No taxation without representation. Stop charging the inhabitants for any and all U.S. taxes. Hell, decolonize and let them have their freedom and independence.
The territories can at any point take a (democratic and non-contestable) vote for their sovereignty. If a majority decided to become a sovereign entity, it's very unlikely the United States would not grant them it. They can also do the same for statehood, but that's a bit more complicated; even so, before 2000, a majority of the United States was pro allowing Puerto Rico statehood, if they decided it. Now....well, good luck given political infighting.
Your option, instead, is forcing millions of American citizens, against their will, into a sovereign situation that they might not be prepared for. Versus letting them make their own choice.
I think your comment is extremely ignorant to obstacles intentionally crafted to prevent those kinds of things in reality. That political infighting does not exist by itself. Another part is that half of the island is by now dependent on a member of family being in the Navy, housing prices are unmanageable, they rely on food stamps etc etc. To which you are saying - why do they want independence then when they're not prepared for it - but this situation was created outside of their control, and they now don't have means to "prepare for it". Also, you might have skipped the part where their draft resolutions are getting just automatically ignored/denied by UN at every assembly.
I doubt a majority of Guam residents want independence at this point. Being part of the US is economically useful, compared to being a small independent island.
But yeah, statehood would solve the representation issue.
Talking about proportionality and the Senate is like talking about fine dining and McDonalds.
Although, oddly enough it seemed to be a small bulwark _against_ extremism in the last election since you can't gerrymander a Senate race. So that was a pleasant surprise.
As a NYer the fact others get 40 times my representation is irksome though.
Or maybe just update the system to match the new realities of a 50+-state America?
"Every idea of proportion and every rule of fair representation conspire to condemn a principle, which gives to Rhode Island an equal weight in the scale of power with Massachusetts, or Connecticut, or New York; and to Deleware an equal voice in the national deliberations with Pennsylvania, or Virginia, or North Carolina. Its operation contradicts the fundamental maxim of republican government, which requires that the sense of the majority should prevail. Sophistry may reply, that sovereigns are equal, and that a majority of the votes of the States will be a majority of confederated America. But this kind of logical legerdemain will never counteract the plain suggestions of justice and common-sense. It may happen that this majority of States is a small minority of the people of America; and two thirds of the people of America could not long be persuaded, upon the credit of artificial distinctions and syllogistic subtleties, to submit their interests to the management and disposal of one third. The larger States would after a while revolt from the idea of receiving the law from the smaller. To acquiesce in such a privation of their due importance in the political scale, would be not merely to be insensible to the love of power, but even to sacrifice the desire of equality. It is neither rational to expect the first, nor just to require the last. The smaller States, considering how peculiarly their safety and welfare depend on union, ought readily to renounce a pretension which, if not relinquished, would prove fatal to its duration."
