On Rebuilding Equalizing Institutions

kuttnerbob2I’ve been reading Robert Kuttner’s “The Squandering of America” he makes a great case for why we need to transform our country to restore the middle class and our democracy. He makes it clear how the misguided policies of the last decade have cost us dearly as a nation and a people. He offers hope though, “A rebuilding of equalizing institutions could broaden American prosperity. A kuttner_cover_200very different set of regulatory policies could once again harness capitalism for the broad public good. A new approach to trade, industry, and technology could bring America’s foreign accounts back into balance and reduce the threat to the dollar and to our living standards. A restoration of progressive taxation could restore fiscal order and substantially increase investment in people.”

He concludes the book with, “It was Bismark who said that divine providence protects idiots, drunkards, children and the United States of America. The republic has faced worse challenges, and one must be optimistic that it will survive this one. But if our society is to reclaim broadly shared prosperity, we had better revive our democracy.”

This is exactly the point of my effort to promote a Middleclass Amendment to save our middle class society, the core of our democracy. After the last thirty years of a steady retreat from the efforts of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s to bring an economic bill of rights to the American People with his New Deal we need to restore that sense of what Sen. Wellstone used refrain, “we all do better when we all do better.”

If you haven’t read my little book on the Middleclass Amendment you can read it online here

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