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Comment by conductr | Hacker News Reader

As bad as it is, I feel like this is our chance to do some large scale norm changes. Eg. Shorter standard work week, more time off. No as some liberal/socialist agenda but as a way to reach full employment again. I don’t think we’re ready for basic income, but whatever the right stepping stone is, I think govt has a big enough reason to address it now.

Edit: our/we = US, habit and context of article

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Another thing is to stop tying healthcare to employment via tax benefits for employers.

So many people are stuck in less than ideal jobs because the employer-provided healthcare system is nuts. On top of that many of these plans aren't even that great any more.

It seems that giving free healthcare, a free place to live, enough food and internet to everyone would be a good idea to stimulate the economy. Jobs would be generated by themselves if people then want a higher standard of living but no longer have to fight to survive.

> No as some liberal/socialist agenda but as a way to reach full employment again.

You know that this is bascially the same reason socialists are in favor of shorter working weeks, right? Their "socialist agenda" is virtually the same as your reasoning.

I made that comment more so because normally our extremely polarized bipartisanship would prevent these types of changes from being made. Even if someone like Bernie was president, no way his agendas make through legislative branch.

This depression will test our country’s ability to rally and cross political lines for the good of the people the way we have in the past. Something that previously was far left may seem viable to right leaning constituents when they’re struggling to meet basic needs.

The trick is framing. Simply frame it as "put America back to work" and "making it easy to work" and you sidestep most of the red scare trigger words.

Part of the decline of the American left in formerly blue collar areas, IMO, is simply that it has become more academic and less attempts at sloganeering or actually doing work to reach out to disaffected people; polls keep revealing that Americans actually like the nitty gritty of the policies but that the marketing of it sucks.

That’s my point, we can now frame as win win win with a story most can get behind. Before it was red vs blue ideology battle royale.

I don’t really want to tackle the decline of left amongst certain demographics. Too much to get into on that one :)

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