U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders unveiled a 12-step plan to revitalize the American economy last December, which has gotten fairly little attention. The self-proclaimed socialist, who is considering a 2016 presidential bid, laid out economic initiatives seeking to reverse a 40 year trend toward "economic and political oligarchy" in America.
"Today, we have more wealth and income inequality than any major country on earth. We have one of the highest childhood poverty rates and we are the only country in the industrialized world which does not guarantee health care for all. We once led the world in terms of the percentage of our people who graduated college, but we are now in 12th place. Our infrastructure, once the envy of the world, is collapsing.
Real unemployment today is not 5.8 percent, it is 11.5 percent if we include those who have given up looking for work or who are working part time when they want to work full time. Youth unemployment is 18.6 percent and African-American youth unemployment is 32.6 percent.
Today, millions of Americans are working longer hours for lower wages. In inflation-adjusted dollars, the median male worker earned $783 less last year than he made 41 years ago. The median woman worker made $1,337 less last year than she earned in 2007. Since 1999, the median middle-class family has seen its income go down by almost $5,000 after adjusting for inflation, now earning less than it did 25 years ago."
His entire program, all of which can be found in the op-ed, can be summarized as follows.
1. Invest in "roads, bridges, water systems, waste water plants, airports, railroads and schools."
2. Create jobs and protect the environment by transforming "our energy system away from fossil fuels and into energy efficiency and sustainable energies."
3. "Provide assistance to workers who want to purchase their own businesses by establishing worker-owned cooperatives."
4. Pass legislation making clear the right of workers to unionize.
5. Equate the federal minimum wage with a living wage.
6. Guarantee pay equity.
7. End disastrous trade policies such as NAFTA, CAFTA, PNTR; prevent disastrous trade policies like the TPP.
8. Make higher education accessible and affordable for all.
9. Break up the large financial institutions which control an amount of wealth equal to 61% of our GDP.
10. Universal Health Care.
11. Strengthen Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, etc.
12. Institute a progressive tax policy which discourages the offshoring of corporate profits.
I think there are two things which Senator Sanders misses in his steps: first, the United States, in order to create an equal opportunity for racial minorities, particularly young black Americans, needs to fundamentally change the way in which we view our policing institutions. First and foremost, the war on drugs ought to be abandoned, freeing up billions of dollars in revenue which can be translated into treatment for those who suffer from addiction. Full legalization would destroy the underground market for drugs, destroy revenue flows to criminal organizations, and allow for taxation and strict regulation of drugs. Furthermore, we need to get our police apparatus in-line, form civilian oversight of police forces, and allow for independent investigators dedicated to keeping police departments in line when they exert force or violate their constitutional requirements.
Second, beyond cooperative ownership of business, people should have the ability to purchase their own homes, regardless of where they live: we ought to make it easier for tenants to either unionize to collectively bargain for terms of contracts with property managers, or assist them in achieving collective ownership of high-density residential buildings. As with participatory budgeting, groups of lay people can and do produce high-quality decisions on many issues, and could collectively manage an apartment complex, for instance. Profit need not be gained for individuals to live in a high-density residential situation, which would, in itself, lower the price of housing for millions of individuals, if they were interested enough in the idea.
I think the day has come for us to consider the values of collective ownership, management, budgeting, and governance. For far too long, humans have been chained to the idea that God, or Nature, or Luck, or whatever, endows certain individuals with the near-exclusive ability to manage themselves and others. Groups who have found and presented an alternative to this have been violently repressed by the powers that be, such as the communes in Spain during the Spanish Revolution, or the Parisian Commune. Even groups such as Occupy Wall Street, which merely seek an alternative, are violently repressed. That being said, we can bring these alternatives into the mainstream, we can implement them, and we can do it all in the name of the market, as innovations of capitalism used to seek social utility rather than financial growth.
Just a thought.