BRICS is basically two things:

1. An investment bank
2. A payment system which is an alternative to SWIFT

BRICS was founded in 2009 just after Russia invaded Georgia. The entire purpose of BRICS is to give Russia a way to move around European and American sanctions because of their military endeavors in Europe.

BRICS comprises 10 countries in the world along with 9 partners. But this is already misleading. Thailand and Brazil have mutual protection pacts with the United States, and Brazil trades more with the US and Europe then with China. So it’s an odd pairing.

India is an odd addition given their tumultuous relationship with China.

Malaysia is also an odd member given how they trade more with the US, Japan, and Taiwan than they do with China.

Most of these countries are fully in the global economy already, so BRICS gives them little to no economic benefit.

Comprising only 23% of the global economy and having a GDP per capita of only around $5100, BRICS is not a major world power if the free world were to flex our muscles.

One interesting argument is that India argued a reason they joined BRICS is because they were upset they were not invited to join the G7. Let’s analyze this.

Every country in the G7 is a rich democratic country with excellent scores on corruption from Transparency International, and top marks from the World Wide Governance Indicators.

When we filter out all countries in the world to find potential additions to the G7, we would want added members to also be trillion dollar economies, and have better democracy and corruption scores than our worst member, in order to keep the group as a serious forum for discussing issues with countries with the weight to have input in such a meeting. The only country with a trillion dollar economy and a larger GDP per capita than the poorest member of the G7 is Australia. If Australia joined, they would be the smallest economy in the group.

Every country with a larger population than the G7’s smallest member and a larger GDP per capita than our poorest member is already a member. There are no good candidates to add in to the G7.

So instead of forming a group which seems to be for helping Russia get around sanctions which are in place because of their invasions, India should work on cracking down on corruption, improving their economy, and then they will almost certainly be invited to join the G7.

All in all, BRICS is a money laundering front meant to counteract US sanctions on Russia all wrapped up in paper saying its anti-colonialism.

If Russia were to stop invading other countries so their economy did not need to be sanctioned BRICS would likely cease to exist.

When armchair urbanists talk about why expanding highways will never work to solve transit, which is true, they claim the reason is due to “Induced demand” and that the highway will simply fill up with more cars, making the point moot.

But they then claim that the solution to housing prices is to build more housing, which is true.

The problem is that in both of these cases, induced demand is at play, and at the same level.

Either induced demand is the reason why highway construction does not work and densifying cities is pointless in terms of affordability, or there is something else going on.

Now it is true that at the scale of transportation demand and the necessity to commute by car in most of the United States, the amount of people who want to travel between points A and B are larger than the total capacity of basically any highway, even the Katy freeway in Houston, Texas which still gets congested despite its ridiculous size.

Leaving armchair urbanism and entering the realm of peer-reviewed research, it becomes clear that a main reason for traffic is not “induced demand” but in fact lane changes. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0378437123006155#:~:text=Such%20decisions%20can%20reduce%20the,to%20traffic%20congestion%20and%20accidents

This presents the real reason why two lane highways are often faster than wide interstate highways. As lane changes increase, people slow down to merge, making the people behind them slow down, leading to more and more congestion until the highway is turned to gridlock. It’s a combination of people driving below the speed limit and changing lanes which leads to congestion in actual scientific research. More lanes means more merging. More merging means slower speeds.

Not induced demand.

It is true that if every person in every car kept going at the same speed, there would be no traffic. But in reality, that is impossible.

Now, there are ways to reduce traffic. Fewer cars on the roads means fewer opportunities for people to change lanes. Fewer lane changes means less traffic.

So how do we end up with fewer cars on the road? There are several options, divided into supply side and demand side solutions.

