025
Of all federal spending
~13%
Of discretionary spending
~47%
Source: CBO. $893B in defense outlays out of $7.0T total and $1.9T discretionary.
½
Defense spending, cut in half
→
5×
Peace Corps: food, safety, clean water, schools and houses of worship
1
Stop overpaying big contractors. Put research and development through smaller, nimbler companies.
2
A lean active force for rapid deployment and special operations. Most of the standing army trains a strong National Guard and reserve.
3
Keep R&D and prototypes current, keep real deterrents, be able to ramp up production fast, and invest in robotics.
4
Verifiable arms reduction deals, especially between the US and China, modeled on the nuclear treaties.
The economy and taxes
Pay for what we actually need, and do it fairly. Taxes should be heavily progressive, cover income, wealth and consumption, and reward building something over inheriting something.
Income tax: how the rates climb
0%
Under ~$75–80k per person
15%
First bracket above that
…
Three or four brackets in between
~90%
Earned income over $10M
No income tax, and no capital gains tax, below about $75,000 to $80,000 per person or $150,000 per couple.
FICA, paid by employer and employee each
Today: 7.65%
My plan: ~12%
Together with the defense savings, this funds public healthcare and Social Security.
Taxed like a paycheck
Passive capital gains, dividends and interest are taxed as ordinary income. Money made by money shouldn't get a better deal than money made by work.
10–20%
Gains from a business you actually built get a low 10–20% rate. Reward the people who create something, not the people who inherit it.
A one-time levy to pay down debt and fund opportunity and infrastructure, then a smaller ongoing tax later, plus an estate tax. Nobody under $25 million pays a cent of it.
Net worth
One-time levy
Ongoing (later)
$25M–$100M
2%
1%
$100M–$400M
4%
2%
$400M–$1B
6%
3%
Over $1B
10%
5%
Rough estimates, being checked: about $1.3 trillion from the one-time levy, and about $400–500 billion a year from the ongoing tax after avoidance. I'm building a full budget model with cited data to test these.
Value: love, and the age of AI
As AI and automation replace more work, everyone needs a floor. It works as stimulus too, because people spend it, and public healthcare frees up even more household money to spend.
Honest open questions
A platform that claims to have every answer isn't being honest. Here's where the math doesn't close yet. These are the next problems to work on.
1
The one-time levy, about $1.3 trillion, would put a dent in a national debt of more than $35 trillion. It's a start, not a payoff.
2
$3,000 a month for every adult would cost about $9 trillion a year, more than the whole federal budget. The ongoing wealth tax alone covers about $150 a month per adult. Options: phase it out as income rises, start smaller, or find more revenue.
3
Higher FICA and the defense savings get us a long way. The full cost still needs to be modeled line by line.
Coming next on the map
The courts
Federal vs. state power
Consumption taxes
A full budget model with cited data
Everything here is open source. If you can make an idea better, I want to hear it.
