A NEW TRI-SECTORAL IMAGINATION OF THE AMERICAN FUTURE
LET’S TRY COMMON SENSE AND GET RID OF THE CORRUPTION THROUGH A NEW TRI-SECTORAL IMAGINATION OF AMERICAN SOCIETY.
Can we truly foster freedom of belief, religion, and educational choice, extend equality before the law and in politics and create an economy which serves people and the earth? This is what FDR hoped for when he proclaimed the four freedoms and asked the question of “whether individual men and women will have to serve some system of government or economics or whether a system of government and economics existed to serve individual men and women?” His answer was to promote freedom of speech and expression, freedom to worship God in one’s own way, freedom from want and freedom from fear, the four freedoms which can be seen as beacons for a tri-sectoral society. Freedom of speech and freedom of worship and belief are calls to foster individual freedom in cultural life, through a quality, accessible and diverse educational system and protections from the manipulation of governments and corporations. The third, freedom from fear expresses our need to live in a society governed by democracy and equal rights before the law and not subject to corruption and the power of special interest groups. The last, freedom from want, addresses our need for a stable, healthy stakeholder economy serving the needs of the earth and of each human being.
Politics:
So let’s fix a broken democracy by the recognizing the truth of Supreme Court Justice Brandeis’s Statement, “We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we cannot have both.” Let us reform our politics by:
- Limiting all political donations by individuals to political campaigns and parties to $5000. per year per person and prohibiting corporate and institutional campaign donations.
- Getting rid of the electoral college and providing for term limits for the House and the Senate.
- Providing for multi-party redistricting commissions for all state and federal offices following a national census.
- Prohibiting federal and state elected officials and appointed officials from lobbying activities for five years after leaving their office.
- Creating an official election day on a Saturday to allow working people to vote without loss of pay.
- Mandating ranked choice voting for state and federal elections, which California and Maine now do for state elections, in order to limit the power and influence of political parties who tend to polarize the electorate and block the will of the people.
- Fighting restrictive voting laws.
- Passing the Equal Rights Amendment, (ERA), giving women equal rights in all sectors of public life.
- Establishing citizen councils of representatives from civil society, government and business at local, regional and state levels to review and to propose legislation to legislative bodies to foster the public good.
- Developing a reasonable immigration policy for refugees, immigrants, Dreamers and long-term illegal immigrants, remembering that most American citizens are descendants of immigrants or of slaves brought here against their will.
- And because quality health care and the right to a dignified existence are human rights let us adopt a single payer health system as most other Western democracies have and provide a guaranteed basic income of $12,500 per year for every child and adult during their lives. Contrary to much popular sentiment it is something we could afford if we adopted a fair tax system.
You can work in this direction by joining www. Represent Us. Com.
Economic Life:
Let us create a responsible form of Stakeholder Capitalism which serves the true needs of people and of the earth. We can do so by:
- Chartering corporations as proposed in the Responsible Capitalism Act, now before the Senate, and requiring all large corporations with over I billion in revenue to seek a renewable charter from a Federal Commission made up of citizen representatives from government, civil society and business life. We now charter schools and colleges as well as non-profit organizations so why not corporations who also benefit from our society and its culture. The criteria for receiving and renewing a charter would be to meet the requirements of the triple bottom line; profitability, sustainability and community support. Smaller corporations would receive a similar state charter and all corporations would undergo a regular charter review process. Boards of corporations would consist of 55% civil society and public sector representatives as well as employees, thereby balancing the interests of shareholders and capital, the remaining 45%.
- Taxing the use of environmental inputs and emissions through a land tax, a water tax and a carbon pollution tax, supporting the principles of natural capitalism.
- Taxing the profits of all corporations at 10 percent with no deductions and exemptions for the public benefits they use; roads, infrastructure, education and culture.
- Having the goal of a carbon neutral economy in ten years and adopting the principles of the Green New Deal proposed to Congress by Senator Markey and Congresswoman Octavio-Cortez. Funding such initiatives though public banking initiatives and an Automatic Payments Tax, (APT).
- Supporting the cooperative, B Corp and Public Benefit Corporation movements by stopping the tax breaks and subsidies presently provided to large and politically powerful corporations and industries such as those in the oil and nuclear sectors.
- Creating producer, consumer, trader associations to guide and stimulate local and regional economic life.
- Paying for these societal benefits and a Green New Deal by gradually introducing an Automatic Payments Transaction Tax, (APT), of .35 percent on all economic transactions from buying groceries, leasing a car or trading stocks and commodities. While the real economy generates about 20 trillion a year, the financial economy; stock trades, derivatives, bonds, commodities, Treasury bills and capital transfers is estimated to be between $750 and $1000 trillion a year in the U.S. It is estimated that a tax of .35 percent could replace all other taxes except for a portion of local property taxes and some corporate taxes for local services. It was proposed by President Bush’s Tax Reform Commission in 2005. See www.apttax.com for more detailed information.
Cultural Life:
Let us extend and deepen cultural freedom in our society by:
- Honoring and protecting freedom of speech, the free exercise of one’s religion, the right of free assembly, trial by jury, and the unhindered right to vote, established by the Constitution.
- Regulate and limit the power of Big Tech; Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Microsoft to spy on us, manipulate our opinions, foster hate speech, and undermine elections.
- Recognizing that corporations and the state now seek to control education, and our cultural and religious/spiritual choices, which properly belong to individuals and families. Therefore let teachers and parents determine educational priorities and options through regional school boards while keeping corporations, such as media and computer learning companies, out of kindergartens and schools.
- Funding arts, and cultural life at much higher levels, which many European nations now do, through supporting local and regional arts councils to foster greater cultural activity and choice in a region.
- Providing for true educational choice and equality of access by funding diverse educational institutions with competing educational philosophies at comparable levels; day care, schools, colleges and universities, taking into account the regional differences in living costs and the nature of the institutions in question. All educational institutions need to be non-profit organizations and would be chartered by regional educational associations consisting of parents, teachers and educational administrators. The National Association of Independent Schools, (NAIS), is a good model to work from. The role of the state would be limited to assuring safety and health requirements, non-discrimination and equality of access.
We need to recognize that our democracy, the American experiment in self- government, rests on a diverse, excellent, and affordable educational system as clearly seen by Thomas Jefferson at the time of our founding as a nation.
International Obligations
Let us again honor our international responsibilities by taking a lead on climate change, mass migrations, poverty and war in the poorer regions of the world and recognize that the dangers of Artificial Intelligence,(AI), of machines escaping human control and human values, are real and require a global effort.
So let us renew the American Dream and honor freedom in cultural life, equality in democratic, state life, and mutuality and service in economic life. If we can do so and appeal to the fully human in each of us than it is possible to transform corruption, egotism and exploitation into a new American Covenant between the American people and its government. In doing so let us remember the insight of Jacob Needleman that “America is the fact, the symbol and the promise of a new beginning.”
April 9,2019
Christopher Schaefer, Edward Baumheier, Davina Muse, Leah Walker, John Beck, Abraham Entin, Luigi Morelli, and Linda Lingane for the Threefold Working Group of 3FSOToday.org