Demand side solutions:

• Congestion charge. This will lead to fewer people choosing to drive. However, its impact on traffic is proportional to the availability of substitutes.
• Car tax. Fewer people driving means fewer cars on the road. However, like a congestion charge, its impact on traffic is proportional to the availability of substitutes.
• Substitution effect. Offer people substitutes to reduce the demand for the road which can include:
  • Living close to the office. As long as everyone in the house works in the same neighborhood and never changes jobs this can work great!
  • Bike trails. As long as everyone lives close enough to their offices that everyone can bike to work every day of the year this can work great!
  • Mass transit. It actually works.

Supply side solutions:

• Narrow the road. Fewer lanes, fewer merges, fewer problems.

Substitutes will be most functional as long as the substitute for driving is faster than driving. Once they reach equity they will stop making any significant impact on congestion. This means that if you invest in a substitute you should make sure it is better than the available alternatives. The better the substitute, the more demand it will attract.

The stronger argument

There is a much stronger argument against widening highways than misapplied basic economic theory.

Mixed traffic, highways or surface streets, carry far fewer people than any other mode of transportation.

https://transformative-mobility.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Passenger-Capacity-of-different-Transport-Modes_light-bg.pdf

Induced demand is a weak argument. The better argument is a simple cost/benefit ratio.

According to Transformative Mobility and other sources, highways carry 10% of the capacity of light rail, and 3% of the capacity of heavy rail.

To estimate the cost of building a highway, let’s use a real life example. The Washington State Department of Transportation is adding lanes to I-405 south of Bellevue. This is a 40 mile long project and it is going to cost $705 million, or over $17 million per mile. This is on par with the costs found on this website, which estimates $20 million per mile, or $32 million per kilometer, for a new highway.

The West Seattle Link which is a 4 mile long project is estimated to cost around $1.5 billion or $275 million per mile. Transit Costs Project puts it even higher at $649.50 million per kilometer. New York is even worse with the subway East Side Access expected to cost almost $4 billion per kilometer.

The San Francisco Central Subway is expected to cost $708 million per kilometer.

This is insane.

Eric Goldwyn is the expert on this topic. Explore the Transit Costs Project for details.

Now when we keep capacity in perspective, the appropriate costs for the following modes would be the following, if we make the inane assumption that $20 million per mile for a new highway is reasonable.

At $20 million per mile for a new highway the cost for a new highway is $10,000 per mile per passenger per hour. If we keep that cost constant we get the following table for each of these modes.

Mode	Passengers per hour	Cost per kilometer	Cost per mile
Highway	2000	$32,000,000.00	$20,000,000.00
Regular bus	5000	$80,000,000.00	$50,000,000.00
BRT single lane	9000	$144,000,000.00	$90,000,000.00
Cyclists	12000	$192,000,000.00	$120,000,000.00
Pedestrians	15000	$240,000,000.00	$150,000,000.00
Light rail	20000	$320,000,000.00	$200,000,000.00
BRT double lane	43000	$688,000,000.00	$430,000,000.00
Heavy rail	60000	$960,000,000.00	$600,000,000.00
Suburban rail	90000	$1,440,000,000.00	$900,000,000.00

These are the costs per mile which keep the cost on par compared to the already inflated cost of building a highway. A simple rule of thumb (whether it is good or not) is if the cost is higher than this, its a bad deal, but if it is lower than this, it is a good deal.

But no matter how you look at it, American costs for some transit projects are too high to justify the costs from a homo economicus perspective.

This is the insane thing.

I don’t care about the money as an end to itself. But if we were able to cut the cost of building transit in half, we could then theoretically double the amount of transit we are building. It also makes the case of building transit much weaker as opposed to highway expansion. At prices like these, highway expansion is sometimes the more economical option for increasing transit modal share!

It is absolutely insane that even though light rail is capable of carrying ten times the number of people as a highway, it can cost 20 times the cost of building a new highway in our current regulatory environment.

Heavy rail like the subway carries 30x the capacity of a highway yet costs 125x the cost of building a new highway.

Transportation costs are too damn high and just shoveling more money into the system will not fix it.

We need to bring costs down by making construction more efficient.

