I Wish

I don’t know if our nation has become too political or simply is not political enough, but I believe a political movement is the only way to transform our nation into the country I wish we had. While I understand that it’s not about me, I believe we need a political revolution to transform our nation into a country that would become of the people, for the people and by the people.

The United States of America is one of the richest countries in the world, if not actually the richest country in the world, yet some of us, our family, friends or neighbors are hungry and we have malnourished children and adults, unhoused individuals and families, under educated people, people who can’t afford healthcare or lose everything because they get sick. In the richest county in the world, there people who cannot afford the basics of life, struggling to keep their utilities on and can't clothe their families.

In 1944 FDR proposed the second bill of rights for American citizens, unfortunately, he would die before his administration could present the bill to congress and congress thought the people had too many rights. Yet some of his ideas were picked up by other countries, like the right to healthcare, rights to employment, education that would both benefit the individual as well as help them become useful to their nation and Universal Basic Income.

What were the Economic Rights of the Second Bill Of Rights proposed by FDR?

1. The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries, or shops or farms or mines of the nation;

2. The right to earn enough to provide adequate food, clothing and recreation;

3. The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;

4. The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;

5. The right of every family to a decent home;

6. The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;

7. The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident and unemployment;

8. The right to a good education.

Those not only are economic rights, they are human rights that should be available to every citizen of the United States. Yet over the years, I’ve heard people say, “If you don’t work, you don’t eat” when referring to their neighbors, but never about the rich who don’t actually work and have more money than they can spend in ten lifetimes.

You call me a liberal? I’m not just a liberal, I like to think of myself as a George Jetson liberal. Many young people may ask, “who is George Jetson”?

George Jetson was a cartoon character in the 1960s. George and his family lived in a stylish apartment and they had a flying car. His wife Jane didn’t work and she and their daughter Julie often went on shopping sprees and like “modern man” George would complain when his wife overspent, but Jane had her own money (AKA a UBI). Jane had a robot maid to help around the house with chores and cooking. His son Elroy had an immense love for science and conducted many experiments and built expensive robots at home. His children were educated by robots that could not and did not discriminate and they were receiving a world class education. His family took two vacations each year. His entire family had medical insurance, including his dog Astro.

What did George do for a living, you may ask? George Jetson worked three days each week for four hours each day. Great, but what did he do to earn his living? It was George’s job to push a button IF NECESSARY. In the three to four years the show aired, to my recollection, George only was required to push the button two times, and to my childish mind it was extremely exciting, especially since in one of the two episodes in which he needed to push the button, his button pushing finger was injured.

As we enter the age of automation, robotics and AI it is essential that we begin to create a world more in line with the one George and his family lived.

We don’t need to get rid of teachers however we need an educational curriculum that is not only more standardized across the country, it should be implemented in such a way that every child, regardless of race, creed, color, religion, economic status, nationality, state or region is given the best shot possible at life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as an individual and the ability to create and find the actual best and brightest in our nation; not our current system which promotes certain groups of children as if they are too stupid to equally compete with our poor children and children of color; and a computerized education with teachers to clarify provides the best opportunity to implement such a system.

Every child in the country, regardless of school or economic status of their parent, should be given a hot, fresh cooked breakfast, lunch and supper at school; eliminating child hunger.

No corporation should own housing of any kind. They can lie and say corporations are people, but there is not a corporation on the planet that will ever sleep in a house or an apartment.

Foreigners living outside of the United States should not be allowed to own more than one dwelling in the United States and if the dwelling is left unoccupied for more than one month each year over a three year period they should be forced to sell it at a loss.

Anyone who wants a job, regardless of skill level, should have a job that pays a living wage, regardless of age or education. There is no such thing as a job designed for teens, just a job that requires a human being to work it and the worker should not be taken advantage of because they are sixteen; some sixteen year olds need to leave home for safety reasons while others have children.

Every adult citizen eighteen years old and older who earns less than $250K a year should receive a UBI of a minimum of $2500 a month (as a starting baseline) that guarantees increases by 3% to keep up with the cost of living and prevent landlords from gauging renters; and yes this income should be considered for homebuyers.

Before you say no, $2500 a month will cover the housing costs of most citizens as well as cover utilities and some food. It will help pull millions of people, especially children, out of poverty. It would allow people stuck in abusive relationships for economic reasons to leave and live on their own. It would encourage couples, who many times don’t marry because they can’t afford it, to marry. It would get adult children out of their parent’s home, giving their parents freedom to enjoy their lives while they are still young and healthy enough without worrying how their children will survive. And it would give people the option to retire at a younger age (50) to enjoy their lives and make room in the work force for younger people. Realize and understand, there will always be people who will work until they die, but those who want to retire would be able to retire. It would remove the constant threats to social security and the retirement age for social security should drop to 50; working thirty-four years from age 16 to 50 should be more than enough for any society, to expect a person to work 49+ years is insane.

We need to implement Medicare for All without the varying parts, that provides full physical, mental, optical and dental medical care to every American citizen with no caveats connected, reasonable co-pays and free prescriptions.

Any chain grocer that chooses to operate in a city should operate in every community in that city. No business should be allowed to operate in a city, leaving some citizens in food deserts. Either they want to sell food or they don’t, and if they don’t want to sell food in one community, they should not be allowed to sell food in any community.

For profit prisons should be closed down and corporate factories should be required by law to open and operate living wage factories. The prison system should go back to the business of reform and rehabilitation of inmates, not slave labor. And all those jobs should automatically be union jobs with full benefits, paid time off, time and a half for over time and a secure pension with cost of living increases that would provide for them until the day they die.

Instead of business and factory districts, businesses and factories should be available in every community across a city. No citizen should have to travel across town to work a living wage job. There should be living wage jobs, not only in their community, but in reasonable walking distance from their home, lowering the need and use of cars.

Our nation should make a declaration on energy similar to the moon shot. We as a nation should embrace the idea of becoming the greenest nation on the planet within ten years and let go of the ridiculous plans for fossil fuels that last into the 2050s. As a nation we need to reject the idea of making money off of energy. Instead of building charging stations all over the country, lay magnetic roads that recharge electric vehicles as they drive over our roads as they currently have in Norway.

We need to begin replacing our current HVAC systems with heat pump systems that both heat and cool homes. We should use solar water heaters and convert to solar, wind and hydro energy, not fossil fuels of any kind or nuclear.

We should begin planting female fruit trees in our neighborhoods and communities, providing free and healthy food to those in the community.

We give over a billion dollars in subsidies to corporations making hundreds of millions of dollars in profits who pay little to no taxes. To pay for these things all we have to do is take away their subsidies and make them pay their taxes. They’ve been gauging, underpaying us and taking our jobs away for decades, it’s time they gave back what they have taken.

Implementing just these few things would improve the lives of the majority of working class and poor Americans and cause crime to plummet because people with the resources they require to survive rarely commit crimes. As a result, the number of guns needed in our country would also fall.

But maybe I’m just a delusional dreamer who wants a country that is possible that my neighbors across this nation have accepted as an impossibility; but my God, I truly do wish it was a country we all could have. This is my wish.