A Call To Action
Wake up, America! How bad does it have to get before people who do know better come out of where ever they have been hiding, rise up and demand meaningful change? Fear not, you cowards and malingerers, if you continue to do nothing (talking, writing, presenting clever arguments, and other typical “Liberal” tactics are a waste of time – only organized action has any chance of making a difference) I can assure you that things are going to get worse. A lot worse.
First, there will never be enough good jobs again. Never! The economic models that got us into this mess will never get us out of it. As Einstein said, doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result is the definition of insanity. More about new economic models later.
Second, the opposition is getting organized, and is taking action. The Tea Party is only the beginning. As history has demonstrated repeatedly, ignorance and insecurity are exceptionally fertile ground for the worst kind of demagoguery. And both are pandemic in America right now. Frightened, angry children everywhere in apparently adult bodies. And no dearth of dangerous demagogues eager to exploit them.
So far, they are still a minority, no matter how they may dominate the 24-hour News Media. But the absence of strong, motivated, organized opposition portends disaster, for our country, if not for the planet. Our Founding Fathers, and the Philosophers who inspired them, recognized the risks inherent in democracy. They tried, while creating our Constitution, to prevent the two greatest risks: the tyranny of an unenlightened majority, and the corruption of our Representatives by a Commercial Society. Their worst fears have been realized. Our putative democracy is on life support, and there is no “Living Will.”
The last time we were in the throes of a crisis like this one, in the 1930's, during the Great Depression, we had the exceptionally good fortune to be in the hands of a leader who was prepared to do whatever was necessary to get us out of it. FDR was not a “small d” democrat. He was a benevolent dictator, right out of Plato's Republic, and his goal was to save Capitalism from its own stupidity. And he succeeded. He did it by using his powers of persuasion, his eloquence, and the new technology provided by the wireless radio to galvanize the American people, by saying, in effect, “You know what we need, and we're going to do it together, whether they like it or not.” Lest there be any doubt, “they” were Congress and the Supreme Court, and the Federal Reserve, and the Financial Titans who got us into the mess.
Let's look honestly at our present predicament. If your family or mine could not provide basic necessities nor pay our debts, we would be forced to file for Bankruptcy. Well, my city of San Francisco (and many others around the country), the state of California (and many other states), and the United States of America have been starved by the anti-tax policies of the last three decades into a state that can only be described as Bankruptcy. All that is missing is the resolution. And, how is Bankruptcy “resolved?” By wiping out debt. Period. The result is that usurious creditors end up holding toilet paper. Then maybe they can try to find a job. Clipping coupons and living off interest is not a “job.” It is parasitic behavior. The truth is that the whole world would be better off if all debt, personal, corporate and public, were summarily eradicated. What a relief! You mean our income can be used to meet basic human needs? Now there's a concept! Of course, the consequence is that no new debt can be created, if not forever, at least for a good many years.
If this seems a little drastic, consider this: we are also morally bankrupt. Millions of people, including children, for God's sake, in the world's richest country go to bed hungry every night.Millions more have little or no access to even minimal healthcare. Our educational system has been cut to the bone, teachers must spend all of their time teaching children how to take uniform tests of math and reading abilities, subjects like history, social studies, art and music get short shrift. Ladies and Gentlemen, the business if education is not to shove facts down the throats of children so they can spit them up on command, it is to teach them how to think, how to develop and use intelligent judgement.
So, ultimately, we are both economically and morally bankrupt. Is there anyone else out there ready to do something? If you are, let me know.
Friday, February 12, 2010
The Real State of the Union
The Real State of the Union
My fellow Americans, I must begin by apologizing to you for failing to keep my promises to you, and for choosing the wrong people to lead us out of the disaster I inherited from my predecessor. While I have no excuse, you should understand that my elitist education and recent political career have unfortunately isolated me from the realities plaguing the lives of ordinary Americans. My task this evening is to assure you the I have gotten the message – that I will henceforth dedicate my life and my presidency to the task of restoring our democracy and the quality of life for everyone, not just for the privileged few.
