9.16.2021

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 Continuing from yesterday, we discussed the role of media, and whether it should be corporately owned or solely a governmental institution. Learning from past ordeals (.... FOX), I thought that for there to be neutralized media, there shouldn't be an oligopoly structure that is persuaded by the government's ideology. One of our group members was on the same page as well and expressed the idea of allowing free press but with the viewer's discretion. We thought that allowing the media to be its individual group would prevent extremists, and contribute to the improvement of current political systems. There may be a problem that some news networks may use this advantage to forcibly call for a recall motion. However, I believe that if the government discloses its non-existing relationship with the media, we can assuage such problems. 

Next, we worked on specific regulations for taxes, since Mr. Paterson pointed out the different ways you can tax people. Some taxes are progressive, and the rates differ from the level of income, while some maintain the same rate for all incomes. These are normally differentiated based on their necessity, where essential products are flat taxed, and others that serve as leisure are progressively taxed. As we couldn't decide on the specifics, generically speaking, we decided on progressive tax for income tax and both for sales tax. Relating to tax, we were questioned about taxes for charities and religious groups, because NGOs are utilizing the funds for the better, and so we decided on a no-tax policy for those organizations. Contrary, we were cautious with how to tax religious groups, seeing as a majority are non-religious, and first of all, we didn't know if our country has religion, so it was a pass for now. Continuing with money-related discussions, we also talked about tax for unemployed people and decided to maximize unemployment benefits as well as not taxing them temporarily. 

Finally, we contemplated ways of punishment, and there was a heated debate about weighing out crimes. At first, I thought that crimes that jeopardize one's health is worthy of a hefty price. But yet, hearing the blue and white-collar crimes made me reconsider a crime's burden. For example, my family watches a show called Suits, where it follows a fake lawyer being hired into an elite Harvard-only law firm. If this happened in real life, hiring such lawyers and letting them work on major corporate cases will jeopardize the financial aspects and reputation of the law firm, past clients, and of the judicial system. Compared to a gas-station burglary, I bet the other case deserves more punishment. To summarize, we decided that such wrongdoings are to be evaluated by both its impact and the act itself.


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