Resources
Economic
NOTE: The resources presented here (using the present tense) envision a systemic reform movement that promotes replacing our current Top-Down System with a Bottom-Up System rooted in new, egalitarian social structures.
Actions
As the systemic reform movement becomes more powerful, it counters the growing concentration of wealth and power and establishes a more democratic economy. Society now ensures all workers have good, living-wage job opportunities, whether private or public. Americans trust they and their children can find good jobs throughout their work lives. These jobs give people enough leisure time to enjoy their families, contribute to their communities, and engage in creative activities that give their lives meaning.
The movement works to ensure that everyone has suitable housing, health care, education, and childcare. Seniors have a comfortable retirement. Disabled people work as much as they can and avoid poverty.
The movement backs the following structural reforms to help society ensure economic fairness.
New laws can increase incentives for workers to join unions, enable unions to reach agreements that cover whole sectors of the economy, and reduce incentives for businesses to oppose unions.
Employee-owned businesses benefit workers, are more stable and productive, and are more involved with their communities than are investor-owned corporations. With technical assistance and long-term, low-interest loans, governments can support the growth of worker cooperatives and family farms, which boost rural economies.
City-owned public banks can support projects driven by public interest. In July 2023, the L.A. City Council funded a feasibility study for a Los Angeles Public Bank.
With tax breaks, governments can encourage the spread of public benefit corporations whose charters require them to value employees, customers, vendors, communities, and the environment — to serve the public interest as well as make a profit.
In August 2023, UN Secretary-General António Guterres published a draft report evaluating options for a new framework for international tax cooperation under UN auspices to minimize the “race to the bottom” with tax havens.
A shift toward the “care economy” could more fully reward and respect service workers such as teachers, childcare workers, nursing home staff, and drug rehab counselors.
These resources document the arguments presented in this chapter.
These tools, some tested and others untested, present methods that compassion-mind people can advance the holistic democracy movement, whether or not they identify with this movement or the compassionate humanity community or explicitly commit to mutual support for self-improvement.
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