Stidmatt

People have debated spending a billion dollars on extending Max to Vancouver, Washington, for decades. The problem is that the existing buses from Portland to Vancouver are faster than Max will be, because it is a streetcar. It doesn’t make sense to spend a billion dollars on a slower mode of transport when you could instead add more double-decker buses to the commute.

So then I thought, well, if light rail doesn’t make sense, why not add a commuter rail between Portland and Vancouver, Washington? If you can get there in under 30 minutes, a commuter rail option would be preferable to any other mode.

It currently takes 26 minutes on Amtrak Cascades between Portland, Oregon, and Vancouver, Washington. The main issue is that the bridge across the Columbia River is 30 mph and is an indirect route.

But this can be easily solved.

Instead of running west of the Willamette River, they use the UP Portland Subdivision. A commuter rail could easily cut out time wasted going the long way around. Run the train across the Steel Bridge and drop passengers off at Portland Union Station.

It is possible to start a 20-minute commuter rail between Vancouver, Washington, and Portland, Oregon. Most of the infrastructure already exists. It will be twice the speed of the proposed Max extension, be separated grade, and the infrastructure already exists.

Why wait, Portland and Vantucky? Start the Portland-Vancouver commuter rail today!

The main point of Schengen is not so much about boosting tourism, though it is about that and does a great job at it… It is to ensure that if any member state starts to fall to fascism, there will be minimal barriers for citizens of member states to relocate.

The ability to quickly move to another country and get employment and housing quickly with minimal red tape is the strongest defense against fascism. This is why I believe the arrangement should expand outside of Europe.

Congress can be corrupted. Courts can be stacked.

It is far more difficult to repeal the ability of your citizens to leave.

Even when a country decides to leave a single market, like the United Kingdom did with Brexit, it is not feasible for them to completely undo the progress and integration that their membership in the European Union created. The UK-EU withdrawal agreement allowed citizens in the EU to stay in the UK, and the same for Britons in the EU.

This is the reality of attempting to undo a freedom of movement agreement. It’s not possible to do it fully without causing major economic disruptions. The integration of the United Kingdom with the rest of Europe is impossible to fully undo without putting the British economy into a full collapse, which will guarantee rejoining the European Union.

I can’t stress this enough. A true Brexit, a full Brexit where the privileges of EU citizens in Britain are fully revoked, is impossible.

The timing of Schengen is a remarkable achievement in history, unlike any other. It is the largest and wealthiest free travel bloc in the world. The period after World War II saw the evolution of Europe from a collection of fighting monarchies to the largest bloc of democracies in the world. The first part was the formation of the European Coal and Steel Community in 1952. This intertwined the coal and steel markets of France and Germany to make it impossible for them to fight with each other. This was followed up by the formation of the European Economic Community and European Atomic Energy Community in 1960.

The European Community was formed in 1967, merging these three organizations into one umbrella.

In 1993 the European Union was formed by the Maastricht Treaty, bringing more treaties, TREVI and the European Political Co-operation under one umbrella.

The Schengen Area was formed in 1995, 10 years after the treaty was signed in 1985. At this point, the economies of Europe were intertwined in many different ways, and freedom of movement as a right for citizens was fully established.

From this point on, any country in the bloc falling to fascism will face a triple threat. The intertwining of their economies would make war infeasible. The decline in their economies will cause severe hardship, reducing the popularity of their government. Plus, freedom of movement will cause citizens of the state engaging in foolish policies to move to other safer states, draining the distressed state of labor.

This means that any national policy that harms the economy of any member state will hurt them politically and demographically.

Likewise, the full withdrawal from the bloc will cause severe economic hardship, as seen in the United Kingdom. Britain has been unable to fully withdraw because of the treaties allowing EU citizens who already lived and worked in the UK to stay, and vice versa. This means full Brexit has not happened. If Britain were to start to fall to fascism, the EU citizens would move back, starving the British economy of essential workers at all levels, causing the economy to shut down. Also, British citizens who live in Europe will not move back in such a situation.