I am sure you realize that this will not be easy, for either of us. For openers, though, I must insist, in the strongest possible terms, that it is time for the American public to stop acting and thinking like frightened, angry children. We can only find our way out of this dilemma as adults. Adults understand that they are responsible for cleaning up their own messes; they understand that risk is a part of life, that no government can guarantee that they will always be protected from the determined efforts of suicidal enemies; they understand that freedom carries awesome responsibilities, including the need to be fully informed and rationally motivated by that knowledge; they understand that liberty can never be license to do whatever one wishes without proper concern for the consequences of our behavior on others.
Most of you know that I worked for some time in Community Organizing. One of the fundamental tenets of that activity is that we are always trying to construct a type of social structure; like most structures, this one has a front door and a back door. We might say that, in Community Organizing, people with needs (some quite urgent and even desperate) come in through the front door and people with values (primarily, those which result in economic and social justice) come in through the back door. Now, my personal belief is that, when we strip away misinformation and fearful generalizations, we will find that a very large majority of Americans can be counted in one or both of those two groups. Again, those with needs and those with human values constitute a large majority. Lest there be any doubt, however, there are Americans who are not in either group. Since I have no concern about offending them, I will categorically state right now that those people have social values that would embarrass a hyena, and there is no need to include them in our discussion. They need to be marginalized and rendered powerless, one way or another, if our beloved country, humanity itself and even the planet are to have any future worth contemplating.
All of which begs the question: what should we be doing? If we can galvanize and organize this majority, what might we ask them to support? For openers, we need to understand that the economic models that got us into this condition will never get us out of it. I began by apologizing for choosing the wrong people to lead us back from the brink of disaster. The reason they are the “wrong people” is that they have spent their lives operating in a system which has outlived its usefulness. You might say, if you'll forgive the bad pun, that they were and are invested in it. If you look at that word, it's obvious that someone who is “in a vest' might well have difficulty “seeing” well. We have a saying, “he was invested in the idea, couldn't see the adverse consequences.” Yet, as Einstein once noted, doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is the definition of insanity.
So, the first thing we need is new economic models. Interestingly enough, the field of Economics has recently (finally!) been expanding its vision, having less emphasis on the “rational actor” and the self-regulating nature of unregulated markets, and spending more time and attention on the irrational, emotional elements of economic behavior that don't submit so easily to reductionist formulas. Now, remember, I am talking about new economic models, which excludes old ideas like communism and socialism. Big anything is potentially bad news. Big government is as vulnerable to corruption and incompetence as big business.
Speaking of Big Government, the issue is not, and should never be the size of government. What we should be debating is the proper role of government, its function. For the last thirty years, thanks to the demagoguery of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, we have been devolving back to a medieval concept of government – that it exists only to protect and enhance the wealth and privileges of the few at the expense of the many. Feudalism, if you will. Until 1980, our idea of the function of government had been evolving toward its proper role – to protect the weak and helpless from the predations of the powerful – to promote and facilitate economic and social justice. Like any large, powerful institution, government must be transparent and responsive to the people. Not to money, or the economic elite, or to any “special interests,” but to the people. As I noted earlier, this can only be accomplished by an intelligent, well-educated, well-informed, politically active electorate. If you look around you, the absence of such an electorate can only have disastrous results. We are living with those results.
There is plenty of room for a vigorous national discussion about what the new economic models might look like, but the first thing we have to recognize is that there will never be enough good jobs again. Never. Automation, outsourcing, and especially the need to cut back on consumption and environmental degradation – no amount of educational reform can create jobs where they don't exist. Moreover, in a world of rising population and diminishing resources we should be rewarding those who are willing to lead a simpler lifestyle, not punishing them. Up until now, we have based our economic system on an egregious extortion: work or die. We have refused, from its inception to endorse the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, precisely because it mandates economic Human Rights (food, clothing, shelter, education and healthcare) whether one can pay the market price or not. If we had followed the lead of Franklin Roosevelt, who was preparing before his untimely death to propose an economic Bill of Rights (freedom from want, among others), we would have removed the power of the extortion.
The time has come to join the civilized world and recognize these basic rights/needs. As I noted earlier, this need not be accomplished with Socialism, a term which is bandied about by ignorant people who don't seem to understand that Socialism was conceived as a means of providing universal access to basic necessities, not as the end. It is an economic model that proposes to transfer control of “the means of production” from private ownership to the government in order to prevent oligarchs from taking more than their fair share of the profits. You may have noticed that most of the “means of production” are no longer located in America, and that recent events have required the government to assume effective control, if not outright ownership of a large portion of the means that are still here to prevent them from self-destructing.