The argument I wanted to make was to say that expanding highways is not economical because they are low capacity and that it would be more cost-effective to just build rail rather than a new highway.

This is true in many cases, even in the United States. There are good projects in the United States which fit in the benchmarks in the table above. Basically every heavy rail project outside of New York city fits under this benchmark. These include:

• The San Francisco Central Subway: $708 million per km
• Los Angeles Purple Phase 3: $857 million
• Los Angeles Regional Connector: $611 million
• Los Angeles Purple Phase 1: $479 million
• Vancouver Broadway: $450 million
• Boston Green Line extension: $315.3 million
• Washington Silver Line Phase 2: $151
• Miami Metrorail extension to MIA: $129 million

But there are also projects which do not meet the benchmark:

• Seattle projects
• New York City subway projects
• Honolulu HART

It’s really just these three cities which are blowing their budgets above the baseline for matching the cost of building a highway in terms of capacity, at least from projects on the Transit Costs Project Database.

One issue I keep thinking is if we changed how bidding worked. Open bidding to foreign contractors. Each contractor sets a bid and proposal which is then accepted by the transit agency and/or city based on its costs and benefits. The contractor then must deliver the project as proposed at the costs laid out. If they underestimate the costs, they cover the difference. If they overestimate the costs, they are unlikely to get the bid. This bidding process in a free market will drive prices down, encourage innovation, and force contractors to stick to their word. If they don’t survey properly, don’t get things done on time, or other issues, they need full liability for that. Private contractors need to take the liability or the construction needs to be done in house.

I think that will be very effective in driving costs down.

But the funny thing is that even with outrageous spending costs, the cost of building transit is still cheaper than widening a highway outside of Seattle, Honolulu, and New York.

This is a factual argument based on real-life data which should be able to convince basically any politician regardless of their political affiliation.

It’s very simple. We should stop building highways because they are just not worth the money. It is usually cheaper to build rail, even in the United States.

In 1968, after a hundred years of operation, Pennsylvania Railroad merged with New York Central and the New York, New Haven and Hartford railroads to form a monopoly of train service in the northeast and Midwest.

8 years later it was bankrupt, and Conrail was formed. Conrail had a near monopoly on train service in the Midwest east of Chicago and the northeast. It was massive. It started to turn a profit within ten years and remained a for-profit government corporation until it was privatized in 1997. As Conrail was public it continued to make money, reinvest the money in the railroad, and service continued to improve.

But then it was privatized and progress has basically stopped since then.

I do not believe the rate setting was the primary factor in how railroads went bankrupt. That’s nonsense. Neither do I believe the Nazis building the Autobahn caused Deutsche Bahn to fail. I think a large part of it is due to incentive structure. The incentive of every private company is to maximize profit for shareholders. This usually works fine because of competition. If Microsoft were to stop investing in Azure, their customers would move to Amazon and Google, and Microsoft would lose a tremendous amount of money. But the issue for railroads is that competition is inevitably limited. If I want to send a shipment between Chicago and Fort Wayne I have only one option. I don’t care who owns the track between Stockton and Reno, it’s irrelevant. Even though there are highways between these cities, roads are more expensive when both trains and roads are run at their optimal level, leading trains to overcharge compared to their actual cost of doing business. Another negative side effect is that if a private corporation has the choice between non-urgent maintenance or sending a dividend to a shareholder, the private corporation is always going to spend money on the dividend, leaving maintenance for a later date. We saw this across the country in the first century of American railroading. Americans also correctly see sending taxpayer money to subsidize profitable corporations as distasteful and inefficient. Railroads should be able to pay their standard maintenance from their profits, just like any other company.

This led to a gradual decline in railroads as the quality of the track declined, leading to the bankruptcy of railroads in the 1970s. We had a choice, nationalize, or lose railroads in the Northeast and Midwest. We chose to nationalize.

