29. National Intergenerational Wealth and Security Trust Fund
Chapter 29: The blessings of political and economic liberty to ourselves and our posterity
The Last Word
As one final example of how we can and do use the great power of our United States Federal Government, which is ourselves, to proactively advance our Constitution’s clear and unequivocal mandate to promote the general welfare while securing the blessings of universal political liberty and ensuring reasonable distribution of our common wealth for the economic good of ourselves, our children and their descendant posterity, all of us together, both now and in our collective future, and because environmental tipping points of major consequence have already passed by without our knowledge or notice…
…THERE IS HEREBY CREATED
The National Intergenerational Wealth And Security Trust Fund (NIWSTF) to assist all United States citizens to persevere and prevail through the unprecedented and severe disruptions and hardships caused by human-imposed solar heating of our earth environment over the coming century. The impending disruptions, though now scientific certainty, cannot be anticipated with detail as to their timing, their frequency, or how, where and with how much destructive intensity they will manifest.
In my view, we should be focusing on the overall net worth of the [United States], not just on the national debt. The proper objective of fiscal policy should be a return to a situation where the state has a significant positive net worth. Of course the reduction of the national debt would contribute to this end, but it is only one side of the equation. The other side is the accumulation of state assets. By holding capital and sharing in the fruits of technological developments, the state can use the resulting revenue to promote a less unequal society. This is all the more important, given the…economic forces driving the distribution of income. To the question, who owns the robots? the answer should be that, in part, they belong to us all.
Sir Anthony Atkinson: Inequality
The National Intergenerational Wealth And Security Trust Fund shall be administered by a National Interest Investment Authority (NIIA) which is hereby created. The NIIA being dedicated to a long-range perspective shall be independent of the Cooperatives Bank of America with its more contemporary perspective. As a nationally-owned investment fund, the NIWSTF shall be administered in a context of simplicity understandable to all. Just as the personal budget of any individual person rich or poor must list income and then subtract bills to determine a remaining surplus if any, the NIWSTF shall list and quantify national assets and then subtract national debt and encumbered obligations to determine national net worth. Notwithstanding all the dyspeptic gas and angst suffered in some quarters over misperceived threat of national collapse posed by the very existence of national debt, the true net worth of our nation, to be revealed according to this Act, is breathtakingly ample beyond all conceivable doubt as is already well understood by thoughtfully cooler heads less subject to gas and angst.
Quantifiable national assets include and are by no means limited to examples such as:
- All publicly owned federal lands, the ores and minerals under those lands and the living flora and fauna resident upon them;
- All publicly owned federal hard infrastructure, buildings, equipment, materials and systems, expressly including the natural monopolies placed by this Act under ownership and control of federal, state and local governments;
- Market-level rent potential for all permitted private uses of federal public lands;
- All basic and applied research and development conducted, coordinated and supervised by the U.S. Government;
- Education of present citizens and investment in the education and meaningful literacy of future citizens;
- All annual surpluses of national revenue over national expenditures resulting from the New Ideal Tax Structure (NITS).
- Applicable equivalents of the above publicly owned by the fifty (50) states.
The National debt and encumbered obligations, to be subtracted from national assets, cannot presently be accurately quantified because of this Act’s mandate for expeditious elimination of all national debt, for balanced budgets, and for transitioning of the United States economy to predominantly citizen-worker-owned cooperatives competing vigorously for up to five percent (5%) of market share within a unique and truly free trade environment unencumbered by monopolistic megalithic corporations which, having ever worked to stifle free trade and free competition, are abolished in toto by this Act. The Congress hereby directs that the National Interest Investment Authority (NIIA) shall, no later than three years after passage of this Act into law, commence annual computations whereby remaining national debt, if any, and encumbered entitlements and other obligations are subtracted from national assets to determine current national net worth. These annual computations shall be expeditiously reported in plain and understandable language to the American people via the news media, and to the Congress and the President, so that necessary adjustments may be initiated as needed toward a goal of building up national net worth and maintaining not less than one century’s (100 years’) worth of prospective economic security for the citizens of these United States.