Yet, despite government ownership, there is no citizen participation in that ownership. I would like to suggest here that our discussion of new economic models should start with the idea of People's Capitalism, with citizen participation in the ownership of our mutual assets. We have the necessary technology, we have a precedent provided by a Republican Administration, we lack only the willingness to implement the program. If every citizen owned minimal shares in a national Mutual Fund (something like the CalPers program that invests for many California Public Employees), we could provide basic necessities as dividend distributions from that
Fund. Then, work could be chosen as a means of providing a better life for oneself or ones family, or even as a means of creating a better world. Work chosen is life enhancing. America is already heaven for those who work because they want to not because they have to.
In conclusion, then, I ask you to consider carefully what I have proposed. Those who are old enough will remember that Reagan and his advisors promoted the idea of a “Silent Majority” (most of whom were silent because they were ashamed of their racism, misogyny and resentment toward those who were unwilling or unable to “play the game”), and rode it into the White House and set in motion thirty years of social devolution. Recently we have learned that they are not so “silent.” Even the possibility of restoring government to its rightful role has frightened and angered them, as well it might. Ignorance and fear are the ultimate “potting soil” for the worst kind of demagoguery. The last time the world was brought to its knees by the titans of finance, only Roosevelt saved us from the Fascism that seized much of the developed world.
Regarding my previous comments about the potential majority of those with needs and those with values, I would like to suggest that it is time to galvanize and organize a Decent Majority, composed of those who know that a better world is possible if we are willing to work to create it. Will you join me?
My fellow Americans, I must begin by apologizing to you for failing to keep my promises to you, and for choosing the wrong people to lead us out of the disaster I inherited from my predecessor. While I have no excuse, you should understand that my elitist education and recent political career have unfortunately isolated me from the realities plaguing the lives of ordinary Americans. My task this evening is to assure you the I have gotten the message – that I will henceforth dedicate my life and my presidency to the task of restoring our democracy and the quality of life for everyone, not just for the privileged few.
I am sure you realize that this will not be easy, for either of us. For openers, though, I must insist, in the strongest possible terms, that it is time for the American public to stop acting and thinking like frightened, angry children. We can only find our way out of this dilemma as adults. Adults understand that they are responsible for cleaning up their own messes; they understand that risk is a part of life, that no government can guarantee that they will always be protected from the determined efforts of suicidal enemies; they understand that freedom carries awesome responsibilities, including the need to be fully informed and rationally motivated by that knowledge; they understand that liberty can never be license to do whatever one wishes without proper concern for the consequences of our behavior on others.
Most of you know that I worked for some time in Community Organizing. One of the fundamental tenets of that activity is that we are always trying to construct a type of social structure; like most structures, this one has a front door and a back door. We might say that, in Community Organizing, people with needs (some quite urgent and even desperate) come in through the front door and people with values (primarily, those which result in economic and social justice) come in through the back door. Now, my personal belief is that, when we strip away misinformation and fearful generalizations, we will find that a very large majority of Americans can be counted in one or both of those two groups. Again, those with needs and those with human values constitute a large majority. Lest there be any doubt, however, there are Americans who are not in either group. Since I have no concern about offending them, I will categorically state right now that those people have social values that would embarrass a hyena, and there is no need to include them in our discussion. They need to be marginalized and rendered powerless, one way or another, if our beloved country, humanity itself and even the planet are to have any future worth contemplating.
All of which begs the question: what should we be doing? If we can galvanize and organize this majority, what might we ask them to support? For openers, we need to understand that the economic models that got us into this condition will never get us out of it. I began by apologizing for choosing the wrong people to lead us back from the brink of disaster. The reason they are the “wrong people” is that they have spent their lives operating in a system which has outlived its usefulness. You might say, if you'll forgive the bad pun, that they were and are invested in it. If you look at that word, it's obvious that someone who is “in a vest' might well have difficulty “seeing” well. We have a saying, “he was invested in the idea, couldn't see the adverse consequences.” Yet, as Einstein once noted, doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is the definition of insanity.