So, after withdrawing from such a treaty, you will never see a full withdrawal occur.

Given what is happening in the United States, it has never been more apparent that we need the Schengen Area to expand to the United States and Canada.

If we were a member state of Schengen, you would see large numbers of Americans moving to Canada and Europe, along with Canadian and European citizens who live here, leaving the USA. No one would move to the US to fill the empty jobs, causing a severe labor shortage. This would starve America of the labor we need at all levels for our economy to survive if another president tries the same trade madness we are seeing from Trump.

We need to remove the president’s ability to unilaterally levy taxes. It was insane to give him such power in the first place. We must repeal the Trade Act of 1974, Section 122, and move the power to tax back to Congress.

Here is another good article describing the legal basis of Trump’s madness.

Businesses have already sued the administration for the sweeping tariffs, but the US Court of International Trade sided with the Trump regime, claiming a lack of standing. This is why I said that courts are not an effective deterrent against radical regimes. They can be corrupted, as I fear the USCIT has been.

Another step to prevent fascism is to make it so the President needs a majority of Americans to vote for them, and we do that by amending the Constitution and replacing the racist Electoral College with instant runoff voting.

So that’s my plan:

• Roll back presidential power to levy taxes. All taxes must be passed through Congress as our founders intended.
• The United States and Canada join the Schengen Area.
• Replace the Electoral College with Instant Runoff Voting.

This is how we defeat Trump today and prevent a future President from abusing the power of the presidency like we are seeing today.

There is talk about creating a federal Europe, where the EU would have more power than they do now. I’m not convinced this is a good idea.

The Treaty of Lisbon was the final major amendment to the Charter of the European Union. It was passed in 2007 and while it sounds like a big deal most of it is pretty boring. It restructures the legal structure of the EU into one legal person, modifies the powers of parliament and the European Council, includes a mutual protection pact, implements a citizen’s initiative, and a withdrawal procedure which allowed Brexit. All in all it is a good treaty, but honestly as laws go its one of the more boring ones out there.

There are talks about a federal Europe bringing its countries closer together. But what part of EU law will this engage? There is no need to move health care or education up to a federal level. Defense could perhaps be moved up. I can see the advantages of a unified foreign policy sometimes, but its a double edged sword. A unified defense policy as well turns into a double-edged sword. I don’t know what the advantage of a unified defense policy would bring. They already have interoperability and a mutual protection pact. What advantage would bringing defense under a single European Union command bring? This is not clear to me.

So the benefits of a federal Europe will not be seen in health care, defense, or education. These are the largest roles which governments play a part. They already have the benefits of being able to travel, live, and work between countries freely with no red tape. I think the structure of the European Union is fine how it is.

Unification is a doubled edged sword. If Europeans elected thoughtful and considerate leaders it could lift up the poorer countries in the European Union.

Likewise,  if they elected leaders with less noble ideals they could easily end up pushing down the wealthier parts of the bloc without any substantial benefit.

Unifying large amounts of countries for trade and travel almost always comes with substantial benefits. Fiscal unions however are far more complicated beasts to deal with. I do not see any benefit to unifying health care programs at such a massive scale. We find that size is obviously not a major factor. Iceland has fewer than a half million citizens, and Japan is the second largest developed democracy in the world yet they spend about the same amount on health care per capita. Education sees almost no benefit to scale.

We can compare to the United States as well to see how such a massive fiscal union across disparate regions doesn’t make a lot of sense. It becomes extremely difficult for states to implement reasonable laws such as universal health care because the federal government sucks up so much tax revenue, while the large Southern bloc of states blocks a lot of laws which would be beneficial to the country. This is while we see a clear trend that Democratic led states do significantly better than Republican led states on almost every metric.

My argument is simple. There is no benefit to large fiscal unions. It would be better to bring fiscal programs down to the state level where for democratic states would see no reduction in quality of life and actually save money by no longer funding Southern corruption. States which are worse off would then need to take on these programs and improve their procedures and no longer depend on being bailed out by wealthy democratic led states. This gets us to the same desired endpoint of fiscal union without the potential downsides of a bad government.

