Thank you for your opening statements, candidates! We will now move on to round two of the debate!
Candidates, you have 48 hours to answer the following questions!
Economic Policy:
> In 2018, 38 million Atlasians lived in poverty. How can this be addressed?
> Technological changes are constantly reshaping the economy. How should policy be adapted to deal with these changes?
> What changes, if any, would you like to see to the tax code?
> From PSOL: What is your opinion on the Federal Gas Tax Reform Act? Would you support its passage and do you see similar tiered sales taxes as being a good measure to appropriately tax individuals based on their parallel “felt” taxes?
Social Issues:
> From S019: What are your views on stricter gun control?
> From S019: What are your views on abortion?
> What would be your administration's policies on immigration?
> How will your administration approach foreign policy?
Game/Reform Issues:
> What is your view on how the relationship between regional and federal government should be?
> There have been many complaints about the lack of stories from the GM. What are your thoughts on this and the role of Game Engine more broadly?
> What are your views on campaign finance reform?
Individual Questions:
> To 1184AZ and ReaganClinton20XX: You are both members of the Federalist Party and presumably you will be facing eachother in a primary. Why should Federalists and Conservatives vote to nominate you?
> To ReaganClinton20XX: In your campaign intro, you mentioned education reform. Can you explain how you would like to reform the education system?
General:
Poverty:
This is obviously a very serious issue. No Atlasian should have to live in poverty, and for the President to stand here and argue that he’s been the sole perpetuator of “progress, stability and growth” while so many are living paycheck to paycheck or are suffering is an insult to our people. Now, I have a somewhat radical idea of how to handle poverty involving racing the 1%. The plan isn’t a redistribution of wealth like some would claim, but the program I would like to propose puts the taxable amount of money in a pool where it can be used for special purposes outside of funding the government, whether that be this poverty crisis or if there needs to be response to a natural disaster in this country, we need to have our people’s backs.
Technological advancements and the economy:
The rise in automation in industries has been concerning. Everybody from our factory workers to cashiers are being eliminated in favor of robots who are meant to do the same job. I believe there needs to be a hard limit on how many jobs can be automated by companies, and limit it to under a majority of them.
Tax code:
As I proposed in my poverty plan, I would like to raise the limit to how much we can tax the top percent of people. I don’t believe we should raise any other tax bracket as to keep the middle class stable and benefit the lower class.
Stricter gun control:
Ban assault rifles from being in the hands of normal people. If you’re in the military or the police, you’re fine, if you want to hunt and protect yourself with a rifle or handgun or something of the sort, cool, keep it. An assault weapon is not needed in the hands of the people. Also stricter background checks but I feel that’s a given.
Abortion:
I think organizations such as Planned Parenthood have their rightful place here in Atlasia, and I believe that the government should still be supporting these organizations. As for the issue of abortion as a whole, I still believe it should be up to the regions to determine abortion policy.
Immigration:
We need to find a better way to let people immigrate to our country. People are waiting years, even decades to come here. We need to actively reform our immigration system to work faster while having thorough background checks. No person should have to wait more than a year to come to this country if they have a clean record, I believe that we can reach this goal.
Foreign Policy:
I think it’s fair to say that it benefits the country to keep up our relationship with our allies. On another note though, we shouldn’t be dealing with countries that knowingly violate human rights. Countries such as the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Iran, and China need to be kept in check, and we’ve been failing in keeping up our relationship with them.
Fed/Regional Relationship:
I believe the current relationship is fine as it is unless the regions are experiencing wild amounts of inactivity, then I could see the federal government stepping in to reboot the region in a way.
GMs:
I believe the complaints about the activity of Game Moderators are true. There should be way more stories coming out of the engine, they run the game, they should be making it interesting for our citizens. Now I like our game moderators, very nice people, however I don’t think that their activity level qualifies them for their jobs anymore. I’ve seen authors of Atlasian newspapers, such as Harry Truman or KoopaDaQuick, or even fellow politicians like LouisvilleThunder or Peebs who could probably shake up the game more than the incumbents have in their tenure. In conclusion, I believe it’s time for new mods.
Campaign Finance Reform:
I pretty much agree with what the President and Fmr. Gov. AZ said, we need campaign finance reform, I support overturning Citizens v. United, of course we aren’t getting paid but we need it.
Personal:
Fed Primary:
I know I’m not under the main ideology of the Federalists, since day 1 when I joined in 2017 I’ve always been one of the more liberal members of the party. Now I like AZ, we’ve worked together on numerous campaigns and have generally helped each other. To the Federalist Party, I could see how he’s more appealing as a more conservative campaign runner. However, I can’t help but think about what has happened since the June Presidential election. The party has been now relegated to a slim minority in both houses even though they only narrowly lost the presidency. Even then, they aren’t that popular in many regions anymore, being downsized in Lincoln and Fremont and competing with the Conservative party in the south. The party needs to be taken in a different direction if it wants to succeed again. The days of being portrayed of a Right only party need to end. It wasn’t this way back in 2017, so I’m not too sure what changed in the mindset of the party, but it needs to go back to succeed again.
Education reform:
I’ve worked on education reform since beginning my career in the Lincoln Assembly. The way that our country’s children are being taught is outdated in more ways than one. Policies like no child left behind have been a failure, and we should now be taking a more one on one approach with our students. The subjects they take should be more preparing for the future, instead of teaching students subjects like algebra for their last years of schooling, they should be taught some courses like finances, programming, and others that benefit them in future jobs. And finally, in the arena of technology, it would save schools a large amount of money if they focused their resources on transitioning to computers instead of buying traditional supplies like paper. All class activities can now generally be done on computers now, and if a school system only replaced the technology periodically over a timespan of 10-15 years, then it would save them from an economic stress that even large schools in wealthy districts go through.