So, the first thing we need is new economic models. Interestingly enough, the field of Economics has recently (finally!) been expanding its vision, having less emphasis on the “rational actor” and the self-regulating nature of unregulated markets, and spending more time and attention on the irrational, emotional elements of economic behavior that don't submit so easily to reductionist formulas. Now, remember, I am talking about new economic models, which excludes old ideas like communism and socialism. Big anything is potentially bad news. Big government is as vulnerable to corruption and incompetence as big business.
Speaking of Big Government, the issue is not, and should never be the size of government. What we should be debating is the proper role of government, its function. For the last thirty years, thanks to the demagoguery of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, we have been devolving back to a medieval concept of government – that it exists only to protect and enhance the wealth and privileges of the few at the expense of the many. Feudalism, if you will. Until 1980, our idea of the function of government had been evolving toward its proper role – to protect the weak and helpless from the predations of the powerful – to promote and facilitate economic and social justice. Like any large, powerful institution, government must be transparent and responsive to the people. Not to money, or the economic elite, or to any “special interests,” but to the people. As I noted earlier, this can only be accomplished by an intelligent, well-educated, well-informed, politically active electorate. If you look around you, the absence of such an electorate can only have disastrous results. We are living with those results.
There is plenty of room for a vigorous national discussion about what the new economic models might look like, but the first thing we have to recognize is that there will never be enough good jobs again. Never. Automation, outsourcing, and especially the need to cut back on consumption and environmental degradation – no amount of educational reform can create jobs where they don't exist. Moreover, in a world of rising population and diminishing resources we should be rewarding those who are willing to lead a simpler lifestyle, not punishing them. Up until now, we have based our economic system on an egregious extortion: work or die. We have refused, from its inception to endorse the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, precisely because it mandates economic Human Rights (food, clothing, shelter, education and healthcare) whether one can pay the market price or not. If we had followed the lead of Franklin Roosevelt, who was preparing before his untimely death to propose an economic Bill of Rights (freedom from want, among others), we would have removed the power of the extortion.
The time has come to join the civilized world and recognize these basic rights/needs. As I noted earlier, this need not be accomplished with Socialism, a term which is bandied about by ignorant people who don't seem to understand that Socialism was conceived as a means of providing universal access to basic necessities, not as the end. It is an economic model that proposes to transfer control of “the means of production” from private ownership to the government in order to prevent oligarchs from taking more than their fair share of the profits. You may have noticed that most of the “means of production” are no longer located in America, and that recent events have required the government to assume effective control, if not outright ownership of a large portion of the means that are still here to prevent them from self-destructing.
Yet, despite government ownership, there is no citizen participation in that ownership. I would like to suggest here that our discussion of new economic models should start with the idea of People's Capitalism, with citizen participation in the ownership of our mutual assets. We have the necessary technology, we have a precedent provided by a Republican Administration, we lack only the willingness to implement the program. If every citizen owned minimal shares in a national Mutual Fund (something like the CalPers program that invests for many California Public Employees), we could provide basic necessities as dividend distributions from that
Fund. Then, work could be chosen as a means of providing a better life for oneself or ones family, or even as a means of creating a better world. Work chosen is life enhancing. America is already heaven for those who work because they want to not because they have to.
In conclusion, then, I ask you to consider carefully what I have proposed. Those who are old enough will remember that Reagan and his advisors promoted the idea of a “Silent Majority” (most of whom were silent because they were ashamed of their racism, misogyny and resentment toward those who were unwilling or unable to “play the game”), and rode it into the White House and set in motion thirty years of social devolution. Recently we have learned that they are not so “silent.” Even the possibility of restoring government to its rightful role has frightened and angered them, as well it might. Ignorance and fear are the ultimate “potting soil” for the worst kind of demagoguery. The last time the world was brought to its knees by the titans of finance, only Roosevelt saved us from the Fascism that seized much of the developed world.
Regarding my previous comments about the potential majority of those with needs and those with values, I would like to suggest that it is time to galvanize and organize a Decent Majority, composed of those who know that a better world is possible if we are willing to work to create it. Will you join me?
