Financial Tweaks to Make the World Better

A recent Planet Money episode asks the question: what small tweaks would make our world a lot better?

They’re keeping their tweaks within the realm of reality — one tweak, for example, is to have phone keypads and 10-key pads run the numbers in the same order — so we don’t get anything fun like “what if cows farted something besides methane gas?” (Acknowledging the small role cow farts currently play in climate change, I am currently trying to figure out what else cows could fart that might be better. I mean, you don’t want them farting pure oxygen or anything.)

Take a listen to the podcast (or read the transcript), and then let’s talk tweaks:

I like the proposed idea that the IRS could pull information from your W2s and fill out your 1040 tax form automatically, but that seems like it would only serve a certain group of taxpayers — people who didn’t move for their jobs, who didn’t have educational expenses, who aren’t first-time homebuyers, etc. If nothing happened in your financial life that couldn’t fit on a W2, great!

Nobody suggests creating a dollar coin, which is a shame (and yes, I know we’ve tried the dollar coin thing a few times); nor do they suggest eliminating the penny. They also don’t suggest tweaks like “every checking account automatically pulls 5 percent from each deposit and puts it into a savings account, and you can opt out, but we know most people won’t.”

After seeing Last Week Tonight’s recent episode on food waste, I could also support a tweak like “pushing back the sell-by date on food products by three days.” Or maybe “paying farmers to distribute produce seconds (aka slightly blemished fruits and vegetables) to food-insecure families.”

What tweaks would you like to see, and how do you think they might change the world? And is it too late on the phone pad/10-key pad thing, or can we make that change happen too?

Photo credit: paulkhor

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