Conrail was a success story. It turned unprofitable companies which would not invest enough into maintenance into a successful and profitable corporation. Then the federal government sold it off. There has been no expansion of passenger rail in the Midwest on former Conrail tracks since then. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Amtrak_routes#Midwest

Neither has privatization been a boon for railroading. In 2002 around 2.3 trillion tonne-kilometers of freight were transported across the United States, and 2.1 trillion tonne-kilometers were transported in 2023. Basically unchanged.

If that’s not enough, America doesn’t even lead the world in terms of freight tons carried once we control for area. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1UjzVlCG2pOCNeuvcT0xEUIjKktV3bt_h7TC6IHKSXMc/edit?usp=sharing

But we do seriously lag behind our peers when it comes to passenger rail.

That’s the reality of the privatization of public utilities.

What if

Now let’s imagine if instead of privatizing Conrail we had instead kept it in public ownership and used the profits to reinvest into itself to the present day.

Images are from Wikipedia

Here is an incomplete list of routes we could have added on just from the tracks controlled by Conrail:

• Cincinnati – Dayton – Columbus – Cleveland
• Chicago – Fort Wayne
• St. Louis – Indianapolis – Dayton – Columbus – Pittsburgh – Philadelphia
• Rochester – Montreal
• Buffalo – Binghampton – New York/Philadelphia
• Detroit – Toledo – Dayton – Cincinnati
• New York – Chicago via northern Pennsylvania, cutting out hours from Lake Shore Limited.

And many many more.

When I took the train to the west coast in November I noticed the track which was former Conrail track was better maintained than the track leading west out of Chicago. The train was faster, and it was clearly in better shape than the track which had never been public.

Not only that, but if we had worked on electrifying the track, straightening, and generally improving the track further it would have benefited not just passenger rail but also freight, as opposed to the stagnation of American freight we have seen for the last 25 years. Increasing capacity while better safety standards for railroads in this most populous region of the country would be significantly beneficial.

It would reduce federal subsidies to private railroads, giving them the option of either being profitable and paying their own maintenance, or being bought out by Conrail.

This would have improved railroading for the entire country and Conrail should never have been sold off.

A British tourist is currently being wrongfully incarcerated in Tacoma, Washington. She was doing a 4 month backpacking trip up the West Coast, and then attempted to enter Canada to finish up her trip and then was wrongfully denied entry. I don’t know if it was due to “lack of funds” or not having an ETA, but Canada claimed it was due to not having a correct visa, whatever that means. She then tried to reenter the United States and due to an executive order was incarcerated.

This is also not an isolated incident. A German tourist is being indefinitely detained in California after being falsely accused of attempting to work in the United States.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/03/ice-german-tourist-detained-immigration

There is so much to unpack with these incidents, and so much that needs to change.

First of all, the requirement to get ETAs (henceforth known as eVisas) needs to be dropped by Canada, the United States, United Kingdom, and the European Union. They do not improve security and lead to situations like this. The post does not say exactly why Becky Burke was denied entry to Canada, I can only assume this is because she rightfully knew that she did not need an eVisa because she had her eVisa for the United States which works for Canada as well as long as you are crossing the land border. I am sure the meat head stamp monkey at the Canada border did not understand this and denied her entry. This is what these eVisas do. They are confusing to people and border police, they are expensive, they are unnecessary. They should be abolished and visa free travel should resume between democracies.

The second thing is that it is one thing if someone who comes across the border and works illegally. I understand why they will be deported. But you cannot just accuse someone of attempting to work illegally when there is no such evidence of them doing such behavior. You need to give them an opportunity to follow the law instead of baselessly accusing them of crimes which they have not committed, and then incarcerating people for crimes which they never did.

Both of these cases come down to the difference between democracy and authoritarianism.

The time of milquetoast moderates needs to be over. As right wing parties have won across the free world over the last couple years, in the US, Germany, New Zealand, and Italy, it is clear we need to elect progressive liberal candidates who will put solving problems ahead of the feelings of radicals.

We clearly need immigration reform. Here are my proposals.