A New Progressive Agenda
A New Progressive Agenda
“…Never Waste A Good Crisis”
“This is, or should be, the guiding principle of all social reform – to organize the economic, practical and social relationships between human beings in such a way that there shall be, for any individual or group within that society, a minimum of temptations to covetousness, pride, cruelty and lust for power.”
-Aldous Huxley-
The Perennial Philosophy
When I was a student, in the late 1950’s, we were repeatedly warned about the potential for dire consequences in three emerging marketing concepts: planned obsolescence, artificial demand and excess consumption. Welcome to a world beset by dire consequences. The piper is here, demanding his payment. Not only are we spiraling into economic chaos, we have despoiled our world, perhaps beyond recovery. The climate is on a deathwatch; we are running out of potable water; our air is fouled with toxic chemicals; our population is exploding, even as our resources are in precipitous decline.
The most alarming aspect of this calamity is the nearly unanimous response of our clueless leaders, whose solution is to resume, as quickly as possible, the very practices that got us here. Governments everywhere are desperately “stimulating” their economies, hoping (and “hope” is the only “hope”) to resuscitate the old economic system by encouraging a return to foolish and wasteful production and consumption.
Of course, we do hear voices of reason, advocates of “voluntary simplicity” and sustainable agriculture and environmental sanity, but they are a relatively minor and thoroughly powerless group: “Idealists,” we are told; “dreamers,” even “utopians,” or, worst, “anarchists.” Where is John Lennon when we need him (“Imagine”), or Martin Luther King, Jr. (“I Have A Dream”)? What happened to all the 60’s radicals and their communal, ecological ideas? When did we stop evolving as a society and start devolving?
The turning point, for me, was the 1980 election of Ronald Reagan, aided and abetted by Margaret Thatcher and the Ayn Rand clones at the Chicago School of Economics and the Hoover Institute and similar “Conservative Think Tanks” (an oxymoron, in my opinion). Sensing our collective fear of radical change, they rode to power by rolling back the clock, year by year, until, by the early 21st Century, we had regressed, in America and around much of the world, to a medieval concept of government: protect and enhance the wealth and power of the privileged few, at the expense of the powerless many, the illusion of “democracy” notwithstanding.
Which brings us to the most important issue: the role of government in society. We can all agree that government, at all levels, has the potential for considerable harm, both within a given society and around the world, representing, as it does, such a concentration of power. For the last three or four hundred years, this awareness has been modified, however haltingly, by an evolving realization that government is at least capable of reversing its medieval role, and being organized and implemented primarily to protect and enhance the welfare of the least powerful citizens from the inevitable predations of those for whom enough power and money is never enough.
The present economic crisis inevitably evokes the memory of Franklin Roosevelt. One of his most important issues is rarely, if ever, discussed. In his State of the Union message delivered January 6, 1941, known as the “Four Freedoms Speech,” he outlined four “fundamental” freedoms, the third of which was “Freedom from want.” It is not so well known that in 1944, shortly before his death, he was preparing to introduce one or more new amendments to the “Bill of Rights,” elucidating and mandating certain economic Human Rights, to supplement the political rights already guaranteed therein. After his death, his wife, Eleanor, continued this campaign, ultimately playing a leading role in the passage of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. Ironically, the United States has never signed that document, largely because it includes things like food, clothing, shelter, healthcare and education. The rest of the world responds with appropriate contempt when we lecture others on the subject of Human Rights.
“Economic injustice will stop the moment we want it to stop, and no sooner.”
-George Orwell-
When discussing economic Human Rights, it is necessary to point out a glaring inconsistency in our legal system: lawmakers, lawyers, enforcers, judges, all the way up to the Supreme Court are ready to go to the wall, pay any price, to protect the economic rights of the individuals and corporations that dominate and control our economy, yet the vast majority manifest open contempt for the economic right of those whose needs are greatest.
One man’s utopia is often another’s dystopia. Tragically, every attempt to ensure economic Human Rights in the 20th Century ended up restricting, if not eliminating, the political Human Rights of those who opposed these efforts, if not their very lives. The main cause of this is that, with few exceptions, those who love the Market hate the Poor (“Get out of the way! You’re holding us back! Get back to work!), while those who love the Poor hate the Market (“Give us all your wealth, you greedy oligarch! Nationalize the means of production! Outlaw private property!). Is there no middle ground in this conflict? Of course there is. We can start the discussion with a few basic suggestions.
