In a weekend discussion I was accused of being on the "far left" and trying to "destroy the President" because I pushed for the public option and disagreed with the pay freeze for federal employees and extending tax cuts for the rich. That makes me "far left."
For some time the right's strategy has been to push a far, far right view on the country, encouraging the farthest right of ideas to be circulated. (Overton Window, etc...) It has worked. The center has moved to the right, and to the right, and to the right. It makes those who are just day-to-day wingnuts sound almost reasonable.
Where is the real far left? How much easier would it be to move the center back if there really was a "far left" out there strategically pushing the goalposts?
So let me throw out a discussion question: What are some things that a real, honest-to-goodness "far left" would be agitating for, and why isn't anyone doing just that?
Here's a start:
Nationalize the oil companies.
Guaranteed job or income for everyone, put to work on infrastructure investment projects, alternative energy projects, retrofitting buildings to be energy efficient, etc.
Cradle-to-grave Medicare-For-All.
Child care for all.
Eldercare for all.
6 week paid vacation for everyone.
Triple Social Security's payments, lower retirement age to 55.
Worker representatives on Boards of Directors.
Limits to the how much of larger companies can be owned by a person or entity.
When companies reach a certain size they become public entities. (Because they have so much effect on everything.)
Companies responsible for externalized cost payback.
A person whose job is replaced by technology receives for life a share of the savings.
Bring back 90% top tax rates. (OK I have been agitating for that one.)
Very very high estate taxes on very large estates. Maybe up to 99% on estates over $1 billion.
Freedom from distraction. We have a right to our own attention, free from advertising and commercialization. The right to public spaces free from commercialization.
How many of these are even "far left" ideas? I'd agree with most of these. Basically I'm describing Europe here, not Maoist China.
So what about some honest-to-goodness "far left" ideas?
Barry has been working with this group of think tanks to encourage long-term thinking, and was talking to the people attending the session about PIN's model for creating and supporting collective projects on big ideas.
To introduce the idea of long-term idea work, Barry used a concept that he calls "Progressive Victories, circa 2020," based on an idea from Joe Brewer at Cognitive Policy Works. His idea is to think about headlines that we would like to see at some point in the near or even distant future. Barry asked the group to imagine the headlines they would see in newspapers in the year 2020, if progressives are able to build true governing power and enact their agenda.
Here are just a few of the 2020 headlines offered by the group:
Rail Passengers Outnumber Auto Passengers 2 To 1
UN Global Governance Task Force Reels In Corporate Anarchy
Annual Citizen Dividend Raised to $20,000 - (mine)
World Population Growth Stabilized
Steady-State Economy Realized
10 Global Corporations Have Their Federal Charters Revoked For Criminal Activity
Citizen Representatives Now Hold Majorities on Corporate Boards
US Manufacturing Reaches New Peak
OMB Enacts Full-Cost Accounting on All Policy Proposals
Planet Temperature Stabilizes
These are great.
An exercise like this helps get us past the current habit many of us seem to have of reacting mostly to today's events and battles, and thinking instead about where we might be able to take our society in the future. It was difficult to dream about the future when we were plagued by George W. Bush and the far right in office But we have some room now to try. Of course, some of the headlines presented (which I didn't include here) dreamed of a progressive resolution to current events, but the exercise is an attempt to move us past reaction and into proaction.
Thinking about possible futures brings with it the question of how to get there. I'll write about that tomorrow.
I am hoping that readers can leave comments with headlines they hope to see in 5, 10 and 20 years. My own headline from above, in the form that would be useful in a comment here, would be "May 2020, Annual Citizen Dividend Raised to $20,000". The opening paragraph of the accompanying story would be something like,
"The annual citizen dividend has been increased to $20,000. This is the dividend paid to all citizens as their share of the fees collected from businesses that put pollutants into the atmosphere up to their allowed cap, for oil and other extracted resources, and other recovery of externalized costs. A similar amount is added to the National Income Trust to increase future payouts. In similar news, because of increasing productivity the maximum workweek has been reduced to 15 hours and the minimum wage has reached $50 per hour."
Yes, I imagine an economy in which every person has a guaranteed income (before working) of $20,000, people only work 15 hours and the minimum wage is $50. Why not? With computers, robots and machines doing more and more of the work for us, why not? The economic paradigm we operate under today sure isn't working for most of us, so why not imagine something better for all of us?
