I recently watched a film titled How To Save Democracy which is a subject that I have been researching since 2016 when the United States was first rated as a “Flawed Democracy” by the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index.
The Film
The film spent alot of time interviewing people about the problems of our democracy.
From the Film’s web site
How To Save Democracy is an incisive and provocative documentary feature film that explores the roots of democracy, its ebbs and flows over its history in the U.S. and why it is currently struggling to continue. Its cast of interview subjects include:
- Marilynne Robinson, Pulitzer Prize winning novelist and political essayist;
- Jesse Eisinger, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and senior editor at ProPublica;
- George Monbiot, British author, journalist and environmental activist;
- David Dayen, executive editor, The American Prospect;
- David Daley, author, “Ratf**ked: Why Your Vote Doesn’t Count”;
- Les Leopold, author, “Wall Street’s War on Workers”;
- Madiba K. Dennie, author, “The Originalism Trap”;
- Michelle Shenandoah, Oneida Nation, Professor of Indigenous Law, Founder, Rematriation;
- Brianna Cea, Founder and Executive Director, Generation Vote.
The real solutions came at the end in 4 slides of steps to create a economic democracy and a political democracy in the United States. The film asserts that you cannot have a successful Political Democracy without a functioning Economic Democracy.
The Plan
Economic Democracy
- End Citizens United
- Apply existing anti-trust laws
- Return Glass-Steagall
- Ban stock buybacks
- Put strict regulations on the large banks
- Create public banks
- Universal health care
- Return the marginal tax rates to the level of the 1950s
- Free public college
- Raise minimum wage
- Enact a Windfall Profits tax
Political Democracy
- Eliminate the Electoral College
- Eliminate the Filibuster
- End Gerrymandering
- Make the Senate more proportionate or take away its power
- Increase the size of the House
- Rewrite the Constitution
- Enact the John Lewis Voting Rights Act
- Term Limits on the Supreme Court
- Ranked Choice voting
- Create multi-member House districts
- Create a participatory and deliberative democracy
This plan seems a reasonable platform for saving our democracy. I plan on investigating each of the steps in detail in the future.