So I think the European Union right now has the ideal structure for such a large and diverse group of democracies. I don’t know how to improve on it. Some laws which hold back innovation perhaps, though this gets complicated. My advice to Europe is keep the system you have. It provides a large amount of benefits with few downsides.

A federal Europe however is probably a bad idea.

The United States started as a fairly loose country with a lot of power in the hands of states, but over the evolution of the country, power has become more and more concentrated in the hands of the federal government.

In a healthy democracy, ideas can be experimented with and the consequences will be felt. By feeling the consequences of decisions, countries can then reverse course when things get worse, without harming other states which did not make the harmful decisions. The damage is fairly limited, and the reversal can happen smoothly.

As power has concentrated more and more with the federal government, tax dollars have become more and more concentrated in the hands of the federal government. Two consequences of this are that there are more subsidies for lower income states. This is seen as a way to raise people out of poverty, improve schools, and many other benefits to those states. But it also creates a drain on public money from wealthier states.

This has two main effects.

• Recipient states do not see the full detrimental effects of their misguided policies because they have a constant bailout from the federal government.
• Donor states do not see the full benefits of their policies because a lot of the surplus is siphoned off to states with inferior policies.

On one hand it is easy to think that this is a good thing from a liberal point of view, since most liberal states are donor states, we have higher levels of education leading to higher incomes, and from a high-minded viewpoint we can often feel like it is just fair for us to share our surplus with the lofty ideal that every American should have access to a high quality education and high quality health care.

This would work if everyone shared our viewpoint. But the world obviously does not work that way.

For states which consistently choose to fund programs which do not bring large benefits, they get a constant bailout from the federal government. People in these states then feel like they keep paying taxes but never get ahead. The reason they never get ahead is their state continues destructive policies but they are never allowed by the federal government to fall apart because of interstate transfers. Because people often feel this way in recipient states, it is clear to me that our current model of siphoning wealth from productive to unproductive areas does not work.

It also happens at a local level as dense urban areas pay more in taxes compared to the cost of infrastructure and suburban areas typically pay less in taxes compared to the cost of maintaining their infrastructure. This phenomenon happens at every level of government.

Now, there are obviously some programs which are truly beneficial, namely health care and education. Food stamps effectively fight poverty. Universal basic income like Alaska or formerly in Canada are effective ways of fighting poverty. But often these programs go in ways which are massive federal grants for infrastructure which might not actually be reasonable, particularly highway construction, which distorts incentives.

It’s a complicated issue.

But I’m coming to the conclusion that in time we will have presidents like Donald Trump come to power. Trump won’t be the last, and this is inevitable. The South will never change.

So we must accept that as long as we remain as tight knit as we are today it is just a matter of time before Medicare is cut. It is just a matter of time before OASI is slashed. It’s a mathematical fact that if we don’t change how OASI is funded that it will run out of money within a few decades.

Regardless of how things go, it is only a matter of time before a Republican President slashes health care programs to an extreme level. There is nothing we can do to prevent this.

There is nothing we can do to protect seniors in the South long-term from these policies being harmed.

So the best thing we can do is protect those of us who live in donor states. If and when this government slashes Medicare and Medicaid, I welcome it. 46% of federal government spending goes to health care and OASI. Another 7.8% of spending goes to income security, bringing it over 50% of government spending or $3.7 trillion. If our current government slashes these programs and moves that responsibility down to the states our deficit will be covered and they can slash taxes even further. Liberal state governments can then pick up the tab. We can increase state level taxes to cover the difference and by no longer having as much money siphoned out of our states to bailout states in the South we won’t have to raise taxes as much as you think. We can implement universal health care, saving businesses more money on payroll than they are spending on private health insurance plans. Out of pocket spending by employees will drop substantially, not necessarily to 0, but it will be lower than what we have now. This will save people money and be more resilient than our current system.

There is no realistic path to implement any form of universal health care as long as the filibuster survives. It will take a lot longer to finally get the filibuster abolished than it will be to implement universal health care at the state level somewhere. Let’s take the win where we can and push for universal health care in our state capitols.

