NEW
YORK – We live in a time of high anxiety. Despite the world’s
unprecedented total wealth, there is vast insecurity, unrest, and
dissatisfaction. In the United States, a large majority of Americans
believe that the country is “on the wrong track.” Pessimism has soared.
The same is true in many other places.
Against
this backdrop, the time has come to reconsider the basic sources of
happiness in our economic life. The relentless pursuit of higher income
is leading to unprecedented inequality and anxiety, rather than to
greater happiness and life satisfaction. Economic progress is important
and can greatly improve the quality of life, but only if it is pursued
in line with other goals.
In
this respect, the Himalayan Kingdom of Bhutan has been leading the way.
Forty years ago, Bhutan’s fourth king, young and newly installed, made a
remarkable choice: Bhutan should pursue “gross national happiness”
rather than gross national product. Since then, the country has been
experimenting with an alternative, holistic approach to development that
emphasizes not only economic growth, but also culture, mental health, compassion, and community.
Dozens
of experts recently gathered in Bhutan’s capital, Thimphu, to take
stock of the country’s record. I was co-host with Bhutan’s prime
minister, Jigme Thinley, a leader in sustainable development and a great
champion of the concept of “GNH.” We assembled in the wake of a
declaration in July by the United Nations General Assembly calling on
countries to examine how national policies can promote happiness in
their societies.
All
who gathered in Thimphu agreed on the importance of pursuing happiness
rather than pursuing national income. The question we examined is how to
achieve happiness in a world that is characterized by rapid
urbanization, mass media, global capitalism, and environmental
degradation. How can our economic life be re-ordered to recreate a sense
of community, trust, and environmental sustainability?
Here
are some of the initial conclusions. First, we should not denigrate the
value of economic progress. When people are hungry, deprived of basic
needs such as clean water, health care, and education, and without
meaningful employment, they suffer. Economic development that alleviates
poverty is a vital step in boosting happiness.
Second,
relentless pursuit of GNP to the exclusion of other goals is also no
path to happiness. In the US, GNP has risen sharply in the past 40
years, but happiness has not. Instead, single-minded pursuit of GNP has
led to great inequalities of wealth and power, fueled the growth of a
vast underclass, trapped millions of children in poverty, and caused
serious environmental degradation.
Third, happiness is achieved through a balanced approach to life by both individuals and
societies. As individuals, we are unhappy if we are denied our basic
material needs, but we are also unhappy if the pursuit of higher incomes
replaces our focus on family, friends, community, compassion, and
maintaining internal balance. As a society, it is one thing to organize
economic policies to keep living standards on the rise, but quite
another to subordinate all of society’s values to the pursuit of profit.
Yet
politics in the US has increasingly allowed corporate profits to
dominate all other aspirations: fairness, justice, trust, physical and
mental health, and environmental sustainability. Corporate campaign
contributions increasingly undermine the democratic process, with the
blessing of the US Supreme Court.
Fourth,
global capitalism presents many direct threats to happiness. It is
destroying the natural environment through climate change and other
kinds of pollution, while a relentless stream of oil-industry propaganda
keeps many people ignorant of this. It is weakening social trust and
mental stability, with the prevalence of clinical depression apparently
on the rise. The mass media have become outlets for corporate
“messaging,” much of it overtly anti-scientific, and Americans suffer
from an increasing range of consumer addictions.
Consider
how the fast-food industry uses oils, fats, sugar, and other addictive
ingredients to create unhealthy dependency on foods that contribute to
obesity. One-third of all Americans are now obese. The rest of the world
will eventually follow unless countries restrict dangerous corporate
practices, including advertising unhealthy and addictive foods to young
children.
The
problem is not just foods. Mass advertising is contributing to many
other consumer addictions that imply large public-health costs,
including excessive TV watching, gambling, drug use, cigarette smoking,
and alcoholism.
Fifth,
to promote happiness, we must identify the many factors other than GNP
that can raise or lower society’s well-being. Most countries invest to
measure GNP, but spend little to identify the sources of poor health
(like fast foods and excessive TV watching), declining social trust, and
environmental degradation. Once we understand these factors, we can
act.
The
mad pursuit of corporate profits is threatening us all. To be sure, we
should support economic growth and development, but only in a broader
context: one that promotes environmental sustainability and the values
of compassion and honesty that are required for social trust. The search
for happiness should not be confined to the beautiful mountain kingdom
of Bhutan.