1. The United States, Canada, European Union, and United Kingdom abolish eVisas, reinstating visa-free travel between democracies. If you are a democracy and are not a state sponsor of terrorism, there is no reason why your citizens cannot be given visa-free travel to our regions.
2. People incarcerated in immigration prisons need to be given a lawyer and a court date as prescribed by the US constitution.
3. Denial at the border for someone who can enter visa-free needs to have a clear reason and there needs to be a way to appeal the decision in all of these countries. This is the difference between democracy and a police state.
4. The President does not have the right to unilaterally change immigration law. Those changes need to go through congress.
5. Even if the President’s 30 day registration crap was constitutional, (it is not) it was applied ex post facto in Ms. Burke’s case. This is a violation of her rights.
6. Farm workers need a pathway to work in the United States legally. George W. Bush destroyed that visa.
7. The United States and Canada should open our border as soon as the United States gets our homicide epidemic under control.

Our immigration systems are broken, and the systems in the European Union are now being broken by a radical right-wing fringe which is following in the footsteps of George W. Bush.

The only radical option is to continue the status quo.

Trifectas are an interesting feature of bicameral Presidential systems. In theory they allow a President to pass a lot of legislation quickly, depending on the power of the President. They are a demonstration of the political skill of both the President and their party, allowing rapid changes of the country with minimal opposition.

The Republican Party was formed in 1854 following the Kansas-Nebraska Act as a result of the dissolution of the Whig Party. The Whigs had been relatively anti-slavery and had most of their strength in the North. They formed only one trifecta in history, in 1841 under Presidents William Henry Harrison and John Tyler. Despite the Whig Party being the relatively anti-slavery party, John Tyler supported slavery and is regarded as one of the worst presidents in American history. He lost congress in the midterms and didn’t even get the nomination from his party in 1844. He was a failure.

The Whig Party never regained a trifecta again, dissolving in 1854.

The Republican Party controlled a trifecta from 1863-1867, during the Civil War when the Confederacy was out of congress. This allowed President Lincoln to lead America to victory.

Andrew Johnson despite being Lincoln’s Vice President turned out to be a Democrat, but Republicans maintained control of congress until 1875. During this era they were able to pass laws around Reconstruction. President Grant was the first Republican to win a majority of the popular vote twice.

There was a brief Republican trifecta in 1889 under President Benjamin Harrison, which passed some important civil rights, anti-trust, and civil service reform legislation.

Republicans maintained a trifecta from 1897 to 1911, as part of President McKinley’s political machine. He was an incredibly popular president, leading America into the Spanish-American War and passing tariffs to protect big business. While President Harrison focused on pulling in monopolies, McKinley set them free. He made speeches about civil rights, but didn’t do much to alleviate the suffering of African Americans in the South. The focus was on protecting American businesses from foreign competition. McKinley is the most important President we hardly ever talk about. Theodore Roosevelt focused on trust-busting like Benjamin Harrison, and then Taft turned the party back to the right in McKinley’s image.

Republicans had a trifecta from 1921 until the Great Depression. This is the last time the Republicans managed to hold onto a trifecta for more than a single term. This firmly established the Republican Party as the party of big business.

President Eisenhower had a trifecta for his first two years, focusing on anti-Communist legislation and spurring the growth of small businesses. Eisenhower was the last Republican to win a majority of the popular vote twice and have a trifecta.

President Bush had a trifecta from 2003-2007. He had the slimmest possible trifecta for part of the time in 2001 and 2002. He focused on reducing civil liberties, tax cuts for the rich, visa restrictions, restricting abortion, and other conservative measures.

Trump has had two trifectas so far, at the beginning of each of his terms. The only major bill he passed in his first trifecta was a tax cut for the rich. The current trifecta is so new it remains to be seen what will actually pass through his narrow majorities.

