Things that would help everyone, regardless of income, without depending on a radical restructuring of entitlement spending, that seem like things startups could actually do:
* Equally credible alternatives to university education for professions that don't involve students shouldering $100k-$200k in debt based on decisions they have to make when they're 18 years old.
* Empirical, blinded, skills-assessment based turnkey hiring solutions that outperform interviews for non-technology roles like marketing, purchasing, &c, so that people who avail themselves of alternatives to universities can get good jobs regardless of social signals.
* Tools that make it possible for companies that today exploit the 1099 labor classification to cost-effectively offer benefits and handle taxes, to make on-demand employment legal and fair while remaining competitive.
* Alternatives to patient-present doctor-mediated health care to cover the 80% case in which doctors are expensive overkill; some combination of telemedicine and nurse-practitioners.
* Technology-mediated services that drastically improve outcomes in K12 education.
* Modern logistics-driven solutions for inexpensive high-quality child care.
* Products that offer serious competition for incumbents in the financial sector to bid down the 7-10% of the economy taken by financial services.
* Tools to improve engagement with local elections and make it easier for people to take flyers on standing for election.
* Modernized fee and fine collection for things like traffic and parking tickets, which currently default out to "charging minimum wage workers $2,000 to get the boot off the car on which they happen to owe 3 parking tickets".
* Similarly: a way to do things like enroll a credit card with your local government to automatically pay fines and fees at their reduced early-payment rate --- which is something you might be able to do without getting permission from local governments.
Later: I added some things
* Equally credible alternatives to university education for professions that don't involve students shouldering $100k-$200k in debt based on decisions they have to make when they're 18 years old.
* Empirical, blinded, skills-assessment based turnkey hiring solutions that outperform interviews for non-technology roles like marketing, purchasing, &c, so that people who avail themselves of alternatives to universities can get good jobs regardless of social signals.
* Tools that make it possible for companies that today exploit the 1099 labor classification to cost-effectively offer benefits and handle taxes, to make on-demand employment legal and fair while remaining competitive.
* Alternatives to patient-present doctor-mediated health care to cover the 80% case in which doctors are expensive overkill; some combination of telemedicine and nurse-practitioners.
* Technology-mediated services that drastically improve outcomes in K12 education.
* Modern logistics-driven solutions for inexpensive high-quality child care.
* Products that offer serious competition for incumbents in the financial sector to bid down the 7-10% of the economy taken by financial services.
* Tools to improve engagement with local elections and make it easier for people to take flyers on standing for election.
* Modernized fee and fine collection for things like traffic and parking tickets, which currently default out to "charging minimum wage workers $2,000 to get the boot off the car on which they happen to owe 3 parking tickets".
* Similarly: a way to do things like enroll a credit card with your local government to automatically pay fines and fees at their reduced early-payment rate --- which is something you might be able to do without getting permission from local governments.
Later: I added some things