1. holistic approach to development that emphasizes not only economic growth, but also culture, mental health, compassion, and community : pendekatan holistik pembangunan yang menekankan tidak hanya pertumbuhan ekonomi, tetapi juga budaya, kesehatan, mental kasih sayang, dan masyarakat
2. happiness is achieved through a balanced approach to life by both individuals and societies : kebahagiaan dicapai melalui pendekatan yang seimbang untuk kehidupan oleh individu dan masyarakat
Neither Revolution Nor Reform: A New Strategy for the Left
But what happens if a system neither reforms nor collapses in crisis?
Quietly,
a different kind of progressive change is emerging, one that involves a
transformation in institutional structures and power, a process one
could call “evolutionary reconstruction.” At the height of the financial
crisis in early 2009, some kind of nationalization of the banks seemed
possible. “The public hates bankers right now,” the Brookings
Institution’s Douglas Elliot observed. “Truthfully, you would find
considerable support for hanging a number of bankers…” It was a moment,
Barack Obama told banking CEOs, when his administration was “the only
thing between you and the pitchforks.” But the president opted for a
soft bailout engineered by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and White
House economic adviser Lawrence Summers. Whereas Franklin Roosevelt
attacked the “economic royalists” and built and mobilized his political
base, Obama entered office with an already organized base and largely
ignored it.
When
the next financial crisis occurs, and it will, a different political
opportunity may be possible. One option has already been put on the
table: in 2010, thirty-three senators voted to break up large Wall
Street investment banks that were “too big to fail.” Such a policy would
not only reduce financial vulnerability; it would alter the structure
of institutional power.
Still,
breaking up banks, even if successful, isn’t the end of the process.
The modern history of the financial industry, to say nothing of
anti-trust strategies in general, suggests that the big banks would
ultimately regroup and reconcentrate and restore their domination of the
system. So what can be done when “breaking them up” fails?
The
potentially explosive power of public anger at financial institutions
surfaced in May 2010 when the Senate voted by a 96-0 margin to audit the
Federal Reserve’s lending (a provision included ultimately in the
Dodd-Frank legislation, which was designed to protect American taxpayers
and consumers from financial corruption and to make the financial
system more accountable)—something that had never been done before.
Traditional reforms have aimed at improved regulation, higher reserve
requirements, and the channeling of credit to key sectors. But future
crises may feature a spectrum of sophisticated proposals for more
radical change offered by figures on both the left and right. For
instance, a “Limited Purpose Banking” strategy put forward by
conservative economist Laurence Kolticoff would impose a 100-percent
reserve requirement on banks. Because banks typically provide loans in
amounts many times their reserves, this would transform them into modest
institutions with little or no capacity to finance speculation. It
would also nationalize the creation of all new money as federal
authorities, rather than the banks, would directly control system-wide
financial flows. A variety of respected liberal as well as conservative
economists have welcomed this strategy—including five Nobel laureates in
economics.
On
the left, the economist Fred Moseley has proposed that for banks deemed
too big to fail “permanent nationalization with bonds-to-stocks swaps
for bondholders is the most equitable solution…” Nationally owned banks,
he argues, would provide a basis for “a more stable and public-oriented
banking system in the future.” Most striking is the argument of Willem
Buiter, the chief economist of Citigroup no less, that if the public
underwrites the costs of bailouts, “banks should be in public
ownership…” In fact, had the taxpayer funds used to bail out major
financial institutions in 2007–2010 been provided on condition that
voting stock be issued in return for the investment, one or more major
banks would, in fact, have become essentially publicly controlled banks.
Unknown
to most Americans, there have been a large number of small and
medium-sized public banking institutions for some time now. They have
financed small businesses, renewable energy, co-ops, housing,
infrastructure, and other specifically targeted areas. There are also
7,500 community-based credit unions. Further precedents for public
banking range from Small Business Administration loans to the activities
of the U.S.-dominated World Bank. In fact, the federal government
already operates 140 banks and quasi-banks that provide loans and loan
guarantees for an extraordinary range of domestic and international
economic activities. Through its various farm, housing, electricity,
cooperative and other loans, the Department of Agriculture alone
operates the equivalent of the seventh largest bank in America.
