# What reforms can progressives implement on the city, county or state level **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [February 6, 2014, 1:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-reforms-can-progressives-implement-on-the-city-county-or-state-level/680633 "2014-02-06T01:22:52Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2014, 1:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-reforms-can-progressives-implement-on-the-city-county-or-state-level/680633/1 "2014-02-06T01:22:52Z")
If progressives want to live in a progressive society, or feel our ideas are better what can be implemented on a city, county or state level to achieve these goals? On the state level you can get health reform (Vermonts single payer plan, etc), legalization of gay marriage, marijuana legalization, a somewhat progressive state income tax system, higher minimum wage, subsides for renewable energy. I’m guessing other progressive legislation is passed on a state level but I don’t know what all else there is. What can be done on the city or county wide level? Is a single payer system possible on a city wide level, or would that be too hard to implement? NYC is trying to do universal Pre-k funded by a progressive tax hike (something like 0.7%). Doing anything on the federal level is not going to happen anytime soon. I know some cities are trying to implement the Kyoto protocol on a city wide level. I don’t know if there has been any success in doing so, or if any states have tried to implement Kyoto. I think California tried, I have no idea what happened with that. I guess law enforcement reform can be done on a city or county level. That happens. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2014, 2:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-reforms-can-progressives-implement-on-the-city-county-or-state-level/680633/2 "2014-02-06T02:50:05Z")
Self-ID’d Socialist [Kshama Sawant](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kshama_Sawant) recently was elected to the Seattle City Council. Her agenda there: > [@](#): > > The core issues of Sawant’s campaign were a minimum wage increase to US$15/hour, a “millionaire’s tax” or income tax on wealthy Seattleites, and rent control.[21] Sawant said rent control is “something everyone supports, except real estate developers and people like Richard Conlin…” and compared the legal fight for its implementation to same-sex marriage, and the legalization of marijuana in the United States, both of which she supports.[12][26] Her campaign for a $15 an hour minimum wage has been credited for bringing the issue into the mainstream and attracting support for the policy from both Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn and Seattle Mayor Elect Ed Murray.[27] > > She is also a supporter of expanding public transit and bikeways, ending corporate welfare, ending racial profiling, reducing taxes on small businesses and homeowners, protecting public sector unions from layoffs, living wage union jobs, and social services.[28] > > On the topic of public transit Sawant has advocated for expanding both bus and light rail capacity with a millionaire’s tax and advocated for what she calls “transit justice” which calls for eliminating user fares, increasing services to the poor, especially communities in south Seattle, and not providing any more transit options to communities who “can afford other options” until that happens.[12][26][28][29] She said that, if elected, she would donate the portion of her salary as a City Council person which exceeds the average salary in Seattle.[30][31] On 27 January 2014, she announced that she would only accept $40,000 of her $117,000 salary, and will donate the remaining $77,000 to social justice causes.[32] Mmm, OK. And **then** can we burst the capitalist integument and expropriate the expropriators? ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2014, 2:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-reforms-can-progressives-implement-on-the-city-county-or-state-level/680633/3 "2014-02-06T02:59:28Z")
Sawant’s policies, if you took off the label ‘socialist’ and just asked people in opinion polls if they support them would likely get 50%+ of the vote. Politics and policy are pretty disconnected in the US. Politics is more about moral heuristics than substantive debate on policy. George Lakoff was right, and the democrats do not know how to utilize that the way the GOP does. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2014, 3:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-reforms-can-progressives-implement-on-the-city-county-or-state-level/680633/4 "2014-02-06T03:03:51Z")
> [@Wesley\_Clark](#): > > Sawant’s policies, if you took off the label ‘socialist’ and just asked people in opinion polls if they support them would likely get 50%+ of the vote. Politics and policy are pretty disconnected in the US. Politics is more about moral heuristics than substantive debate on policy. George Lakoff was right, and the democrats do not know how to utilize that the way the GOP does. [We’ll learn.](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=714760) ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2014, 3:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-reforms-can-progressives-implement-on-the-city-county-or-state-level/680633/5 "2014-02-06T15:51:34Z")
In terms of law, a state can do quite a bit if the legislature and governor choose to. If a state wanted to raise the minimum wage to thirty bucks an hour, it could. If a state wanted to put the tax rate at 80% for income above a million dollars and 0% for income below a million dollars, it could. If a state wanted to pay unionized government workers $200,000 a year, it could. However, there are certain realities that can intrude. For example, California has the highest top income tax rate in the country, high minimum wage, and powerful public sector unions. So it should be a progressive paradise, right? Turns out that California also has [very high income inequality](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_Gini_coefficient), [the nation’s third-highest unemployment rate](http://www.ncsl.org/research/labor-and-employment/state-unemployment-update.aspx), and [the nation’s highest poverty rate](http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21590933-americas-biggest-state-has-americas-biggest-poverty-problem-not-so-golden). Other would-be progressive paradises such as New York and the District of Columbia also rank badly. ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2014, 11:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-reforms-can-progressives-implement-on-the-city-county-or-state-level/680633/6 "2014-02-06T23:20:34Z")