By studying trifectas we are able to see the evolution of the Republican Party from an anti-slavery unionist party to a socially conservative economic nationalist party. William McKinley is particularly responsible for the shift to big business, while George W. Bush is very responsible for their hard turn to the right on social issues.

How the mighty have fallen.

Which presidents were the most effective based on pure results?

I’m going to empirically measure this based on election results. Categories are based on the following:

• How many terms?
• How many congresses with a trifecta?
• Average percentage of the popular vote?

This list does not judge based on the morality of the decisions the president made, only in the president’s ability to gain and keep power.

I scored every president with the following rubric:

• 1 point per term
• 1 point per congress with a trifecta all the way through
• For popular vote:
  • If the president did not win the popular vote: 0 points
  • Won a plurality, but not a majority, of the popular vote as Vice President: 0.25 points
  • Won a plurality, but not a majority, of the popular vote: 0.5 points
  • Won a majority of the popular vote as Vice President: 0.5 points
  • Won a majority of the popular vote: 1 point

Sum these numbers for each president and that is the Presidents power score.

For tie breakers, more terms > popular vote status > congresses

Starting with the most insignificant presidents to the most important president in history:

One term, no trifecta, never won popular vote

John Quincy Adams never won the popular vote and never enjoyed a trifecta. Despite this he was way ahead of his time in terms of policy.

Rutherford Hayes served only one term, never had a trifecta, and never won a plurality of the popular vote. Hayes didn’t even run in 1880.

Gerald Ford is the only president who did not appear on the presidential ballot before serving, and he never enjoyed a trifecta. He lost his reelection campaign.

Hayes and Ford were the least charismatic and forgettable presidents in history. 1 point.

Former Vice President, won a plurality but not a majority of the popular vote as VP candidate, no trifecta

These two presidents succeeded their predecessors who had died in office. They never ran for President on their own merit. They received a plurality but not a majority of the vote as the Vice Presidential candidate. 1.25 points

• Millard Fillmore
• Chester Alan Arthur

Former Vice Presidents, won popular vote as VP candidate, no trifecta

These two presidents succeeded their predecessors who had died in office. They never ran for President on their own merit. 1.5 points

• Andrew Johnson

One Term, no trifecta, won a plurality but not a majority of the popular vote

A handful of Presidents have served only one term or less and never had a trifecta. They are forgettable or disastrous. 1.5 points

• Zachary Taylor
• James Buchanan
• James Garfield

One Term, no trifecta, won popular vote

2 points

• George H. W. Bush

Former Vice President, 2 years of trifecta

John Tyler had a trifecta for his first two years. 2.5 points.

One term, 2 years of trifecta, lost popular vote

Benjamin Harrison never won a majority of the popular vote, but they did enjoy two years of trifecta under their presidency, so they did better than Hayes and Ford. 2 points.

One term, 2 years of trifecta, won a plurality but not a majority of the popular vote

James K Polk receives 2.5 points

One term, 4 years of trifecta, no popular vote

John Adams receives 3 points.

One term, 2 years of trifecta, won popular vote

3 points

• William Henry Harrison, in his defense, he was dead in a month.
• Franklin Pierce
• William Howard Taft
• Herbert Hoover
• Joe Biden

Two terms, no popular vote, 2 years of trifecta

George Washington receives 3 points.

One term, 4 years of trifecta, won a plurality but not a majority of the popular vote

John Fitzgerald Kennedy receives 3.5 points

Two terms, no trifecta, won a plurality but not a majority once, won popular vote once

Richard Nixon receives 3.5 points

One term, 4 years of trifecta, won popular vote

From our purely results driven calculation, these 5 presidents had only one term, but they were popular enough for their party to win in the midterm. 4 points

• Martin van Buren
• Warren Harding
• James Earl Carter

Two terms, won a plurality but not a majority of the vote twice, 4 years of trifecta