First, we need to resume the evolutionary development of government: not only should its primary purpose be the protection of the relatively powerless from human predators (at home or abroad), the cost must be borne disproportionately by those who have the most to give (however that wealth may have been accrued). We could begin by reinstating the Progressive tax system we had in the US before the Reagan devolution: up to 70% of ordinary income and as much as 90% of “excess” income (you could look it up). The economic elite would rather consume sold waste material than give money to the government, so they would inevitably find more socially constructive means of creating wealth.
Next, we have to recognize that Representative Democracy, as it was envisioned by our founding fathers, has outgrown its relevance and has been co-opted by those whose “covetousness” and “lust for power” knows no reasonable bounds. Again, there is a simple solution: a tax reform which eliminates all deductions and includes a form reading, “Please spend my taxes as follows: do spend it for these programs, and do not spend it for these other programs.” In a true democracy, spending must reflect the desires of its citizens, not those of “special interests.”
There is at least one excellent model for this process: Working Assets, which provides telephone service and credit cards, distributed more than $3.5 million to nonprofit groups “working to change the world” (for which we can all be thankful). Those funds were allocated according to preferences of customers, who vote each year for their favorite causes. Maybe Working Assets would be willing to donate the software to our government tax agencies..
Think of it – if those special interests wanted to corrupt someone, they’d have to do it by treating us right. If you don’t think the government should support abortion, fine, your money will not be used for that purpose. If you want the government to protect your private wealth, you can pay for it. If a program lacks public support, it should be discontinued. Our “representatives” would allocate the resources according to our instructions. No need to lobby or otherwise corrupt them.
Finally, and here is where the present “crisis” provides a golden opportunity, as banks or auto companies or other “too big to fail” institutions come calling with their begging bowls in hand, we can have our economic “cake” and eat it too: instead of “nationalizing” them, we should collectively take ownership of them, creating a Citizens’ Mutual Fund, with shares and any subsequent profits distributed to all (with the possible exception of those who have way more than they need). People’s Capitalism! Talk about an “ownership society!” There is a precedent: Alaska already does this with a percentage of its oil income. While we’re at it, the Citizens Mutual Fund should also receive shares in the many private companies that will be profiting handsomely from the stimulus funds designated for restoring and expanding our decrepit infrastructure. Seems like simple justice to deal us all in on the game. After all, it will be our money paying for everything.
Similarly, we must resolve the threat of insolvency in Social Security and Medicare (and other Safety Net programs) by returning to the original intent of these programs, and making them available only to those who actually need them. A simple means test would suffice. Social Security was never meant to be a private retirement fund, or a return of your personal investment. Look at the name. It is supposed to be a Safety Net for those who have little or no other means of surviving in old age. By the same token, Medicare and other types of public healthcare should be reserved for those who would otherwise not have access to something that is one of the most basic Human Rights.
To summarize, the new Progressive agenda needs to reflect reality. There will never be enough good jobs again. Returning to our old economic models is nothing less than species suicide. Certainly, work can be ennobling and personally rewarding. Too much work for not enough compensation is a form of living death. Excessive, wasteful production and consumption in order to keep people working forty hours a week or more just to make ends meet is not only immoral, it is economically and ecologically unsustainable. We have to stop talking about more jobs and start demanding economic justice.
It will never be easy to implement such radical changes. Less work for more pay requires new economic models. Substantially contracting the Gross National Product will involve dislocation and discomfort, especially for those who have been the biggest beneficiaries of the old system. But we will never have a better opportunity than we do now. The last Great Depression was also the last time we acted like a “civilization,” paying artists to create art and writers to write. The forty-hour week, overtime, Social Security and many other humane programs were initiated. Surely, we can use the present crisis to develop even more “civilized” solutions. But, it will not happen unless Progressives organize and manifest our power. There really are a lot more of “us” than there are of “them.” Reactionary forces are well financed, well organized and motivated by their addiction to power and money. They will only be overcome by organization and effort.
“"If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without demand. It never did and it never will."
