How To Fix American Politics With Mike McCabe

Check out Jeremy’s latest podcast on retirement planning by listening on “Apple Podcasts” or “Google Podcasts” or read below for How To Fix America: Politics. Summary: 109 – There are many ways we could improve our politics, but where do we begin? In this episode, Jeremy Keil speaks about America’s politics with Mike McCabe. Mike brings a few issues to light that he believes Americans should address and proposes some ideas for where we can start. He talks about how gerrymandering is the root problem, how unionization affects our political representation, and the problems with our current left vs. right thinking when it comes to elections. Mike discusses: What he did to give himself the leeway to take some time off and focus on some passion projects Why he believes gerrymandering sums up the problem with America’s politics How unionization has changed the way the American working class is represented politically and affected their voice Why Americans need to get out of the left vs. right political system mindset, and instead focus on an up vs. down representation of the powerful vs. the American voters And more How To Fix American Politics 1) Summing Up The Problem Gerrymandering and outside money in politics are two major contributors to political dysfunction if you look at the root causes. What is gerrymandering? It’s a way of drawing political districts to produce results for the party in power. They draw districts in a way that makes it virtually impossible to beat the party currently in power by packing as many opposition voters into a few districts and then spreading the rest of those opposition party voters across many other districts. So instead of having competitive districts where it’s relatively close to 50-50, and the results could go either way, they’ve turned those 50-50 districts into 60-40 or 65-35 districts, minimizing the competition for the party in power. This naturally creates representatives who are fierce partisans because they no longer have to listen or talk to the opposing side. By eliminating the fear of competition, the politicians no longer work to best serve us. Our guest, Mike McCabe, has advocated taking the process of drawing political boundaries out of the hands of the elected officials and giving it to a nonpartisan agency or an independent commission. This would give us many more competitive districts and create representatives who would be keener to listen to the voters’ concerns. With more fairly competitive elections and politicians considering Americans’ concerns, we would see greater voter turnouts and politics representing Americans better. 2) Unionization and American Politics America used to be broadly unionized, but now it’s mostly government jobs that are the only unionized professions left. There is very little unionization in the private sector now. The last bastion of union involvement is in the public sector – the government workers still have union representation. While some believe all unions are good, and others believe all unions are bad, the current situation is most union membership and power lies in government unions. This puts more power in the hands of the politically connected and less in the hands of every day Americans.   Now, with not a single member of most American families having any union affiliation,