March 18, 2020
- Immediate $1,000 per capita distribution to state governments and territories to offset lost tax revenues of state and local governments and sustain public services.
- Nationalize financially failing enterprises deemed strategically important to the promotion of public purpose, including transportation manufacturing businesses, by taking control from shareholders and directors, and assuming all operating expenses and incomes similar to that of bankruptcy. Corporate management and employees can be left in place, should that be deemed to further public purpose.
The crisis may not be the fault of the shareholders, but it is a risk they take when investing.
- Increase the minimum social security payment to $2,000 per month, offsetting the losses from uninsured pensions and supporting our seniors at a level that makes us proud to be Americans.
- Increase the minimum unemployment compensation to $500 per week and make it available without restriction to all of the unemployed.
- Fund $15 per hour jobs for qualifying non profit organizations to allow them to employ anyone willing and able to work for that wage.
- Lower the eligibility age of free Medicare from 65 to 0 and adequately fund it to provide medical care that makes us proud to be Americans.
- Eliminate the tariffs.
- Supplement with proposals to eliminate undesired emissions and channel sustainable growth.
These were my proposals back in March.
Now, with 20-20 hindsight, and some 8 months on, seems I wouldn’t change a thing…
We still need equitable distributions to the states to keep up their public services, and a federal distribution to the state governments with no strings attached calculated on a per capita basis remains equitable, doesn’t selectively reward bad behavior, and doesn’t involve any state paying for any other state.
I still see nationalizing strategically important business that would otherwise be bankrupt and assets liquidated as critical to preserving strategically important business infrastructure.
I still see the imperative of increasing minimum social security payments to equitably sustain seniors without moral hazard and take some of the pressure off of underfunded pension fund issues.
I still see unemployment compensation as a countercyclical measure to sustain spending and social cohesion that targets and supports those who’ve lost their jobs and which will automatically taper off as employment recovers.
I still support this as a means of providing a transition job for unemployed looking to transition from unemployment to private sector employment as the economy recovers. Private sector employers prefer to hire those who are already working rather than the unemployed, and being employed by a non profit is sufficient to make these employees far more employable by the private sector as the economy recovers.
I still support single payer universal healthcare, as vastly superior to today’s arrangements for both quality of care and overall efficiency, saving the nation some $500 billion per year of reduced healthcare expenditures. Furthermore, it removes healthcare as a marginal cost of production for businesses, removing that distortion of economic outcomes.
I still support eliminating the tariffs, which continue to be a drag on prosperity even as the economy struggles with the burdens of the COVID19 epidemic.
I still support restoring the economy in a way that doesn’t give back the ecological gains of the last 9 months which were accomplished solely by eliminating ‘non essentials’ and since they are recognized as non essential, the cost of any environmental degradation to restore those activities puts them in question.