The Orange Terrorist, in his inauguration speech today, said he will end US decline. Sorry, Dim Don, you, more than anyone else, represent US decline. Here are some things that will actually reverse the things your voters have been complaining about
Raise the minimum wage. Lots of evidence (Kruger and Card, etc), proves that at least for moderate changes, raising the minimum wage helps the economy, and there's essentially no evidence that it hurts, even for substantial raises.
Increase taxes on the rich. From before the great depression until the 1960s, the top marginal tax rate was above 90% and even after Kennedy's cuts, the top rate was over 70%. This does not seem to have hurt the US economy at all. Every single case of a tax cut for the rich supposedly improving the economy can be debunked. For example, Reagan's 1983 cut caused people (mostly businesses) to change the timing of expenses to optimize for the tax change, but after the dust had settled, the economy returned to the mean it had been on before. It's also important to realize that the extremely high tax rates were only a marginal rate. For example, in 1955, a married couple earning over $400K owed 91% of their earnings over $400K to the IRS. A $400K income in 1955 is equivalent to $4.7M today. But this is only a marginal rate. The median family income in 1955 was $4400, and the tax on that was $940. Our $400K earner is actually only paying about a 70% effective rate.
Laffer and others argue that there is a threshold tax rate beyond which, there is no incentive to invest or expand businesses. Lots of research has been done on this, and there's no evidence at all of such an effect below about 70% effective tax rate. It's important to realize that when we had these extremely high tax rates, that all of the people who were paying them were getting huge no-bid contracts from the government. You don't hear much about Howard Hughes and Henry Kaiser trying to lower tax rates. You hear a lot about them trying to avoid realizing dividends and gains so they wouldn't get taxed, and making big investments and loans so they could call that an expense.
All income should be taxed at the same rate. Today, long term capital gains and a few other things are taxed at a much lower rate. I think the right way to do this is to exempt all income below some level, appropriate for where the person lives, and tax all income above that at the same rate. The marginal tax rate system was an attempt to do that, but I think it's outlived it's usefulness. I'm ok with long term gains being adjusted by a CPI correction. 40 years ago, this would have been painful to compute, but nobody does their taxes by hand anymore. The computer can figure it out.
Effectively ban non-productive profiteering. The value of the economy is the value of all the goods and services in it. If it is possible to make money without providing a service, this is a drain on the economy. Examples of this include high-velocity trading, private equity, hedge funds, and several others. Insurance has become largely a scam, especially health insurance. Some of these things do provide an actual service, but the drag on the economy far outweighs their Return on Investment. Countries which have nationalized health care pay less than half what the US does.
I'm pretty sure we could devise a scheme which taxes businesses at a rate inversely proportional to the number of employees. So a private equity or high speed trading firm employs about 20 people and brings in a $billion a year, they should be taxed at 99%. If a factory employs 10,000 people and brings in that same $billion, they should be taxed at 10 or 20%. If a small shop employs 20 people and brings in $250K, it should be taxed at $10% or less.
Tax for-profit churches. If a church engages in politics, proselytizing or any of a host of other for profit operations, they should lose their tax exempt status. If a church (or any other organization) sponsors a food bank or other actual charity, they should get an exemption for that, but not for funding the preacher's gold mines in Africa. A significant fraction of the Orange Terrorists support comes from for-profit churches telling their congregants that opposing him is a threat to our freedom. The truth is pretty close to the opposite. Simply taxing them will make a lot of them go away.
Support and encourage unions. The time that America worked best was the 30 years after WWII. At that time, about 30% of workers were in a trade union. Trade unions give workers bargaining power which most workers lack.
Build/Rebuild infrastructure. This employs a lot of people. The ROI on infrastructure is extremely high.
Adjust the zoning laws to make sure there's profitable low-income housing and healthy food everywhere. For example, places like South Lake Union here in Seattle used to be a warren of moderate priced apartments. The rules need to make sure that the moderate income people who work downtown have a place to live. Tax the bejezus out of luxury condos, etc., and make it cheap to have low-cost restaurants and other shops.
I'm a fan of transit, but we cannot make people use transit by making the alternative miserable. Some people cannot ride the bus to work--a repairman, a consultant who works a different place every day, etc.
Separate run-of-the-mill banking from Investment Banking. Until it was overturned in 1996, the Glass Steagal act gave protections to ordinary banks, called "Savings and Loans", including federally insured deposits. They also did regular inspections of banks and closed them if they violated certain rules. This meant that for the period that Glass-Steagall was in effect, S&Ls gave a reliable 5% or so interest and nobody lost everything. Investment banks wanted the government protection, without the limitations, so they convinced congress to overturn this sensible protection. 11 years later, the economy collapsed. Banking and the building industry are very important. Nobody was making big profits out of S&Ls unless thy were scammers, but it kept a huge part of the economy healthy.
We need to make it as cheap and healthy as possible to be poor. Whether this is Universal Basic Income, Housing subsidies, or something else, we can't have poor people starving or homeless.
In the same way, we need to make sure that everyone has a safety net. Rich people claim that only rich people start businesses. Historically, this is not true. The people who start businesses are in a situation where they know that failure doesn't make their family destitute. Whether that's extended family, government programs or something else is beside the point. At the present time, this does mean that only rich people can start businesses