-Frederick Douglas-
“…Never Waste A Good Crisis”
“This is, or should be, the guiding principle of all social reform – to organize the economic, practical and social relationships between human beings in such a way that there shall be, for any individual or group within that society, a minimum of temptations to covetousness, pride, cruelty and lust for power.”
-Aldous Huxley-
The Perennial Philosophy
When I was a student, in the late 1950’s, we were repeatedly warned about the potential for dire consequences in three emerging marketing concepts: planned obsolescence, artificial demand and excess consumption. Welcome to a world beset by dire consequences. The piper is here, demanding his payment. Not only are we spiraling into economic chaos, we have despoiled our world, perhaps beyond recovery. The climate is on a deathwatch; we are running out of potable water; our air is fouled with toxic chemicals; our population is exploding, even as our resources are in precipitous decline.
The most alarming aspect of this calamity is the nearly unanimous response of our clueless leaders, whose solution is to resume, as quickly as possible, the very practices that got us here. Governments everywhere are desperately “stimulating” their economies, hoping (and “hope” is the only “hope”) to resuscitate the old economic system by encouraging a return to foolish and wasteful production and consumption.
Of course, we do hear voices of reason, advocates of “voluntary simplicity” and sustainable agriculture and environmental sanity, but they are a relatively minor and thoroughly powerless group: “Idealists,” we are told; “dreamers,” even “utopians,” or, worst, “anarchists.” Where is John Lennon when we need him (“Imagine”), or Martin Luther King, Jr. (“I Have A Dream”)? What happened to all the 60’s radicals and their communal, ecological ideas? When did we stop evolving as a society and start devolving?
The turning point, for me, was the 1980 election of Ronald Reagan, aided and abetted by Margaret Thatcher and the Ayn Rand clones at the Chicago School of Economics and the Hoover Institute and similar “Conservative Think Tanks” (an oxymoron, in my opinion). Sensing our collective fear of radical change, they rode to power by rolling back the clock, year by year, until, by the early 21st Century, we had regressed, in America and around much of the world, to a medieval concept of government: protect and enhance the wealth and power of the privileged few, at the expense of the powerless many, the illusion of “democracy” notwithstanding.
Which brings us to the most important issue: the role of government in society. We can all agree that government, at all levels, has the potential for considerable harm, both within a given society and around the world, representing, as it does, such a concentration of power. For the last three or four hundred years, this awareness has been modified, however haltingly, by an evolving realization that government is at least capable of reversing its medieval role, and being organized and implemented primarily to protect and enhance the welfare of the least powerful citizens from the inevitable predations of those for whom enough power and money is never enough.
The present economic crisis inevitably evokes the memory of Franklin Roosevelt. One of his most important issues is rarely, if ever, discussed. In his State of the Union message delivered January 6, 1941, known as the “Four Freedoms Speech,” he outlined four “fundamental” freedoms, the third of which was “Freedom from want.” It is not so well known that in 1944, shortly before his death, he was preparing to introduce one or more new amendments to the “Bill of Rights,” elucidating and mandating certain economic Human Rights, to supplement the political rights already guaranteed therein. After his death, his wife, Eleanor, continued this campaign, ultimately playing a leading role in the passage of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. Ironically, the United States has never signed that document, largely because it includes things like food, clothing, shelter, healthcare and education. The rest of the world responds with appropriate contempt when we lecture others on the subject of Human Rights.
“Economic injustice will stop the moment we want it to stop, and no sooner.”
-George Orwell-
When discussing economic Human Rights, it is necessary to point out a glaring inconsistency in our legal system: lawmakers, lawyers, enforcers, judges, all the way up to the Supreme Court are ready to go to the wall, pay any price, to protect the economic rights of the individuals and corporations that dominate and control our economy, yet the vast majority manifest open contempt for the economic right of those whose needs are greatest.
One man’s utopia is often another’s dystopia. Tragically, every attempt to ensure economic Human Rights in the 20th Century ended up restricting, if not eliminating, the political Human Rights of those who opposed these efforts, if not their very lives. The main cause of this is that, with few exceptions, those who love the Market hate the Poor (“Get out of the way! You’re holding us back! Get back to work!), while those who love the Poor hate the Market (“Give us all your wealth, you greedy oligarch! Nationalize the means of production! Outlaw private property!). Is there no middle ground in this conflict? Of course there is. We can start the discussion with a few basic suggestions.