I wish we lived in a country where we could implement these common sense solutions at a national level, but the reality is that we don’t and we never will.

The federal government can move health care, social security, income security, veterans benefits, commerce and housing credit, transportation, education and more down to the state level. Cutting out 75% of federal government spending down to a budget of only $1 trillion. Half of it military, half of it paying interest on the national debt.

The gap between rich and poor states will increase, and there is nothing we can do to stop it. As right-wing states complain that their states keep falling behind the solution will always be there for them. The solution is, has always been, and always will be for them to elect a better government. Their infrastructure will fall apart, and that’s just the way it is. The federal government might take over the interstate highway system and railroads, paying for their maintenance and operations through tolls, taking that burden off of state governments, but for the rest of the operations that is up to the states. We might keep FEMA around, but insurance without conditions is rarely a good idea.

So the best step for progressive politics might actually be to have Trump slash the federal budget. End Medicare, Medicaid, OASI, federal income security, and other programs. Liberal states come in and fill the void. Conservative states languish.

After that transfer is done and conservative states see their economies failing they will need to implement these programs themselves, and we shouldn’t let them just re-implement them at the federal level.

Perhaps we should even move immigration down to the state level as well. That’s how the European Union does it and it works well. States could choose reciprocity with other states which implement work visas or choose not to. This would encourage best practices and if a state chooses detrimental policies it will minimize the damage.

Adoption of the United States dollar should be optional. If a state wants their own currency to focus on manufacturing and export-oriented development… let that be on their own grave. Just don’t take my state down with you.

Again, in an ideal world this would not be a problem. But there are enough states which vote in politicians who push for ridiculous policies at the federal level and I am tired of it. Let states be laboratories of democracy again. The scales of efficiency of having work done at the federal government only works as long as we continue to have presidents and congresses who are thinking through their policies. We clearly do not live in a country like that.

In terms of foreign aid states could choose to fund initiatives together in blocs. This would be more robust because if a state enters or leaves the arrangement it won’t be the sudden death of the program.

In summary, I think moving social programs from the federal government down to the state level will be more economical, be more resilient, and a more desirable outcome than what we are dealing with right now.

Please poke holes in my argument. I want to be wrong, but I don’t think I am.

The way for a country to move from a weak passport to a strong passport is actually quite simple.

• Crack down on corruption
• Improve your country’s human rights record
• Have a strong economy
• Visa reciprocity
• Low visa overstay rate

That’s really it. There are no other steps. With these five changes your country will almost certainly be granted visa-free status to the Schengen Area.

It’s not discrimination, it’s a matter of safety. The EU and United States cannot grant passports to countries which are not trustworthy.

Let’s say you have visa-free travel to Europe and you have a golden passport scheme which is being granted to Russian oligarchs. If your country does not crack down on corruption first and you were granted visa-free travel to the European Union you would immediately become the favorite destination for corrupt oligarchs to get a second passport. This is a national security risk.

There also is a lag between when your country democratizes and when you will start to see your passport become more powerful. This is because countries which are targets of criminals (especially the US and the EU) need to ensure the country will not regress after being granted more travel freedom.

I do not believe eVisas are necessary between low-corruption democracies no matter the cost.

The EU and the USA also want to ensure your economy is wealthy enough to reduce the likelihood of visa fraud so people will likely go back home when their visa-free period is up, and not commit tax fraud by working without paying taxes.

So for a few case studies let’s look at the Philippines. The Philippines has a very low GDP per capita and consistently has voted for right-wing oligarchs like their current president Marcos and their former president Duterte. This is despite the fact that Leni Robredo was running on an anti-corruption platform which is a time tested way to gain visa-free access to Europe.

Georgia and Ukraine saw the election of anti-corruption leaders similar to Leni Robredo in the 2000s and 2010s, leading to both countries being granted visa-free entry to the European Union. Corruption was reduced, economies improved, and democracy improved. As a result they were granted visa-free entry to the European Union.

We find the same thing in Colombia which has seen a reduction in cartel violence and corruption.