The
economic crisis has also produced widespread interest in the Bank of
North Dakota, a highly successful state-owned bank founded in 1919 when
the state was governed by legislators belonging to the left-populist
Nonpartisan League. Over the past fourteen years, the bank has returned
$340 million in profits to the state and has broad support in the
business community as well as among progressive activists. Legislative
proposals to establish banks patterned in whole or in part on the North
Dakota model have been put forward by activists and legislators in
Washington, Oregon, California, Arizona, New Mexico, Montana, Illinois,
Louisiana, New York, Maryland, Virginia, Maine, and Massachusetts. In
Oregon, with strong support from a coalition of farmers, small-business
owners, and community bankers, and backed by State Treasurer Ted
Wheeler, a variation on the theme, “a virtual state bank” (that is, one
that has no storefronts but channels state-backed capital to support
other banks) is likely to be formed in the near future. How far the
various strategies may develop is likely to depend on the intensity of
future financial crises, the degree of social and economic pain and
political anger in general, and the capacity of a new politics to focus
citizen anger in support of major institutional reconstruction and
democratization.
That
a long era of social and economic austerity and failing reform might
paradoxically open the way to more populist or radical institutional
change—including various forms of public ownership—is also suggested by
emerging developments in health care. Here the next stage of change is
already under way. At first, it is likely to be harmful. Republican
efforts to cut back the mostly unrealized benefits of the Affordable
Care Act, passed in 2010, provide one example of this. The first stages,
however, are not likely to be the last. Polls show overwhelming
distrust of and deep hostility toward insurance companies. We can also
expect public outrage to be fueled by stories like that of
fifty-nine-year-old James Verone who attempted to rob a bank in
Gastonia, North Carolina this year—but only, he made clear, for one
dollar. The reason: unemployed and without health insurance, Verone
simply saw no way other than going to jail to get health care for a
growth on his chest, foot difficulties, and back problems.
Cost
pressures are building in ways that will also continue to undermine
corporations facing global competitors, forcing them to seek new
solutions. A recent report from the federal Centers for Medicare and
Medicaid Services (“National Health Expenditure Projections, 2009–2019”)
projects health care costs to rise from the 2010 level of 17.5 percent
of GDP to 19.6 percent in 2019. It has long been clear that the central
question is to what extent, and at what pace, underlying cost pressures
ultimately force development of some form of single-payer system—the
only serious way to deal with the underlying problem.
A NEW national solution is ultimately likely to come either in response to a burst of pain-driven public outrage or more
slowly through a state by state build up to a national system.
Massachusetts, of course, already has a near universal plan, with 99.8
percent of children covered and 98.1 percent of adults. In Hawaii,
health coverage (provided mostly by nonprofit insurers) reaches 91.8
percent of adults in large part because of a 1970s law mandating low
cost insurance for anyone working twenty hours or more a week. In
Vermont, Governor Peter Shumlin signed legislation in May 2011 creating
“Green Mountain Care,” a broad effort that would ultimately allow state
residents to move into a publicly funded insurance pool—in essence a
form of single-payer insurance. Universal coverage, dependent on a
federal waiver, would begin in 2017 and possibly as early as 2014. In
Connecticut, legislation approved in June 2011 created a “SustiNet”
Health Care Cabinet directed to produce a business plan for a nonprofit
public health insurance program by 2012, with the goal of offering such a
plan beginning in 2014. In California, there is a good chance a
universal “Medicare for all” bill may be on the governor’s desk for
signature by mid-2012. (Similar legislation passed by both the House and
the Senate was vetoed by then-Governor Schwarzenegger in 2006 and
2008.) In all, nearly twenty states will soon consider bills to create
one or another form of universal health care.
One
can also observe a developing institutional dynamic in the central
neighborhoods of some of the nation’s larger cities, places that have
consistently suffered high levels of unemployment and underemployment,
with poverty commonly above 25 percent. In such neighborhoods,
democratizing development has also gone forward, again paradoxically,
precisely because traditional policies—in this case involving large
expenditures for jobs, housing and other necessities—have been
politically impossible. “Social enterprises” that undertake businesses
in order to support specific social missions now increasingly make up
what is sometimes called “a fourth sector” (different from the
government, business, and nonprofit sectors). Roughly 4,500
not-for-profit community development corporations are largely devoted to
housing development. There are now also more than eleven thousand
businesses owned in whole or part by their employees; five million more
individuals are involved in these enterprises than are members of
private-sector unions. Another 130 million Americans are members of
various urban, agricultural, and credit union cooperatives. In many
cities, important new “land trust” developments are underway using an
institutional form of nonprofit or municipal ownership that develops and
maintains low- and moderate-income housing.
