Dear Editor,

We face a dire predicament caused by an economy that’s dismantling ecosystems essential to human life-support.

Moreover, conventional economic policies are concentrating wealth to such an extent that the top one-percent possesses some 70% of the nation’s wealth, while increasing numbers of Americans are destitute, though many hold multiple jobs. The middle class, traditionally the core of America’s stability, has withered, paralleling the diminishment of organized labor.

Therefore, transformational reforms are being proposed to improve economic institutions so they achieve sustainable outcomes – or at least far less self-destructive ones – while also eliminating gross economic injustices. A number of non-profit research groups are developing policies that will significantly upgrade economic performance.

An approach devised by the Center for Economic & Social Justice, the Economic Democracy Act, proposes “a national economic agenda of monetary, tax and expanded ownership reforms to enable every person to become an independent owner of income-producing capital. The Act starts by removing unjust barriers to equal economic freedom, opportunity and power. It institutionalizes capital ownership as a fundamental human rights by restructuring and democratizing America’s monetary, tax and other basic institutions.”

Many decision-makers are so deeply vested in the exploitations of current economic practices that they fiercely defend them, despite irrefutable evidence demonstrating a myriad of destructive consequences.

Partisans who instinctively block proposed reforms because they violate “free markets” should consider how many economic manipulations already exist. Most ongoing market interventions – such as corporate subsidies and tax-credits – worsen the very problems that jeopardize our future.

Reference: https://www.cesj.org/about-cesj-in-brief/

~ David Kyler

Center for a Sustainable Coast