So the lesson is clear. If the Philippines wants to gain visa-free entry to the European Union they need to stop voting in right wing demagogues.

But honestly, that’s what I thought entering this thought experiment, but the reality is that citizens from the United Arab Emirates and Brunei are able to travel to the European Union visa-free.  So it sounds like it is more of an OR function as opposed to an AND function.

But this does not explain it either. There are still countries missing from European Union visa-free travel which clearly should have it, including South Africa, Cape Verde, and more.

Cape Verde does not have visa free travel to the EU because they lack visa reciprocity. Jamaica does not have full visa reciprocity with the Schengen Area.

The unfortunate reality is that visa-free access to the Schengen Area is mostly determined by region rather than any factor countries can control. If you are from Asia or Africa you can only really get visa-free waivers if your country is extremely democratic or wealthy. If you are from the Americas, you likely already have visa-free travel to the Schengen Area.

Every wealthy democratic country has visa-free travel to the Schengen Area.

So if you want visa-free travel to the Schengen Area you should improve your economy and remain democratic. This is why Filipinos need a visa to travel to the Schengen Area. Their economy has stayed weak and they continue to vote for right-wing demagogues. Reverse this trend and Filipinos will likely receive visa-free access to the Schengen Area.

I know… depressing.

Ironic ultranationalistic memes aside…

Let’s continue and be serious for the rest of this post.

Sorry for being a Millennial there.

Ukrainian officials are in Paris today discussing the Russian invasion of Ukraine. I think the following is the most reasonable path to peace.

1. France and the rest of the European Union promise to send Ukraine more aid, stabbing Trump and Putin in the back.
2. France and the rest of the European Union implement stricter sanctions on Russia, stabbing Trump and Putin in the back even further.

Ukraine can win the war this year as Russia’s economy collapses. It’s just that simple.

If you wouldn’t give Paris to Hitler, don’t give Crimea to Putin.

The next agenda for France is to get the United Kingdom to rejoin the European Union.

The first step is that the UK is trying to broker “deals” with other countries. Particularly Canada. This needs to be undermined. Macron must fly to Quebec City and Ottawa to meet with the Quebec Premier and the Canadian Prime Minister to offer a counterproposal that Canadians and Europeans should have the right to freely live and work in each other’s countries. Extend the European Economic Area and Schengen Area to Canada. This is a far better deal than anything Starmer is offering, simply because the European Union has a bigger economy, more places to go, and more job opportunities. Integrating Canada into the European Union would benefit both parties.

This leaves Starmer with no deal with Canada, as he keeps blabbering about. This one supposed “Brexit benefit” will then evaporate.

However, if the United Kingdom rejoined the European Union, it would benefit from free trade and travel with Canada and the European Union.

Macron can make this happen over the next few years.

The process of Canada integrating into the EEA should take around 4 years. The only barrier is aligning economic regulations with Europe.

With Canada in Schengen and Trump out of office, it is time for a diplomatic onslaught on the United States to moderate our extreme politics. If Russia can propagandize the United States to vote for a convicted felon like Donald Trump, then certainly the European Union can do the same to convince Americans that an open border with Canada and the European Union is not the end of the world, but actually would be beneficial to the United States.

Reducing trade barriers, aligning regulations, and enabling the freedom of movement between North America and Europe will benefit everyone. It will extend the most successful model of continental integration to show that even oceans cannot stop the process of global democratization. wordy and redundant. This will show that cooperation is more powerful than conflict. It will help moderate American politics as it will be difficult for Republicans to replace it. With a deep integration of workers moving freely across borders, there would be no easy way to undo these bonds without serious economic consequences.

Unlike the accession of former Soviet colonies to the European Union, the United States and Canada are already quite wealthy and have been democracies for over a century. Our incomes are closer to Germany than any country that was a member of the Warsaw Pact (excluding occupied East Germany). This means there wouldn’t be the same type of one-way flow of workers. This means that when designing regulations, the United States, Canada, and European Union would have increased pressure to converge to what are found to be best practices. We don’t necessarily need regulations from the European Union for many of these policies unless they are clearly for safety reasons. The best practices, by definition, give better results, and when companies and workers can freely move around, the reality will be to adopt best practices or fall behind. Workers will have the right to move to where the best practices are done. This forces countries to adopt best practices or fall behind.

