UNDERSTANDING HOW WE GOT THIS FAR DOWN (while distracted)

1. The unspoken Republican strategy: Use Pickpocket Distractions to divide us and seize our attention while our pockets are being picked. Some familiar examples of the distractions:

Patriotism; Religion; Abortion; Gun control; LGBTQ; Immigration; Money as free speech; Corporations as faux people; Globalization as “inevitable”; the oft-repeated lie that all government is bad when in fact only government has the power to save us, and WE are the government.   Republican Party strategists who in fact agree with progressive positions on many of these issues nevertheless use them to distract and divert one-issue voters their way. Democratic strategists who spend their time obsessing over these issues simply miss the boat.

 

2. The unspoken Republican goal: Control all wealth and the power that goes with it. Rely on “supply-side” economics which uses ever-larger corporations to exploit consumers and achieve grossly unequal distribution of our national wealth. A tiny super-rich minority, now controlling well over half of all national wealth, is sinking the USA in slow motion. Even as poverty steadily expands, the Pew Research Center says our middle class has shrunk until it no longer is the economic majority in the United States. We The People are losing ground.

• In 1977, twenty-five million Americans (11.6%) lived in poverty.  In 2017, after forty years of Republican economics, over 46 million (15.1%) Americans live in poverty.
• Just 20 mega-rich people now control more wealth than half the entire US population.

 

3. The unspoken Republican device: Use capitalism against the common public good, and use corporations to exploit, assured that pickpocket-distracted voters will vote against their own economic interests. Never mention “demand-side” economics, which sustains self sufficiency by sharing wealth more fairly – most voters are uninformed about it anyway. Americans tend to favor capitalism because it promotes competition, holding prices down for everybody. But huge corporations constantly seek mergers and takeovers that eliminate competition. They then further boost profits by “cutting costs” – which usually means laying off US workers and shipping their jobs to countries where slave wages are an improvement.

 

 

2018-2020 PRIORITY: WIN BACK THE VOTES TO FIX THE PROBLEM

*AVOID pickpocket distractions that pull voter attention away from basic economic issues. Hot-button issues, on which most minds are made up, only divide us against each other. They can be addressed AFTER progressives have taken back the Congress and White House.

*TAKE BOLD INITIATIVE – LEAD.  Never again simply react to Republican initiatives. Look where forty years of non-cohesive reacting has taken us. Let’s Get Our Act TOGETHER

*SOLICIT VOTES of all Americans who agree with our New Ideal Democratic Agenda.

 

THE NEW IDEAL DEMOCRATIC AGENDA FOR THE COMMON GOOD:

STRATEGY:        Advocate THIRD OPTIONS that make capitalism serve all Americans.

WATCHWORDS:     Repeat these underlined words at every possible opportunity:

1. Political Freedom is meaningless if you can’t afford the basic economic needs of life.
2. Economic Rights for all Americans are far more important than profits to corporations.
3. THE COMMON GOOD outranks self serving: We’re all in this together, one nation.
4. WE will create NEW OPTIONS. “Conservative” and “Liberal” are obsolete terms

 

The Specifics of Interest

NEW OPTION: Enact into law a LIVING INCOME floor for every American citizen.

Action: ECONOMIC RIGHTS are the #1 Democratic priority:

1)  Living Wage (replaces minimum wage): paid wages shall be sufficient to buy food, clothing, shelter, transportation, and insurance required by law;

2)  Free public education from kindergarten through college bachelor’s degree;

3)  Medicare expansion to cover every American citizen through life; and

4)  a Financially secure retirement.

Action: Tax reform: Outlaw all sales taxes, they rob the poor whose total income gets taxed

Action: Tax reform:  Re-graduate personal and corporate income taxes far upward

  

NEW OPTION: Place strict conditions on access to the United States Marketplace   (The USA is the world’s third largest market: 320 million and growing fast)

Action: Ban multi-national corporations (loyalty to USA is a precondition of selling here)

Action: Ban US corporations that moved offshore to avoid paying their fair taxes

 

NEW OPTION: Enforce competition by limiting corporate control of US marketplace

Action:  Place every monopoly under control of a government (federal, state or local).

Action:  Limit corporate growth to maximum 5% of US market for whatever they sell.

Action:  Subdivide any corporation that grows to control more than 5% of the US market.  (First priority:  Abolish and subdivide every too-big-to-fail corporation)

Action:  TEACH: US businesses’ first duty is to SERVE THE U.S. COMMON GOOD by competing to provide the durable goods and services that are truly needed by American citizens. Selling in world markets henceforth has no priority unless and until the living needs of all American citizens are first ensured.

 

NEW OPTION: Restore tens of millions of good new US jobs with two simple initiatives

Action: Repair and modernize our aging national infrastructure, including massive new government investment in renewable energy to supply 100% of US energy needs.

Action: Pay Americans to manufacture all needs of our own US marketplace.  Ban the import of every product Americans are capable of manufacturing ourselves for our own US household needs (e.g., pots and pans; shoes; steel; computers; all of it)
 

NEW OPTION: Permanently stabilize the US workforce by engaging natural incentives

Action: Convert subdivided corporations to employee-owned co-ops

Action: Redefine “profit” as “surplus” to be reinvested in the co-op and workers’ pay

“Simply put, when employees have an ownership stake in their company, they will not ship their own jobs to China to increase their profits, they will be more productive, and they will earn a better living.”                             -Bernie Sanders

Action: Adapt US foreign aid to help other nations achieve comparable innovations

 

A FEW SAMPLES FROM THE ENDLESS LIST OF SMARTER NEW OPTIONS:

Action: Limit all banks to checking, saving and lending. Outlaw money manipulations that produce nothing of value to anyone other than sterile profits to the manipulators.

Action: Fully fund each federal agency commensurate with its mandated responsibilities

Action: Mandate all federal agencies to eliminate the need for welfare and labor unions

Action: Mandate universal, affordable, co-op child care in support of working parents

Action: Mandate a $100 fine for failing to register and vote in any federal election.

Action: Mandate the federal government to nationalize all (meaning all) basic research.

*          ©          *

These FIXES are based on Populist Corrections at  fixypopulist.com   If you, dear fellow American, have good progressive ideas for FIXING THE USA, enter below your (brief) comments to…     The Fixy Populist   at  fixypopulist.com        where they will become part of

CITIZENS REUNITED:

The Grand Democratic Revolution Of 2018-2020.