The
various institutional efforts have also begun to develop innovative
strategies that suggest broader possibilities for change. Consider the
Evergreen Cooperatives in Cleveland, Ohio, an integrated group of
worker-owned companies, supported in part by the purchasing power of
large hospitals and universities. The cooperatives include a solar
installation company, an industrial scale (and ecologically advanced)
laundry, and soon a greenhouse capable of producing more than five
million heads of lettuce a year. The Cleveland effort, which is partly
modeled on the nearly 100,000 person Mondragón cooperatives in the
Basque region of Spain, is on track to create new businesses, year by
year, as time goes on. However, its goal is not simply worker ownership,
but the democratization of wealth and community-building in general in
the low-income Greater University Circle area of what was once a
thriving industrial city. Linked by a nonprofit corporation and a
revolving fund, the companies cannot be sold outside the network; they
also return 10 percent of profits to help develop additional
worker-owned firms in the area. (Full disclosure: The Democracy
Collaborative, which I co-founded, has played an important role in
helping develop the Cleveland effort. See www.Community-Wealth.org for
further information on this and many other local and state efforts.)
Another
innovative enterprise is Market Creek Plaza in San Diego. There a
comprehensive, community-owned project links individual and collective
wealth-building through a $23.5-million commercial and cultural complex
anchored by a shopping center. The complex has developed a range of
social and economic projects that have resulted in the employment of
more than 1,700 people. Its multicultural emphasis on the arts has
helped create several venues for common activity among the local Asian,
Hispanic, and black communities.
Significantly,
these collectively owned businesses are commonly supported by unusual
local alliances, including not only progressives; labor unions; and
nonprofit and religious leaders; but also, in many cases, the backing of
local businesses and bankers. The efforts have also attracted
surprising political support. In Indiana, for example, Republican State
Treasurer Richard Mourdock has established a state linked deposit
program to provide state financing support for employee ownership. At
this writing, Ohio Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown has plans to
introduce model legislation to support the development of an initial
group of Evergreen-style efforts in diverse parts of the country.
Environmental concerns are also involved; many of the enterprises are
“green” by design, increasingly so as time goes on. Cleveland’s
Evergreen laundry, which uses less than a third the amount of water used
by comparable commercial firms, is one of the most ecologically
advanced in the Midwest. In Washington state, Coastal Community Action
(CCA) operates a portfolio of housing, food, health, and employment
programs for low-income residents that uses development and ownership of
a fourteen million dollar wind turbine to generate income to support
its social service programs.
Yet
another sphere of institutional growth centers on land development. By
maintaining direct ownership of areas surrounding transit station exits,
public agencies in Washington, D.C., Atlanta, and other cities earn
millions capturing the increased land values their transit investments
create. The town of Riverview, Michigan, has been a national leader in
trapping methane from its landfills and using it to fuel electricity
generation, thereby providing both revenues and jobs. There are roughly
five hundred similar projects nationwide. Many cities have established
municipally owned hotels. There are also over two thousand publicly
owned utilities that provide power (and, increasingly, broadband
services) to more than forty-five million Americans, in the process
generating $50 billion in annual revenue. Significant public
institutions are also common at the state level. CalPERS, California’s
public pension authority, helps finance local community development
needs; in Alaska, state oil revenues provide each citizen with dividends
from public investment strategies as a matter of right; in Alabama,
public pension investing has long focused on state economic development
(including employee-owned firms).
ALTHOUGH
PUBLIC ownership is surprisingly widespread, it can also be vulnerable
to challenge. The fiscal crisis, and conservative resistance to raising
taxes, has led some mayors and governors to sell off public assets. In
Indiana, Governor Mitch Daniels sold the Indiana Toll Road to Spanish
and Australian investors. In Chicago, then-Mayor Richard Daley
privatized parking meters and toll collection on the Chicago Skyway and
even proposed selling off recycling collection, equipment maintenance,
and the annual “Taste of Chicago” festival. How far continuing financial
and political pressures may lead other officials to attempt to secure
revenues by selling off public assets is an open question. Public
resistance to such strategies, although less widely publicized, has been
surprisingly strong in many areas. Toll road sales have been held up in
Pennsylvania and New Jersey, and newly elected Chicago Mayor Rahm
Emanuel recently voiced his opposition to an attempt to privatize Midway
Airport as previously attempted by Daley. An effort to transfer
city-owned parking garages to private ownership in Los Angeles also
failed when residents and business leaders realized parking rates would
spike if the deal went through.