Integrating the United States and Canada into the European Economic Area will be a tide that lifts all boats. It is likely the best plan for the United States to implement universal health care. It is the best way for Europe to increase its productivity to match that of the United States, which has slipped since the austerity crisis. The pressure of the market will force the European Union to adopt best practices regarding tech, just as it will force the United States to adopt best practices regarding health care.

There is no reason Australia, Chile, Japan, New Zealand, and South Korea could not be the next countries to join.

But let’s start with the United States and Canada, which have the longest shared border in the world, starting with Canada.

This is a rosy future. But it is in reach. This is the best way to counter Russia’s influence. It is the best way to show a clear path towards a prosperous economy for countries moving along the path to democracy. It will counter authoritarians by extending systems which are very difficult to unravel.

Let’s make it happen. Bring Canada into the European Economic Area.

King Charles has extended a potential offer of Commonwealth of Nations membership to the United States.

I oppose it for many reasons.

Limited benefits

What exactly is the Commonwealth of Nations? It’s a loose forum of former British colonies and the United Kingdom.

There are no travel benefits to being a member of the Commonwealth of Nations. Everyone except Americans needs a visa to travel to Canada; Australians and Kiwis are the only nationalities that do not need a visa to travel to Australia and New Zealand. It is not an open border treaty or even a visa-free travel zone. There is no travel benefit to commonwealth membership.

It is not a free trade area.

Commonwealth citizens who live in the United Kingdom can vote in British elections and in a few other countries.

A few commonwealth nations offer preferential citizenship acquisition.

If we don’t have an embassy in a country but the British do, we could then use the British embassy. This is not an issue for Americans since we have relations with almost every country on Earth.

So, unless you are actively traveling in a country where the US does not have an embassy and the UK does, or if you live in a country that allows other Commonwealth citizens to vote, you likely will see no benefit from Commonwealth membership.

Optics

Keir Starmer has supported Brexit from the beginning. Over the last decade, it has become clear that the lauded “Brexit benefits” Labour and the Tories were going on about have never transpired. Instead, like every other third country, the United Kingdom now has tariffs with the European Union. They have lost the ability to travel freely around the European Union and the Schengen Area. It is no longer possible for a British citizen to live in Greece or Spain without bureaucratic paperwork.

I hope you enjoy cold rain if you supported Brexit!

Starmer, UKIP, and the Tories are grasping for some big story to make Brexit “worth it,” and they are failing. Staying out of the European Union has not led in the polls since 2023, and that one poll was a fluke. The last time staying out of the European Union consistently got 50% of the respondents in a poll was in 2022, and as time goes on, the trend is clear. Rejoining has a consistent 10-point gap in the polls. If the United Kingdom had a vote to rejoin the European Union today, it would vote in favor.

Brexit is a scam.

So Starmer is trying yet again to prove that he can “make a deal” just like his buddy Donald Trump. The King is breaking tradition now and stepping into British politics by offering Trump membership in the Commonwealth. This is a distraction meant to demonstrate some sort of “Brexit benefit” in order to push down support for rejoining the European Union. It’s utterly unacceptable.

Nothing precludes the United States from joining the Commonwealth of Nations even once the United Kingdom rejoins the European Union.

While Trump is creating trade wars with every commonwealth member, this is a reward for his unacceptable behavior. It strengthens Trump in a meaningless way by giving him a “victory” in a “deal” which is the only thing he cares about. It teaches a lesson that you will be rewarded if you bully the United Kingdom. This is the wrong message and will weaken Britain substantially.

Not only that, but the Trump Administration is pressuring Starmer to repeal hate speech laws that protect LGBT people in exchange for a “deal”.

It also looks like Keir Starmer agrees with Trump on LGBT rights.