Grover Cleveland receives 4 points

Two terms, Won the popular vote twice, no trifecta

Ronald Reagan receives 4 points

One term, won a majority once, won a majority as VP, 4 years of trifecta

Calvin Coolidge receives 4.5 points

Two terms, won a majority once, only a plurality once, 2 years of trifecta

Bill Clinton receives 4.5 points

Two terms, won a plurality but not a majority once, lost the popular vote once, 4 years of trifecta

Donald Trump receives 4.5 points, so far

Two terms, Lost the popular vote at least once, won the popular vote once, 4 years of trifecta

George W. Bush receives 5 points

Two terms, won a plurality but not a majority of the popular vote twice, 4 years of trifecta

Woodrow Wilson receives 5 points

Two terms, won the popular vote twice, 2 years of trifecta

5 points

• Dwight Eisenhower
• Barack Obama

Two terms, won a plurality but not a majority of the popular vote as Vice President, won a majority

Lyndon Baines Johnson receives 5.25 points.

Two terms, won the popular vote once, 4 years of trifecta

Harry Truman receives 5.5 points

Two terms, won a majority of the the popular vote once, won a plurality of the popular vote but not a majority once, 4 years of trifecta

Abraham Lincoln receives 5.5 points

Two terms, no popular vote, 8 years of trifecta

From the Era of Good Feelings, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe score 6 points each.

Two terms, won the popular vote twice, 6 years of trifecta

7 points each

Andrew Jackson was a major political force for his era, even if many of his decisions were major human rights violations.

Ulysses S. Grant kept a trifecta until being a victim of the 6 year itch.

William McKinley was a major political force for his era, winning the popular vote twice and having a constant trifecta before his assassination in 1901.

Two terms, won the popular vote once, 8 years of trifecta

Theodore Roosevelt is similar to Truman, differing only in how he always had a trifecta, putting him slightly higher in our list. He receives 7.5 points

Four terms, won the popular vote four times, 14 years of trifecta

You knew he had to be on top, the only president to win the popular vote four times, Hitler’s arch-enemy, defender of the poor, builder of infrastructure, undoubtedly the most influential president in the history of these United States, his face is on the dime, he receives a whopping 15 points by my rubric, the most important president in history could only be:

Franklin Delano Roosevelt

 

Download the source as an xlsx file here: http://www.stidmatt.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/presidential_influence.xlsx

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puerto_Rican_government-debt_crisis

Puerto Rico experienced a debt crisis in 2014, and there are some major misunderstandings about its causes.

First of all, the triple tax-exempt bonds made the situation better, not worse. By being triple-subsidized Puerto Rico was able to offer a lower interest rate compared to competitors which saved the commonwealth money. The debt crisis would have been worse without the triple tax-exemption.

The increase in the debt burden restriction made the situation worse in the long run.

The cessation of federal subsidies made the situation in Puerto Rico worse. Puerto Rico has to deal with the Jones Act which increases shipping costs. Removing the federal subsidies means companies have to deal with higher shipping costs and no major benefits to doing business in Puerto Rico compared to the rest of the country. The cessation of federal subsidies with the elimination of the Jones Act might have been sustainable, but no subsidies with the massive increase of costs from the Jones Act was a death sentence to the economy.

On top of this, local newspapers have reported the commonwealth has had trouble collecting tax revenue, causing a deficit.

If this wasn’t bad enough, the federal government does not give Puerto Rico the same level of funding for their Medicaid program as states do per capita. This leads to doctors fleeing the island and increases strain on the territorial budget.

If that wasn’t enough, out of a $13 billion budget, $3.7 billion are going to “Custody Accounts” held by the OMB and Department of the Treasury.  Source

All of this has led to Puerto Rico having a larger budget than one would expect creating a damned if you do, damned if you don’t situation.

If Puerto Rico prioritized raising tax revenue during a recession, that will be a pro-cyclical policy and only make the recession worse. They have been given no choice given how they cannot default on their debt and do not control their currency.

If Puerto Rico prioritized cutting government expenditure that will reduce expenses in health care and education, putting the territory further into poverty, creating a debt spiral.

