The Big Ideas Project

Merged Idea

Stop taxing Social Security benefits! This requirement was not initially intended. Rather, it was added and later expanded to keep Social Security solvent! It amounts to paying part of your monthly benefit! The solution should be kept solvent by either raising or removing the cap on the amount income which is taxed during a persons working years!

Submitted by Bob M. from OH in Economy & Jobs Dec. 9, 2014, 10:36 p.m.

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#114

1963 votes

Merged Idea

Radical revision of nafta and block tpp. We need trade policies! We need to stop paying manufacturers to offshore!

Submitted by Todd C. from OR in Economy & Jobs Nov. 9, 2014, 12:24 p.m.

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#117

1907 votes

Put CEOs of corporations that engage in wage theft in jail.

Submitted by Steve Silberstein, Executive Producer of Inequality for All in Economy & Jobs Dec. 10, 2014, 1:28 a.m.

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#119

1873 votes

Stop Corporate Socialism. Require all businesses of 100 employees or more to pay for the public assistance and income tax credits their employees are forced to use because of a non-living wage. Walmart and other large corporations make tens of billions profit each year while the communities their stores are located in are forced to support their imployees with public assistance.

Submitted by Robert E. Sojka in Economy & Jobs Dec. 10, 2014, 2:37 p.m. 3

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#121

1847 votes

Merged Idea

Remove the federal prohibition on cannabis -marijuana and cannabis-hemp. Colorado and Washington State have created thousands of jobs and generated millions in personal income as well as tax revenue. Crime has dropped as legalization pulls the rug out from criminal bankers as well as gangs. Cannabis-hemp has thousands of industrial applications to further expand personal revenue as well as industrial enterprise.

Submitted by Al T. from IA in Economy & Jobs Dec. 30, 2014, 11:32 a.m.

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#125

1812 votes

Prohibit companies with more than 100 employees who pay less than a living wage from accepting public benefits. It shouldn't be possible for a company to pay its' employees so badly that they wind up needing WIC and food stamps, then turn around and make money accepting those benefits. It's wrong and a major expense to the taxpayer.

Submitted by Janalyn Glover in Economy & Jobs Nov. 11, 2014, 6:09 p.m.

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#126

1803 votes

Scrap the failed F-35 fighter jet, and use the $1.5 Trillion... yes, trillion dollar budget to completely rebuild and modernize our infrastructure from the ground up, rebuilding our roads, freeways, bridges, rail systems, power grids, air traffic systems, and utilities. This would not only bring our infrastructure into the 21st century, it would directly create millions of jobs, and indirectly create hundreds of thousands of support jobs for small businesses. What's not to like?

Submitted by Geoff H. from WA in Economy & Jobs Jan. 3, 2015, 7:08 p.m.

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#141

1631 votes

Re-Patriate all the money stashed in tax-free, off-shore accounts by declaring it illegal to hold U.S. Dollars in tax sheltered accounts. This can be accomplished by international declaratory statements and presumed wealth as to amount being held.

Submitted by captmike in Economy & Jobs Jan. 4, 2015, 5:44 p.m.

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#145

1572 votes

Putting a lid on CEO pay by empowering shareholders. In the last 3 decades, CEO pay has exploded. A simple way to change incentives is to have directors forfeit their own pay by giving shareholders a “say on pay” vote. This would create a real incentive to rein in CEO pay, which will help to contain pay at the top throughout both the corporate and non-profit sector. The best part is that this can be done by legislation, or shareholders can pressure corporations to adopt this rule on their own.

Submitted by Dean Baker, Co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Economy & Jobs Dec. 10, 2014, 1:34 a.m.

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#154

1497 votes

Repealing these Right to Work Laws that do more to protect Corporations and CEO’s than their employees or their customers and consumers.

Submitted by Roger M. from NY in Economy & Jobs Dec. 30, 2014, 3:41 p.m.

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#156

1478 votes

Do not allow companies to force part-time (or full-time) employees to become independent contractors so that the companies no longer have to offer benefits. Do not allow schools to have "adjunct" instructors when there are enough classes to hire a full-time instructor. Companies and schools are using more and more people as employees but denying them employee status. When forced to accept independent contractor status, I lost a lot of the rights and protections that are given to employees.

Submitted by L.M> in Economy & Jobs Jan. 8, 2015, 3:06 a.m.

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#158

1466 votes

End corporate stock buybacks. One of the major causes of income inequality and wage stagnation is the growing corporate use of stock buybacks to drive up stock prices which is one of the major factors in computing executive compensation. Statistics show that companies making up the S&P 500 index from 2003 to 2012 used 54% of their earnings to buy back their stock. Dividends use an additional 37% of earnings. That leaves only 9% to pay for new plants and equipment, R&D, and raises for employees.

Submitted by Former U.S. Sen. Ted Kaufman (Del.) in Economy & Jobs Dec. 10, 2014, 2 a.m. 2

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#160

1448 votes

Repeal employers' rights to slash pensions for retirees that found its way into the $1.1T Spending Bill to fund the gov’t through 2015.

Submitted by Roger M. from NY in Economy & Jobs Dec. 30, 2014, 2:57 p.m. 1

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#168

1386 votes

Cut Defense Spending by $500B that Panetta found as waste in the Pentagon

Submitted by Roger M. from NY in Economy & Jobs Dec. 30, 2014, 2:53 p.m.

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#173

1366 votes

Minimum wage automatically increases with inflation to offset inflation. Everyone starting at minimum gets mandatory raises after working a specific amount of months or years, and these are also adjusted for inflation. Big corporations are using performance to deny pay even when the workers performance is satisfactory; most hourly workers will not keep their jobs unless their performance is much better than "ok".

Submitted by Daniel S. from CA in Economy & Jobs Jan. 12, 2015, 3:24 p.m.

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#186

1311 votes

"NAFTA-style" trade deals have sent jobs out of the country, cut wages and increased our trade deficit, which drains our economy. We should renegotiate these trade deals. Make it a trade violation to threaten to move a job out of the country. Require a minimum wage with trading partners. Require some level of balance in trade with our partners so they buy from us as much as we buy from them.

Submitted by Dave J. in Economy & Jobs Dec. 30, 2014, 3:26 p.m. 1

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#194

1240 votes

The government should reinstate/strengthen the made in America purchasing rule for items purchased for the government. This rule has been ignored for too long and would do much to stimulate American production. The U.S. government buying non american produced products should be rare and not the norm.

Submitted by Charles Soper in Economy & Jobs Nov. 16, 2014, 5:52 p.m.

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#200

1195 votes

Reinstate Chapter 11 for the common man. That the minimum (!) amount to qualify for filing is $1,030,000 is absurd. If banks knew that mortgagees could file, there would be no "Liar Loans," and a lot more manageable derivative market.

Submitted by Dave C. from WI in Economy & Jobs Nov. 11, 2014, 12:09 p.m.

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#202

1187 votes

An enforceable federal right to organize.

Submitted by Todd Andrew in Economy & Jobs Nov. 11, 2014, 3:54 p.m.

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#207

1175 votes

Get rid of the right to work laws in some states that employers use against their employees, like mandatory overtime or cutting employees hours to part time so they won't have to give benefits.

Submitted by Mark Weisser in Economy & Jobs Dec. 29, 2014, 9:25 p.m.

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#220

1117 votes

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