It benefits all the wrong people. This “deal” is a bludgeon by the Trump administration to force the United Kingdom further away from the European Union, to make rejoining more difficult. They are pushing laws that will harm British citizens. The laws being pushed by Labour push Britain closer to Russia and further from the European Union.

If you are English or Welsh, I implore you to vote for the Liberal Democrats and protect your democracy.

A realistic proposal

I support deepening America’s ties with other countries in meaningful ways, and the Commonwealth of Nations is just not that meaningful.

Here is a chronological list of ways to meaningfully improve the foreign relations of Canada, the European Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

1.  Australia, Canada, the European Union, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States should drop eVisa/ETA requirements for each other. Go back to visa-free travel. The way to get to this is to drop the obsession with visa reciprocity and do the right thing. Perhaps implement extra screening for high-profile figures and politicians if visas are in place. I would love to see Donald Trump and Keir Starmer receive pat-downs at customs until they drop their nonsense!
2. The United Kingdom needs to rejoin the European Union or at least the European Economic Area and the Schengen Area.
3. The United States and Canada should implement an open border treaty.
4. The United States and Canada should join the European Economic Area and the Schengen Area.

Then maybe the United States will join the Commonwealth of Nations, but no one will care.

This is an actual plan that will accomplish my goals:

• Weaken Putin. The United Kingdom’s rejoining the European Union will harm Russian money laundering in London.
• Improve trade in ways that create jobs.
• Improve the relationship between North America and Europe.
• Free flow of labor between the United States, Canada, and the European Union. This improves the economy for everyone involved.
• Free movement of people seriously weakens authoritarians like Trump.
• Save money on the United States/Canada border. Lay off customs agents at our border, we don’t need them. Let’s save taxpayers money by cutting out wasteful spending, instead of this DOGE shit.
• Implement eGates at airports, saving taxpayer money by laying off unnecessary customs agents, not this DOGE shit.

These policies will actually improve the lives of American citizens instead of meaningless optics.

News Stories

https://www.newsweek.com/us-joining-king-charles-commonwealth-2049916

https://www.thesun.co.uk/royals/33954809/charles-trump-secret-offer-kier/

• Adopt best practices so your citizens stay and you attract young talent to boost your economy.
• Do not adopt best practices and do the opposite. Your best and brightest will leave, your budget will be harmed, you will not attract high-skilled foreigners, and you will become a pariah state.
• Leave the European Union. This will create tariffs and many other trade barriers with the largest economy in the world. You become less attractive for foreign skilled workers, who would rather go somewhere in the bloc. Importing and exporting become more complex, as we saw with Brexit.

Through the power of trade alone, the European Union ensures best practices.

It sounds good to liberal minded people like me that we should send aid down to states which are worse off, and the federal government should help states when they have budget problems. While I think there are very good reasons that everyone should have access to health care and education regardless of what state they live in, along with things like natural disaster insurance which we all pay into, there also is a part of me which wants to ensure every state in the United States and every member state in the European Union adopts best practices.

I am concerned that if a state has a budget deficit due to its own dumb decisions, you should let it see the consequences. Otherwise, you run the risk that states will engage in bad practices, draining money from states that observe best practices. This can create a cycle of dependency with no way out. Health care is necessary for life, and education is necessary for a modern economy; those must be available to everyone. But if your state runs out of money to keep roads paved, has to lay off public sector workers because of bad policies, then you should let them slide while preventing as much damage to children in school. Once they improve their policies, they will be more vibrant and contribute more to the national budget. I also don’t think low-income citizens should need to die from lack of health care because their state government is made up of idiots, though. I draw a line there. But if your roads are full of potholes because your governor is an idiot? So be it.

It has become clear to me that the American system of siphoning money from productive states to corrupt states is a way to enforce worst practices and can be counterproductive, outside of health care and education.

So I believe the best action is not to expel Hungary from the EU. Instead, they should end subsidies to Orban’s government. I have no problem with that. Let the market speak.

This is how you deal with leaders like Orban in the fairest way possible while minimizing damage to his dissidents.