Neither of these will solve the problem.

The real solution to Puerto Rico’s crisis is the following:

1. Repeal the Jones Act so manufacturing from Puerto Rico is competitive.
2. The cessation of Federal subsidies while maintaining the Jones Act is what put Puerto Rico into the situation they are in. The federal government needs to absolve Puerto Rico of their debt.
3. Puerto Rico needs to improve tax collection so they can cover future expenditures.
4. For purposes of Medicaid, Puerto Rico needs to be treated as a state, even if they are not granted statehood.

It’s pretty obvious to me that the major point of Trump’s agenda is to ensure Russia colonizes Ukraine again.
NATO has traditionally waited for America’s lead on security issues since we are the largest member. However, we comprise less than 50% of NATO’s population and less than 50% of NATO’s military expenditure.
It looks to me like Canada is handling this right by rightfully dismissing my government and if Ukraine gets large arms deals with no strings attached from the other 31 member states of NATO, then Putin’s attack on our alliance will fail.
Once the US has a good president again we will be forced to examine our relationship with the rest of our alliances it forces it to the front of the debate for the first time since the 1940s.
Once we start thinking about it again Americans will have to consider who we ally ourselves with
The Bush administration turned my generation to the left overall. Trump is now doing it for people born during Bush’s administration without passing any major laws short of a tax cut for billionaires, Trump’s impact in the long term will be insignificant.
That’s what I’m seeing so far.

Trump will end up being far less damaging than Bush has been for the last quarter century when all is said and done.

Trump will not last forever and in 4 years America will have a new president. The next president will have almost 30 years of damage to reverse regarding our relationships with all our allies.

• Clarify that we are a NATO member and a Rio Pact member. These alliances are central to American security and irreplacable.
• Rescind visa policies towards democracies and reinstate visa-free travel to the United States.
• Make a clear and irrefutable statement that we support the accession of Ukraine, Moldova, and Georgia into NATO.
• Continue the policy of constraint through trade towards China. Make China utterly dependent on trade to ensure they will not step out of line without seeing an immediate and severe economic depression.
• Reinstate and reinforce American aid efforts around the world. These are successful and improving people’s lives and are effective counter-terrorism.
• Reinstate work visas for foreign farm workers in the United States.

There is a lot of work to be done to not just rescind the damage of the last two Republican presidents but also to move forward toward deeper integration.

The best way to counter the extreme Republican party is not to seek unity with it but to move the Overton window away from their extreme views.

We tried moderate policies and to approach the Republicans under the Biden administration. The policy not only failed but led to the best performance for a Republican candidate under a Democratic President since 1980. Unity as a value does not work.

The path forward is a clear policy moving America towards a brighter future, away from the failed Republican policies, and implementing more complex effective treaties that bind us to our allies and make it politically impossible for a candidate like George Bush to ever be elected again.

There are several steps to designing. your system of government and most countries use a unique form of government. Out of 136 democracies listed on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_electoral_systems_by_country 106 countries use a completely unique system used by no other country.

So using only the features currently used by a government, and only considering democracies, here are the questions you need to ask:

Federal or Unitary

How much power are you going to give to regions versus held by the central government of the country? This usually correlates with population, you can be very democratic with either system.

Head of State and government

Who will your head of state be? President, constitutional monarch, or someone else?

Will your head of government be a prime minister or held by a president who is also head of state?

This leaves you with three options:

• Parliamentary (prime minister selected by parliament)
• President
• Constitutional monarchy
• Semi-presidential

Election system

How will the head of state be elected if they are not a constitutional monarch?

How will parliament be elected?

Popular options:

• Ranked voting (instant runoff or single transferable vote)
• Mixed-member proportional
• Party-list
• Two-round system
• First-past-the-post
• Appointed by state legislature
• Appointed by monarch

Total possibilities

Using only these factors, how many possible unique government structures are there?

2 * 4 * 8 * 8 = 512 possible combinations of election and government systems.