We all feel the pressure of so many people competing for jobs. But imagine that instead of competing for scarce jobs, everyone just works fewer hours. Last March, in A Stimulus for Working Fewer Hours, economist Dean Baker wrote,
An alternative would be to have everyone share in the adjustment to excess supply by reducing work hours. Fewer work hours would mean roughly proportionate reductions in pay, but there would be the offsetting benefit of more leisure time. Workers would have more time to spend with their families or in nonwork activities. This would bring us more in line with the rest of the world, where the standard workweek and year is considerably shorter.
So what is your vision for a progressive future? Let's come up with some headlines you would like to see in five, ten and twenty years. Give it a try. Tomorrow we can work on how to get there.
I'm Dave Johnson. Along with Ian Welsh, I will be sitting in for Chris Bowers through the end of the month. Chris, Mike, Matt and company have built a great intellectual community here and I am proud to be able to be a part of it.
I like to work with ideas and see where they go, and along with other blogging I'll be trying to do some of that while I am here. I guess this is because I grew up during a time when people talked about "opening up your mind" and "thought experiments" and my high school even taught a class called "creative thinking." (These days it's probably been changed to "corporate thinking.") There were many evenings when we would entertain ourselves by throwing ever more outrageous ideas into the mix.
Sometimes by introducing an outrageous idea and working with it a workable idea can result. (But sometimes everyone just gets angry at you.) Sometimes just talking about ideas can help move or unfreeze people's thinking and open up new possibilities that would not otherwise have been considered. And sometimes everyone makes a face and agrees that the idea just stinks and should be tossed away. You're not playing the game right if you don't offer up a few of those. When I introduce an idea it doesn't mean I am advocating it, it just means let's talk about it and see where it leads. I am completely ready to accept or reject things based on the merits of the arguments and I hope you can be as well.
For example, what happens if we look at all sides of the question, "should we nationalize the oil companies?" Asking the question doesn't mean that I am advocating doing it. But just asking the question opens up a number of areas of discussion that we haven't been having in this country for some time. Discussing this makes us talk about what "nationalization" means which is certainly topical. Perhaps it leads us to talk about who "owns" and benefits from the earth's resources (see Capitalism 3.0 for a discussion of this idea), and what the concept of "ownership" itself means. These are examples of places that just introducing and discussing an idea can take us, and I think that especially today we need to be looking for new economic ideas, new directions, new possibilities for how we as a society are going to feed and house and provide health care and comfort and meaning to people i.e. each other.
For months now the Democrats have been trying to paint John McCain as a toady of the Republican party, voting for Bush 97% of the time over the past two years, attempting to erase his maverick image. But as we've seen over the past several elections, what works best is hitting your opponents on their perceived strengths.
What if we embraced the maverick motif and just made it look dangerous?
You'll have to forgive me in advance - I'm a bit of an amateur on this issue, but I think I understand the broad trends. If I'm factually off somewhere or conceptually a bit incoherent, please do correct me.
There are a lot of things that progressives and the MSM discuss in terms of progressive policies - protecting the environment, health care, the right to organize, etc. However, beyond noting repeatedly that Americans are in a "mountain" of debt (latest example), I haven't seen very many stories on policy responses to this massive problem that is at the heart of the current economic crisis. This is an issue not just for the countless people who have debt problems, but also for the global economy, and so it should be winnable, in some form or another, and be extremely popular politically within the United States. It even has Christian roots. This debt forgivess MUST be packaged with debt forgiveness for other countries as well, if it's going to be advocated by progressives, because otherwise it's not going to help the hundreds of millions - if not billions - of people that are going to be damaged by the global financial crisis, and is more broadly going to endanger world security, including for Americans.
Some policies, like expanded health insurance coverage or a revision of the draconian bankruptcy bill that was passed recently or reducing the possibility of deportations of undocumented people, would reduce the possibility of danger incurred with existing debt, but they won't fundamentally redress the power that debt gives banks over people in the United States and everywhere else. This principle is true whether it's a loan from the IMF to Bangladesh or whether it's a credit card bill from Bank of America to John Q. Public.
Now, banks and the banks that bought their debts are not stupid (now). They know that in order to avoid going belly up, they need to make sure that as much of the income stream they're counting on comes in. Which means that they'll support something like a federal bailout, as happens everytime a company goes bankrupt, and they'll support one for consumers as long as they get their debt written off by the government. However, this is where their interests and the interests of citizens of the United States and every other country that is in debt to finance capital as well as other sectors of big business diverge.