The major factor in CA’s high poverty rate is the high cost of housing since the state is mostly urban. And that bastion of liberalism, Mississippi, has an unemployment rate of 8% to California’s 8.3%. That doesn’t prove or disprove anything and I’m not interested so much in whether liberalism is good or bad in and of itself. I am wondering what all progressive laws can be passed on a city, county or state level. ---
**Author:** ![davidw](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c4cdca/32.png) [@davidw](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davidw)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2014, 3:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-reforms-can-progressives-implement-on-the-city-county-or-state-level/680633/7 "2014-02-07T03:00:23Z")
[Paid sick days laws](http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2014/01/28/3214551/newark-pass-paid-sick-leave/)are being pushed in a lot of cities. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2014, 3:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-reforms-can-progressives-implement-on-the-city-county-or-state-level/680633/8 "2014-02-07T03:16:28Z")
The [American Socialist Party](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Socialist_Party) never had much success on the national level, but members did govern several significant cities, notably Milwaukee, for long periods in the early 20th Century. They were pioneers in establishing public services and utilities. More ideological and revolutionary socialists derided this as [“Sewer Socialism.”](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sewer_socialism) You can read the story in [_The S Word: A Short History of an American Tradition . . . Socialism,_](http://www.amazon.com/Word-History-American-Tradition-Socialism/dp/184467679X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1391742845&sr=1-1&keywords=the+s+word+a+short+history+of+an+american+tradition...socialism) by John Nichols; and also in [_It Didn’t Happen Here: Why Socialism Failed in the United States,_](http://www.amazon.com/Didnt-Happen-Here-Socialism-Paperback/dp/0393322548/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1391742921&sr=1-1&keywords=it+didn%27t+happen+here+why+socialism+failed+in+the+united+states) by Seymour Martin Lipset and Gary Wolfe Marks. ---
**Author:** ![Desert\_Dumpster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9d8465/32.png) [@Desert\_Dumpster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Desert_Dumpster)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2014, 3:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-reforms-can-progressives-implement-on-the-city-county-or-state-level/680633/9 "2014-02-07T03:24:20Z")
As a practical matter, at the county and city levels, the easiest changes to make would be those that are traditionally in their purview. So schools, local infrastructure and transit, property taxes, and so forth. It would be part of the progressive agenda to expand assistance to the poor, support education, especially for the disadvantaged, and expand access to the arts and recreation. Of course, the tax structure would probably be rearranged to support all that. To prevent businesses from leaving as a result, a quality-of-life publicity plan would have to be initiated. How successful such a campaign would be would be largely dependent on the political and ideological makeup of the population. Such agendas have worked well in Portland, OR, for example, but have crashed and burned in even such nominally liberal places as the CA Bay Area. And of course, there would be no chance of a progressive agenda ever being implemented at all in the flyover states. ---
**Author:** ![Human\_Action](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ac91a4/32.png) [@Human\_Action](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Human_Action)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2014, 3:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-reforms-can-progressives-implement-on-the-city-county-or-state-level/680633/10 "2014-02-07T15:54:59Z")
> [@Desert\_Dumpster](#): > > And of course, there would be no chance of a progressive agenda ever being implemented at all in the flyover states. [Minnesota begs to differ.](http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/10/minnesota-progressives-turn-state-blue) ---
**Author:** ![Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/f04885/32.png) [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qin_Shi_Huangdi)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2014, 7:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-reforms-can-progressives-implement-on-the-city-county-or-state-level/680633/11 "2014-02-08T07:54:50Z")
> [@Desert\_Dumpster](#): > > As a practical matter, at the county and city levels, the easiest changes to make would be those that are traditionally in their purview. So schools, local infrastructure and transit, property taxes, and so forth. > > It would be part of the progressive agenda to expand assistance to the poor, support education, especially for the disadvantaged, and expand access to the arts and recreation. Of course, the tax structure would probably be rearranged to support all that. To prevent businesses from leaving as a result, a quality-of-life publicity plan would have to be initiated. > > How successful such a campaign would be would be largely dependent on the political and ideological makeup of the population. Such agendas have worked well in Portland, OR, for example, but have crashed and burned in even such nominally liberal places as the CA Bay Area. And of course, there would be no chance of a progressive agenda ever being implemented at all in the flyover states. Actually at one time, many of these so-called “Flyover” states were some of the most leftist in the Union, supporting the Populist and Socialist Parties. ---
**Author:** ![monstro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2014, 2:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-reforms-can-progressives-implement-on-the-city-county-or-state-level/680633/12 "2014-02-08T14:03:48Z")
Local governments are very important in implementing environmental regs. Some of them are state mandates, but a great deal of them are not. LA and San Francisco have both banned plastic grocery store bags. Lots of locales have levied taxes and fees to improve stormwater systems. The majority of Virginia drivers don’t have to get emissions testing, but in Fairfax County you do.