Politics aside. Most vaccines aren't "sterilizing' that is... Prevent infection. Rather they reduce or eliminate the symptoms which is partially why diseases that have been vaccinated against for decades still hang around.
S 1540 had a number of those provisions in it including:
- mandating paper ballots with by hand (via ocr) counting and audits.
- mandating all voting equipment be manufactures in the US
- in case of audit conflict, hand counted paper ballot wins
- lots of funding stuff....
https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/1540/text#HD0900D437F88436AA6D7C117237AF9AF
https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/1540/text#H6358202F99AF44708FA5BB6B8F6F8015
I think it died in committee... But that was in 2019 when it wasn't a big of a deal as it is now...
There's a number of mentions here of businesses trying to do this. I think it's pretty tough but a good goal.
It's worth looking into the past (especially the 80s and 90s) when the big shift from US to (at the time) Japanese, SE Asia, Mexico (which set the stage for Chinese) manufacturing took place.
You all know that in the 80s the US auto industry basically collapsed.
At the time there was a push for so called "domestic content aid" which was basically a mechanism that would mandate that a certain % of cars sold in the US be made here. The idea was to use it as a tool for trade negotiation (mostly with Japan at the time).to get them to not manipulate currency, demand reciprocal buying (US was buying hundreds of thousands of Japanese card, Japan was buying like 4k US cars).
The WaPo did some interviews with politicians about their views... John Glenn is especially poignant on grounds of national security and innovation dominance. If you can't make your own shit you can't ramp up during a war... You can't own your infrastructure security... You can't own your innovations. (big issues we worry about with china today).
Of course those voices lost out to the voices of "free trade" being both necessary and "good for everyone ." Reagan was actually a huge supporter of this and was decidedly against domestic content aid and almost any kind of "protectionism..." Believing that global free markets and competition are the way to go.
US consumers didn't really behave based on patriotic motivations or solidarity with US manufacturing workers and opted (as today) for lowest price. Autonation also played a huge role here. Even today US manufacturing output is quite high but employment is much lower.
Back then it was environmentalists and labor unions etc that were pushing for locally made, keep foreign goods out, free trade isn't necessarily good, etc.
For NAFTA it's a bit murkier but it really forced US manufacturing (among other things) to compete with SUPER low cost labor.in Mexico. Crazy Bernie had an OpEd where he strongly opposed NAFTA for precisely this reason... It allowed big corporations to force US workers to compete with Mexican workers which allowed them to keep wages really low (exploit Mexican workers and use that to justify low wager in US) and drive profits up.
https://www.scribd.com/document/239210728/Why-I-Oppose-NAFTA-Vermont-Times-Oct-28-1993
Of course both Bush and Clinton supported NAFTA and it passed. You can see the final vote in Congress here
https://www.citizen.org/article/final-house-vote-on-nafta/
As a result of the globalization of trade it's nearly impossible to make complex stuff without getting bits and pieces from all over the world. Supply chains are optimized for it and products have no disclosure on where what comes from. Try to build a computer with US only parts .. it's hard to even know WHERE they actually come from!
Also... Capital used to be less mobile. In the 1880s moving millions of dollars around wasn't easy. You had to put gold on a boat, wait for it to arrive and be verified, hope it made it there etc. Now you can move it instantly so moving money where you can pay the least is easy.
Labor has also gotten more mobile because of tech and free trade agreements. Things like bitcoin make this even easier.
Just think...I could easily setup a software company, get the lowest cost labor on the planet... Not move people anywhere... Not officially "hire" anyone. Pay people in bitcoin (rapid dollar to btc to local currency) so I don't even need visas or worry about local employment laws etc. With physical goods it's a bit harder because they still need to actually be moved, but using Alibaba I can "make" almost anything in any volume.
So every worker in the world is now competing with every other worker and big corporations can use that to have them beat each other down to get the lowest price.
Gonna be hard to change without huge changes in consumer behavior which is sort of what you all are advocating.
I think this was based on Ron Wyden's (D-OR) idea a few years back to mark to market unrealized cap gains and tax them as income. It'd be income and wealth based (so prolly kicks in at many millions) and not include primary residence or 401ks (per the original proposal).
California had a similar proposal to tax wealth at some % that kicks in above 15m (30m if married... I guess you need to go halfsies with the wife :)) but it probably won't ever happen cause it's not very popular except on the far left.
The theory is that super rich people get most of their wealth from unrealized gains which are taxed low, whereas normal people get most of their "wealth" from income which is taxed much higher. Also, when you die the tax basis of holdings is reset so you effectively never pay taxes on those gains.
So as an example, if I give my kid a $5m trust with a bunch of stock. They borrow against it and get, say, 150k/year (3%) and essentially have "no income." Then they just sell the holdings at the best time to pay off the margin but keep the amount low so the LT cap gain taxes stay reasonable (15% ish). If they do this for 30 years and their 5m goes to 15m and they give that to their kids; the tax base on the stock resets and the 10m capital gain from 5m-15m is never taxed (estate taxes for married people kick in at 23.4m in 2021).
I don't think it's a good idea and there's always a slippery slope with taxes (i.e. AMT), but I think that's what Yellen is responding to.
Gotta be careful here.
My understanding is that they conclude that because they locked down early and tightly it reduced the effectiveness of asymptomatic spread over time The paper supports lockdowns and congratulates wuhan on managing it well.
It doesn't really conclude "asymptomatic cases don't exist/aren't infectious" it concludes "if you lock people up over time the viral load reduces from person to person thus making asymptomatic people less infectious over time."
It also exptessely says you should lock things down, social distance, wear masks, etc.
I mean you're right in that they say that no people with close contact to asymptomatic people tested positive... But you also have to look at the conditions of those asymptomatic people. It's not like Wuhan had people walking around and living a normal life. They shut the whole fucking place down and used military style population control.
I guess that might be effective but not sure that's what we want to see...