Whereas banks will want the government to assume the debt and have people pay them or some other mechanism that will displace the risk from them to the government, what this will not do is liberate people from the actual debt. More succinctly, it doesn't matter to an individual company if you're broke - as long as you get you debt paid off by taxpayers or government borrowing. However, this does nothing to increase the spending power of the American consumer - which in turn contributes strongly to the global economy's prospects. And so this is an area where big business can be split in half and part of it allied with ordinary people (i.e. how "progressive policies" get implemented in the U.S.).
Our winner this time is Populista for answering in the affirmative the question of the ages, "Will there be pie?"
As usual, the details of the the winning entry are presented on the flip. Get busy with any refining you may want to do, Populista, and let me know when you're ready to post your diary!
First is "PledgeBlue-Institutionalize Our Outrage" and second is "Demand FISA Fillibuster From Obama". At the same time, several people responded to my call for help in continuing this series. Those who did--and anyone else interested, please email me ASAP--my email is on my user's page.
Details on the winning entries on the flip. Get busy writing your diaries!
For "Supporting Progressive Institutions Like Candidates"
The lead changed hands several times, and there were other strong contenders, but in the end more people voted for the one clearly long-term focused proposal--one devoted to developing netroots support for progressive institutios. So, congradulations, Jared!
Now, get busy recasting your already persuasive comment into a top-notch diary! Please let me know at least 1/2 day ahead of time when it's ready to be posted so I can promote it to the front page. (My email's on my user pag.)
And for everyone else, the next contest repeats this weekend, with suggestions opening Friday afternoon (Pacific time) and voting opening on Saturday.
Please keep track of comments/ideas that would be worthy of pormoting in a front page diary next week--or even just kicking around a bit, because of where they might lead. The top prize is a frontpage diary slot, but the overall purpose is to expand the life of good ideas, and give them a second chance to reach more people, spark more connections, and make this a richer environment for all of us to hang out in.
Two different entries that is. And one was a combined idea, so that's three different people! Only there were initial comments, as well as people who recommended them so that makes five different people! My head is spinning!
First is JonPincus, Taylor and dr anonymous for "Mutual Guest Blogging." Second is desmoinesdem, nominated by Sam L. Or is that Sam L, for an idea based on a comment by desmoinesdem? I have to admit, I'm a bit confused myself. Anyway, I'll let all five of them sort it out in their two different teams. I'm the anti-Simon Cowell here.
Congradulations, all five of you! Please talk amongst yourselves and post your diaries expanding on your winning ideas any time this week and I will promote them to the front page. Please check my user page & email me at least 1/2 day ahead of time to give me a heads up on when you're going to do it.
And for everyone else, the next contest repeats this weekend, with suggestions opening Friday afternoon (Pacific time) and voting opening on Saturday.
Please keep track of comments/ideas that would be worthy of pormoting in a front page diary next week--or even just kicking around a bit, because of where they might lead. The top prize is a frontpage diary slot, but the overall purpose is to expand the life of good ideas, and give them a second chance to reach more people, spark more connections, and make this a richer environment for all of us to hang out in.
Our first winner on American Blogger is adamterando, for his comment proposing to organize commenting on swing state newspapers.
Congradulations, Adam! You can post a diary expanding on your comment any time this week and I will promote it to the front page. Please check my user page & email me at least 1/2 day ahead of time to give me a heads up on when you're going to do it.
And for everyone else, the next contest repeats this weekend, with suggestions opening Friday afternoon (Pacific time) and voting opening on Saturday.
Please keep track of comments/ideas that would be worthy of pormoting in a front page diary next week--or even just kicking around a bit, because of where they might lead. The top prize is a frontpage diary slot, but the overall purpose is to expand the life of good ideas, and give them a second chance to reach more people, spark more connections, and make this a richer environment for all of us to hang out in.
Okay, folks, here it is, stage two in the process of collecting and selecting the best ideas of the week, chosing one person's comment or even just the germ of an idea for them to expand into a frontpage diary next week. The rules are simple: read all the entries, and vote!
Now, I'm going to do my best to set this up as a multi-vote poll and hope that it works out so I can determine an actual winner. It's been eons since I did anything like this, so cross your fingers and jump in!
Or better yet--if you know how this works, let me know. Because if it's too confusing, I'm going to switch it.
You are, of course, free to comment as well, to your heart's content.
[Update] Okay, here's how it works--you vote for whatever comments you'd like to see in the running. If you have a clear favorite, vote for it. If you like 2 or 3 vote for them. Whatever. This is not my idea of how to run a multi-option poll. But, then, I gave up programming a while ago, so what are ya gonna do?
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