National Policies, which by directive of this Congress shall be implemented by the NIIA, include and are not limited to:
- Preventing forever the privatization of monopolies and publicly-owned assets in all circumstances wherever that perennial urge again and again rears its ugly head;
- Phasing out with all due speed all (meaning all) foreign ownership of U.S. assets and maintaining that status thereafter so long as the United States shall exist;
- All nitpicking equivocation over what constitutes foreign ownership or what constitutes a U.S. asset shall be defaulted in favor of the United States;
- The NIIA shall buy, for public ownership, slums, rust belts, strip mining wastelands, abandoned farms, and other blighted or abandoned formerly productive ruins and, with support and collaboration by the Cooperatives Bank of America, shall assist NIPS co-ops to take over these wasted vast assets and convert them to good and productive uses which serve the people;
- To promote the essential understanding that we all are one nation and we’re all in this together, a government subsidy of any nature whatsoever which is accepted by a private enterprise shall, if accepted, constitute a permanent ownership share in that enterprise by the U.S. Government on behalf of All The People, and that share shall permanently thereafter be counted as a valuable public asset.
- Upon total retirement of all national debt, not less than one hundred percent (100%) of all surplus of national revenue over national expenditures which may annually accrue thereafter shall be deposited into the National Intergenerational Wealth And Security Trust Fund.
Permitted and prohibited spending from the NIWSTF trust fund
Within strict limitation as provided in this Section, up to twenty percent (20%) of NIWSTF monies may be spent annually on any or all of the following five categories, which collectively shall be recognized as the nation’s determination to pass the American Dream on to each next generation.
- Economic Subsistence Rights. If needed and only if absolutely needed, NIWSTF funds may be used as augmentation to regular budgeted funds to ensure that every American citizen is guaranteed not less than nutritious food, clothing and shelter, and this guarantee is in addition to related economic rights guaranteed elsewhere in this Act.
- Climate Change Mitigation. NIWSTF funds may be used to mitigate, and to counter as possible, the harmful effects of global warming as those effects worsen over coming decades of this century and beyond. No amount of dollars or financial commitment will suffice to prevent the impending terrible burden which all Americans must endure and survive because of the foolish short sightedness of a cabal of ideologically bound and politically motivated persons serving in this Congress over the past two decades. With deep remorse and profound apology to the American people this Congress now enacts this Capitalist Free Market Corrections Act (CaFMaC) in general, and these climate provisions in particular, in order to do what it can to right those historic wrongs perpetrated on our democratic American republic.
- Infrastructure Investment. NIWSTF funds may be used to augment other funds budgeted for infrastructure development if, and only if, budgeted funds are found to be inadequate to the need in a given year.
- Free College Education. Beginning five (5) years after the date this Act becomes law, and subject to the expenditure limitations specified in this Section, NIWSTF funds may be used to start, and to help maintain for fifty (50) years, a guarantee of free four-year college education to every American youth who meets qualifications prescribed by the National Interest Advisory Council (NIAC) established by this Act.
- Literacy for All Americans. NIWSTF funds may be used to promote and to bring about in reality for the first time in the nation’s history true and comprehensive literacy throughout the American population. The following literacy targets shall be applied consistent with the How To Think curricula specified elsewhere in this Act. Students at all grade levels from first through four-year college shall be tested once annually, and all other citizens may voluntarily opt to be tested, to assess their understanding and retention in memory of these Literacy Targets for American Citizenship (LTAC):
- Comparative culture including and not limited to: 1) Historical timelines long and short; 2) human and organizational economics; 3) competitive and cooperative politics; 4) sports and military competition; 5) comparative religions; and 6) the concept of third options.
- Arts and Personal Creativity by self and others.
- Literature and ideas.
- Personal life purpose, social consciousness, ethics and personal responsibility.
No categories of programs other than these five shall be permitted financial support from the NIWSTF. No program of any nature shall ever be made wholly dependent on the NIWSTF, and a program started with use of NIWSTF funds shall maintain at least a fifty percent (50%) share of its funding from a non- NIWSTF source(s); this share shall increase not less than five percent (5%) yearly until the program stands independent of NIWSTF funds and no NIWSTF funds may ever again be spent on that program. No program expenditure or aggregate expenditure for multiple programs shall ever constitute more than twenty percent (20%) of the total funds in the NIWSTF.
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Prospective
Right. So. These ninety-five CaFMaC thingies… you gonna nail’em to the churchhouse door or what?
Precisely. Exactly what I’ve just been doing. Actually, any door will do.
Get serious.
[Lowered eyelids, Mona Lisa smile] What makes you think I’m not?
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READERS COMMENT: Your ideas are invited for dealing with the issues addressed here. These posts present new perspectives – THIRD OPTIONS – to move beyond the conservative-liberal divide that is so poisoning our national sense of shared community. New and wiser options are always available to make life in America better for all the people. What are yours?