One
thing is certain: traditional liberalism, dependent on expensive
federal policies and strong labor unions, is moribund. The government no
longer has much capacity to use progressive taxation to achieve the
goal of equity or to regulate corporations effectively. Congressional
deadlocks on such matters are the rule, not the exception. At the same
time, ongoing economic stagnation or mild upturns followed by further
decay, and “real” unemployment rates in the 15 percent to 16 percent
range appear more likely than a return to booming economic times.
IRONICALLY,
THIS grim new order may open the way for the kinds of “evolutionary
reconstructive” institutional change described here. Since the Great
Depression, liberal activists and policy makers have implicitly assumed
they were providing one or another form of “countervailing power”
against large corporations. But institutional reconstruction aims either
to weaken or displace corporate
power. Strategies like anti-trust or efforts to “break up” big banks
aim to weaken. Public banking, municipal utilities, and single-payer
health plans attempt to displace privately owned companies. At the same
time, community-based enterprises offer public officials alternatives to
paying large tax-incentive bribes to big corporations.
Of
course, “evolutionary reconstruction” might fail, as have most kinds of
top-down national reform. The era of stalemate and decay might continue
and worsen. Like ancient Rome, the United States could simply decline
and fall, unable to address its social ills.
However,
even during a sustained era of stalemate and decay, it may be possible
to develop a coherent long-term progressive strategic direction. Such a
direction would build upon the remaining energies of traditional liberal
reform, animated over time by new populist anger and movements aimed at
confronting corporate power, the extreme concentration of income,
failing public services, the ecological crisis, and military
adventurism. And it would explicitly advocate the construction of new
institutions run by people committed to developing an expansively
democratic polity, thereby giving political voice to the new
constituencies emerging alongside the new developments at the same time
it helps to begin altering underlying institutional power balances.
In
connection with environmental issues, at least, some “capitalists” also
seem willing to sign onto this vision. New organizations like the
Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE) and the American
Sustainable Business Council (ASBC) have been quietly developing
momentum in recent years. BALLE, which has more than 22,000 small
business members, works to promote sustainable local community
development. ASBC (which includes BALLE as a member) is an advocacy and
lobbying effort that involves more than 150,000 business professionals
and 30 separate business organizations committed to sustainability.
Leading White House figures and such Cabinet-level officials as Labor
Secretary Hilda Solis have welcomed the organization as a counter to the
national Chamber of Commerce. (Jeffrey Hollender, chair of ASBC’s
Business Leadership Council and former CEO of Seventh Generation, has
denounced the Chamber for “fighting democracy and destroying America’s
economic future” because of its opposition to climate change legislation
and its support for the Citizens United decision.) Gus Speth, a member
of ASBC’s Advisory Board (and former environmental adviser to Presidents
Carter and Clinton) offers a more far-reaching general perspective:
“For the most part, we have worked within this current system of
political economy, but working within the system will not succeed in the
end when what is needed is transformative change in the system itself.”
AT
THE heart of the spectrum of emerging institutional change is the
traditional radical principle that the ownership of capital should be
subject to democratic control. In a nation where 1 percent of the
population owns nearly as much wealth as the entire bottom half of the
nation, this principle may be particularly appealing to the young—the
people who will shape the next political era. In 2009, even as
Republicans assailed President Obama and his liberal allies as immoral
“socialists,” a Rasmussen poll reported that Americans under thirty were
“essentially evenly divided” as to whether they preferred “capitalism”
or “socialism.” Even if many were unsure about what “socialism” is, they
were clearly open to something new, whatever it might be called. A
non-statist, community-building, institution-changing, democratizing
strategy might well capture their imagination and channel their desire
to heal the world. It is surely a positive direction to pursue. Just
possibly, it could open the way to an era of true progressive renewal,
even one day perhaps step-by-step systemic change or the kind of
unexpected, explosive, movement-building power evidenced in the “Arab
Spring” and, historically, in our own civil rights, feminist, and other
great movements
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