First, we need to resume the evolutionary development of government: not only should its primary purpose be the protection of the relatively powerless from human predators (at home or abroad), the cost must be borne disproportionately by those who have the most to give (however that wealth may have been accrued). We could begin by reinstating the Progressive tax system we had in the US before the Reagan devolution: up to 70% of ordinary income and as much as 90% of “excess” income (you could look it up). The economic elite would rather consume sold waste material than give money to the government, so they would inevitably find more socially constructive means of creating wealth.
Next, we have to recognize that Representative Democracy, as it was envisioned by our founding fathers, has outgrown its relevance and has been co-opted by those whose “covetousness” and “lust for power” knows no reasonable bounds. Again, there is a simple solution: a tax reform which eliminates all deductions and includes a form reading, “Please spend my taxes as follows: do spend it for these programs, and do not spend it for these other programs.” In a true democracy, spending must reflect the desires of its citizens, not those of “special interests.”
There is at least one excellent model for this process: Working Assets, which provides telephone service and credit cards, distributed more than $3.5 million to nonprofit groups “working to change the world” (for which we can all be thankful). Those funds were allocated according to preferences of customers, who vote each year for their favorite causes. Maybe Working Assets would be willing to donate the software to our government tax agencies..
Think of it – if those special interests wanted to corrupt someone, they’d have to do it by treating us right. If you don’t think the government should support abortion, fine, your money will not be used for that purpose. If you want the government to protect your private wealth, you can pay for it. If a program lacks public support, it should be discontinued. Our “representatives” would allocate the resources according to our instructions. No need to lobby or otherwise corrupt them.
Finally, and here is where the present “crisis” provides a golden opportunity, as banks or auto companies or other “too big to fail” institutions come calling with their begging bowls in hand, we can have our economic “cake” and eat it too: instead of “nationalizing” them, we should collectively take ownership of them, creating a Citizens’ Mutual Fund, with shares and any subsequent profits distributed to all (with the possible exception of those who have way more than they need). People’s Capitalism! Talk about an “ownership society!” There is a precedent: Alaska already does this with a percentage of its oil income. While we’re at it, the Citizens Mutual Fund should also receive shares in the many private companies that will be profiting handsomely from the stimulus funds designated for restoring and expanding our decrepit infrastructure. Seems like simple justice to deal us all in on the game. After all, it will be our money paying for everything.
Similarly, we must resolve the threat of insolvency in Social Security and Medicare (and other Safety Net programs) by returning to the original intent of these programs, and making them available only to those who actually need them. A simple means test would suffice. Social Security was never meant to be a private retirement fund, or a return of your personal investment. Look at the name. It is supposed to be a Safety Net for those who have little or no other means of surviving in old age. By the same token, Medicare and other types of public healthcare should be reserved for those who would otherwise not have access to something that is one of the most basic Human Rights.
To summarize, the new Progressive agenda needs to reflect reality. There will never be enough good jobs again. Returning to our old economic models is nothing less than species suicide. Certainly, work can be ennobling and personally rewarding. Too much work for not enough compensation is a form of living death. Excessive, wasteful production and consumption in order to keep people working forty hours a week or more just to make ends meet is not only immoral, it is economically and ecologically unsustainable. We have to stop talking about more jobs and start demanding economic justice.
It will never be easy to implement such radical changes. Less work for more pay requires new economic models. Substantially contracting the Gross National Product will involve dislocation and discomfort, especially for those who have been the biggest beneficiaries of the old system. But we will never have a better opportunity than we do now. The last Great Depression was also the last time we acted like a “civilization,” paying artists to create art and writers to write. The forty-hour week, overtime, Social Security and many other humane programs were initiated. Surely, we can use the present crisis to develop even more “civilized” solutions. But, it will not happen unless Progressives organize and manifest our power. There really are a lot more of “us” than there are of “them.” Reactionary forces are well financed, well organized and motivated by their addiction to power and money. They will only be overcome by organization and effort.
“"If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without demand. It never did and it never will."
-Frederick Douglas-
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