10 Ways to Make America Better Immediately

Ever since the first time I went to Europe back in 2021 I’ve been constantly thinking about what we could do to make America a better place. It turns out the way that we do things in this country is often not viewed as “normal” in other countries.

There are so many things broken about this country – and everyone always has some excuse as to why can’t fix x, y, or z.

“Who’s gonna pay for that?”

“Republicans would never vote for that”

“Donors would hate that”

So I’ve been thinking … what could we change tomorrow that would make this country a better place?

Here’s what I’ve come up with.

School should teach useful things

The things kids learn in school are NOT useful. Wealthy kids will play the game and memorize/repeat the useless info because they want to get good grades and go to a good college so they can get a good job, but the reality is almost nothing kids learn in school has any relevance outside of school.

Poor and middle class kids who have no plans of going to college see this and simply checkout. They (correctly) see school as a massive waste of time.

I think the biggest problem in our education system right now is not even that the majority of kids are taught by awful teachers in awful environments, but rather that what they’re learning clearly has no use.

If we taught things like Cars 101, Taxes, local Government, Entrepreneurship, and Physical Education – we’d get more buy in from kids of all socio-economic backgrounds.

Right now school is useless and kids know that. Wealthy kids play the game because they want to go to college and get a good job, but for a poor kid who has no plans for college this line of thinking makes no sense.

They see school for what it is … a waste of time.

👉 Checkout my post on things I WOULD teach in school

Teaching should be a desirable profession

In most places in the US, teaching has become a bottom of the barrel profession – an easy college degree that will get you a job. While you may have gone to a decent public school with decent teachers, I assure you that most Americans today are not. I taught at an atrocious but average public school in Arizona and let’s just say there is no way you would ever send your kids into those walls voluntarily.

Anyone who chooses to become a teacher these days faces the same question from those around them – “Why the hell would you wanna do that?” – The stereotype about teaching is that you’re underpaid and overworked. True and true.

This is a problem. Teachers should be inspiring. These should be some of our best people. They affect the lives of all of our kids. Right now, most kids see teachers as fat, lazy, and uninspiring. This needs to change.

When I worked as a public school teacher in Arizona back in 2017-2018 my salary was $38,000 per year. I received a highly qualified bonus of $2,000 because I had a degree in Math, making my annual comp a whopping $40,000.

Raise the salaries, lower the class sizes, give teachers more freedom. Make the profession more desirable. We all would benefit.

Cut the money from some useless international program we fund abroad that has no effect on the lives of American citizens. Use it to make teaching desirable again.

Cheaper career paths

College is way too expensive. Useful degrees should be free/low cost, funded by the taxpayers. I’m thinking of engineering, nursing, teaching, accounting, etc. Incentivize people to study these fields that we need.

The government needs to stop guaranteeing student loans. Tuition has ballooned because of this.

We also need to get rid of useless and expensive barriers to entry. Why do I have to go to 4 years of undergrad and 3 years of law school if I want to become a lawyer? Or 4 years of undergrad and 4 years of med school to become a doctor?

In most European countries you go straight to law school. Straight to med school. Nothing you learn in undergrad is necessary to learn before law school. Get the glut out of the system.

Also, we need a better trades program like those in Germany, Switzerland, Netherlands, etc. I grew up in a wealthy suburb outside of Philadelphia and I couldn’t tell you how the hell one would even try to become an electrician, plumber, carpenter, etc. This is a problem. School does not prepare kids for real world professions.

We need free programs for people to enter into these professions. Pay them a fair wage. Make these things desirable jobs. They are respectable in Europe – why can’t they be here as well?

When I went backpacking in Central America I met a ton of Europeans with normal ass jobs. Plumber, electrician, carpenter. I met 0 Americans with these kinds of jobs. In America, these are lowly-paid, low-status jobs. This needs to change.

Get the homeless off the streets

The downtowns of our cities can’t be flooded with tents and drug addicts. Period. No one wants to live in a place like this. Drug addicts need to be incentivized to get off drugs. Meaning they can get housing, but they need to show improvement day in and day out.

Once a person becomes a danger to their community – they need to be sent to prison/rehab. Like Jared Klickstein says in his book Crooked Smile about his life on the streets as a homeless person, sometimes the only way an addict can change is if you take all temptations away – and sometimes the only way to do that is by sending him to prison. All drugs should not be decriminalized.

If I was the leader of San Francisco, I would announce that starting one month from now, no one will be allowed to sleep on the street/in the parks. Give them a month warning, and then begin enforcing. Give them rehab options – but as soon as they relapse they lose shelter options. Also, don’t give them their own rooms. Put them in dorms of 4-8 people, and make them work for better accommodations.

Right now there are thousands of homeless all across California receiving free housing, meals, and phones. This needs to stop.

