With pollsters announcing all these complaints from the "average voter" that America is on the wrong track, has anyone every thought to ask that average voter just what he has in mind that would put America back on track? No, don't ask the plethora of presidential candidates, nor the self-appointed pundits, nor the raging televangelists. Ask the guy on the street, the forgotten man and woman who pay the taxes to fund the current wrong track solutions and fight the mission-accomplished wars. Well, someone actually did ask that average voter, and here are their answers.The contest arose out of frustration over the banalities which comprised most of the 2004 presidential campaign, and it was run over the Internet. A jury of 23 distinguished Americans from the right, the left, and in between judged the hundreds upon hundreds of suggestions, over 22,000, that poured into the Since Sliced Bread web site, along with comments from over 100,000 others, who also voted on the finalists to be sent forward to the jury. The winner received a prize of $100,000; the first two runners up got $50,000 each, and the 21 finalists have been published in a booklet called ?Since Sliced Bread,? published by Chelsea Green Publishing, P.O. Box 428, White River Junction, Vermont 05001. This is a true grassroots effort from the bottom up, not one ivory tower inside-the-Beltway so-called expert was involved. It is the voice of the American worker, loud and clear.
The winner, SUSTAINABLE RESOURCE INDUSTRIES by Peter Skidmore of Washington State: impose a "resource tax" on pollution, development, and fossil fuels to pay for development of renewable energy and environmental restoration on a localized basis. This will develop local jobs along with local sustainable energy (solar, wind, hydro, tidal, biofuel), creating as many as 5 million local jobs in a sustainable, stable economy; investment in sustainable energy leads to roughly 10 times more jobs than a comparable investment in the fossil fuel sector.
First runner-up, TIE MINIMUM WAGE TO COST OF LIVING by Filippo Menczer of Indiana: tie the minimum wage to inflation in order to guarantee minimum-wage workers an income that goes up automatically with the cost of living, something many states have already done on their own (Washington, Oregon, Florida). Contrary to employers propaganda, studies, including a recent one from Princeton, have shown that a modest increase in minimum wages does not do significant harm to employment and actually resulted in a slight increase in jobs.
Second runner-up, REFORMING PUBLIC EDUCATION by Leslie Hester of North Carolina: send local property taxes to a state fund and then equitably re-distribute the funds among all schools on a per-student basis; control tuition at public universities to reflect the statewide median income-to-cost of attendance ratio; and increase teacher salaries so as to attract the highest quality teachers. This would, among other things, wipe out the 3:1 funding gap between comparable rich and poor school districts. It would raise Pell Grants, which used to cover 47% of the cost of public college tuition in 1975 but have fallen recently to only 25%; and, it would bring teacher salaries in line with inflation.
Other runners-up include:
4) MEDICARE as Single Payer Pilot Program, giving 10-20 of the nation's largest employers the opportunity to pay premiums to use Medicare as their company's health insurance for 5 years (due to Medicare?s low administrative costs, premiums would be lower than the current system of private insurance)
5) Give beneficiaries of the Earned Income Tax Credits (EITC) the option of putting their EITC payments into Individual Development Accouints in which the government matches deposits that can be channeled to ends like education, starting a business, or buying a home, OR into tax-exempt savings accounts for the same things.
6) Create a National Farm Produce Network to distribute produce, instead of enriching (and subsidizing) agribusiness.
7) Protect Workers' Retirement Assets by requiring companies to place their retirement funding dollars into approved accounts so that the retirement assets would belong to workers.
8) Develop Massive Public Works Projects to repair existing infrastructure and develop new, begin pilot programs of new technologies including renewable fuels, communications, etc.
9) Flat Tax to Save Social Security applied across the board
10) Three Steps to Universal Health Care: digital records, health care first for children and young adults under single-payer system, and as the individual child grows older, they stay in the program until everyone ends up covered
11) Create a "Civil Work Corps" with enlistments of 1 to 4 years, to do public works, conservation management, infrastructure repair, and other community projects
12) Blanket the U.S. with Wireless Internet
13) Home Ownership Plan for Workers with tax-exempt savings accounts (perhaps in lieu of a pension plan for young workers) with employer contributions
14) Do Not Tax Earnings for College Education, whether earnings of a full-time college student or a parent?s contribution to college expenses
15) Standardize Health Care Data
16) Teach Children Money Management
17) Pride of Skilled Working Hands, vocational training with jobs at graduation
18) Mortgages for Abandoned Houses, low interest, for blighted properties
19) Access to Capital for Small Businesses through an agency comparable to FreddieMac
20) National Service Scholarship Program similar to the Armed Forces? ROTC
21) Shift from Job-Based Health Insurance to national system to which everyone contributes
There are more innovative ideas on more topics. Go to http://www.sinceslic...
Are any of the elite leadership listening?
And look at the ideas these grass roots thinkers came up with. Almost every one can be regarded as "progressive" in the sense that they want their government to do good on a personal level, but not get in the way. Need any more proof the basic philosophy of the majority of Americans is NOT right-wing conservative but more in line with classic progressive politics?
Admittedly, most participants were somehow connected to labor, due to the sponsorship of SEIU, but the contest was on the Internet, open to (and publicized to) everybody. The judges were, some of them, hard conservatives... and each suggestion was required to have back-up facts and figures, that is, research supporting the idea. Could we get our political elite to implement some of them, instead of the inevitable snide criticism ("won't work, the free market solves everything, etc.")
I would love to see our next President embrace this model with the end goal being accomplishing #1 on this list, a sustainable energy industry.
Which raises the question -- what is blocking these reasonable solutions from being undertaken, or even formally proposed and debated?
Clearly, we are suffering from democra-sclerosis and need to find a way to clear out all the sh*t in our national arteries.
Although I like most of the "wants", I think one good one would be tying the minimum wage to the cost of living. To me this is a no brainer. But all of the list items are truly steps to a better society. Heads up candidates!
Again, thanks.
This was a grassroots effort, so I suppose that it is up to the grassroots to push the ideas (there are additional ones in the neat little inexpensive paperback book available Chelsea Green Publishing). Maybe the blogosphere could help here, maybe some letters to the editor, maybe letters to elected officials presenting one or two of your favorites for consideration?? And be sure to give credit when you do so.