Zero tolerance for violent crime

Almost every major city in America has a ton of violent crime. This is unacceptable. We need a zero-tolerance policy. Meet any form of violent crime with a harsh sentence.

Free the people in jail for minor drug offenses – but put violent criminals away for good. Other people need to see that this behavior will not be tolerated.

Right now theft is de facto tolerated in many places in California. Theft needs to be prosecuted fully to disincentivize further crime. Make an example of one person for everyone else to see.

California has the most lax car burglary/theft laws and guess what? California also has the most amount of car theft. Coincidence?

Medical emergencies should be free

There are a ton of people working in the US only for the health insurance in the case of a freak accident. I had a teammate on my soccer team at 12 years old who didn’t go to the emergency room for a torn knee because his family was afraid of the bill they’d be served upon leaving.

Our medical system can easily bankrupt anyone but the richest in society. Give people the security to know that emergencies like broken arms and freak accidents will be covered. At least put a max on what the hospital can charge.

Everyone knows our medical system is out of hand, but no one does anything about it.

If health insurance was fair then wealthy suburbs wouldn’t be made up of a bunch of people who work for the big health insurance companies. There shouldn’t be this many wealthy people profiting off of insuring the rest of us.

If it were up to me, the government would insure everyone at no cost. Single payer. The government should negotiate rates for every standard procedure with hospitals to make sure hospitals and insurers cannot overcharge.

Address the root cause before looking for a cure

So much of medicine today is seeking “the cure” because this is where the financial incentive is. Instead, address the root cause. We don’t need to dump billions into drugs to help fat people get skinnier.

In my opinion, no one has a right to Ozempic.

Let’s address the reasons why people are fat in the first place.

• get the chemicals out of our food
• get more sunlight
• walk more
• eat local

Until these things are addressed, I don’t believe anyone has the “right” to Ozempic.

Reform the zoning laws

Go to Europe and then come back to the US and you can’t unsee how ugly most of the US is. Miles and miles of car-dependent suburbs where you need a car to participate in the economy. Every town has the exact same chain stores and looks exactly the same. Massive space wasted on empty parking lots. It’s disgusting.

Reform the zoning laws so you can open a bakery on the ground floor of your house in a residential neighborhood. So that you can build a 6 unit apartment building in a wealthy school district. So that you don’t need a parking lot double the size of the store you’re building. This is what makes places like the Netherlands, France, and Spain so awesome to visit and live. And this is the reason the few places like this in the US just so happen to also be the most expensive places to live in the US. (ny, sf, cambridge, etc)

People don’t wanna shop at a bunch of warehouses where everything is the same. (walmart, costco, sams club) They don’t want to live in places where you can’t bike or walk to a store. But most people have no choice because this is what 99% of America looks like.

We can’t be fueled by illegal migrant labor

When you allow businesses to thrive using illegal labor, it forces everyone else to do it to – or be forced to drop out because they can’t compete with the low wages and no benefits that companies pay illegals.

Because of this – We need strict enforcement of labor laws.

People say “Well who will build the houses??”

Americans will. Wages will need to be raised until a legal American will do the job. This will create a fair and more equal society where people are paid a fair wage, along with benefits.

There is no point in having a law if you are not going to enforce it. If illegals couldn’t get jobs in the US then they wouldn’t come. Or they’d simply leave on their own. The reason many of them are here is because there are jobs for them.

Public transport needs to move laterally not just into the city

Another American problem. Trains go into and out of the city and that’s it. Major problem. If trains went laterally a lot of people would no longer need a car. People want to use public transport – but it’s simply not feasible.

Where I live in Cambridge, Massachusetts there is simply no feasible way to get to Brookline with public transport, even though it’s just across the river. If transport went laterally then people who work in Cambridge and live in Brookline (and the reverse) would have no need for a vehicle.

Right now, you basically have to take a train into Boston, then back out again if you want to get to a neighboring town via public transport.

Get rid of college degree requirements

In every possible way, get rid of the college degree requirement for government jobs. College is useless in almost every profession and is simply a massive barrier to entry. Almost every job could be done by a high school graduate with a few weeks of training.

While the government might not have the power to tell corporations to stop requiring a college degree, they can certainly set the standard for government jobs.

Get rid of the Bachelor’s Degree requirement, pay the jobs a bit more, and all of a sudden you’ll have a LOT more applications coming in for these government jobs. Corporations will have to lessen their requirements to compete.

How to Make America Better Immediately

If I had to pick the three biggest things from this list, I’d pick:

1 – Teach useful things

2 – Make teaching a desirable profession

3 – Medical emergencies should be free

Obviously there are a TON of things we need to change in America. I didn’t even dip into the whole problem of campaign contributions and Citizens United.

What did I miss?

Sam