University Place  James "Gus" Speth Manifesto For A New Economy  November 11, 2012 UP806    cc >> I've had a chance to know Gus Speth for, I don't know, probably 7, 8, 9, 10 years, maybe even. As I was reviewing his credentials because I just know him as Gus, he's a good guy that does good stuff, but I thought maybe I should refresh myself on his credentials that brings us to him today, I had to kind of cause for breath. At the Leopold Foundation, we're celebrating our 30th anniversary, so we've been reflecting a little bit on the different work and accomplishments that we've done. I've had the good fortune to be there 15 years, so sometimes I think, wow, look at all we've been able to accomplish, and then I read Gus' credentials and I got quite humbled because he's had, like, four or five great careers worth of the work that I've done. Just a couple of his quick accomplishments. He's a founder of both the National Resource Defense Council, World Resources Institute. He was the chief adviser to what's called the Council on Environmental Quality Chair for President Carter. He worked internationally through the United Nations development program and led that effort. And then was dean of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies for a decade before kind of going into quasi-retirement and just teaching at the Vermont Law School and writing several books. So, his credentials are impeccable. 

He comes to us at a time questioning the direction of our country and perhaps the world on the heels of an election. So, his voice and his insights are particularly timely. He's written four major books, the latest of which is America the Possible, and what I particularly like about this book is it not only begins to show us how we can change the direction we're headed, but also I think importantly reminds us why we need to change the direction we're headed. And this, I think, is a very Leopoldian aspect. For those of you that are familiar with the "Sand County Almanac," Leopold talks a lot about conservation and how we can live within our means, if you will, but most importantly, he asks us to rethink and reframe why we care about these things as those we cannot live without wild things. so I think "America the Possible" is a great tool to, not only help us rethink where we're headed and how we're going to get there, but why we need to rethink that so that our direction is clear and the end result is what we hoped to achieve. So, without further ado, I will welcome Gus Speth to the podium, and he will share his thoughts, insights, experience, and expertise with us. [APPLAUSE]  >> Thank you. Thank all of you for coming, and thank Buddy for that warm introduction. All of the groups that Buddy mentioned have done better after I left. 

[LAUGHTER] And Buddy was kind enough to give me a book that I treasure maybe as much as any, maybe more than others, which is a copy of the "Sand County Almanac" made out of the trees that Aldo Leopold planted and some of which had to be thinned out. It's a great pride of mine. And thank the festival organizers for this wonderful event. Honestly, I don't think I've ever seen anything quite like this. It's really spectacular. I've been attending some of the sessions myself, and congratulations to the sponsors and organizers of this event. And thanks to all of you for coming out in the rain, and thank you Wisconsin for Tammy Baldwin. [LAUGHTER] [APPLAUSE] Oh, boy. And I was just attending a session a few moments ago on the Wisconsin uprising, and thank you for that, too. [APPLAUSE] Another inspiration and you always keep us guessing. 

[LAUGHTER] Around the country, Wisconsin. I'm in Vermont now, as Buddy said, and we just take the most liberal congressional delegation in the congress and send them back in routinely. But when I was learning the ropes in Washington, it was Gaylord Nelson and William Proxmire, and I thought that was the way it was supposed to be. And somewhere in my mind, I still think that and this great governor and senator that you gave us gave birth to Earth Day when I first started my career in 1970. So, as the expression goes, everything has a story, the motto for this event, and I want to talk to you about America's story, and I'll try not to talk too long and we'll have some time left over. I'll read a little bit from the book after I make a few comments here, and then we'll have a conversation. So I want to begin on a personal note and to say that this book really began when I started thinking hard, maybe I should have done it a lot earlier, about my six grandchildren. And what's the America that we would like to see for today's children when they grow up some decades from now? In my own mind, I think it's still possible to build a very attractive America for them, but it won't be easy. We haven't got much time. We're going to have to do some major things. 

So the book really addresses the issue of how do we get there and what do we do now. And I think the first thing we have to do is really deeply understand where we are today if we're going to get to a better place. When we surveyed the conditions and trends in our country today, it's damn distressing, isn't it? And the book begins by reviewing these afflictions that we have economically, politically, environmentally, socially, and my conclusion is that we're suffering from a bad case of system failure. Just take the international comparisons, for example. I looked at 30 indicators of national well-being and international citizenship, and I looked at it in terms of the top 20 advanced countries. Our peer countries, if you will. And I'm afraid what I found is at the very beginning of the book, and it makes quite a distressing read, but I'm going to tell you about it nevertheless. Our country now has, in this 20-country sample of Europe and Japan and Canada and others, we have the highest poverty rate, the greatest inequality of incomes, the lowest spending on social programs for the distressed, the lowest score on the United Nations' index of material well-being of children. And this will surprise many of, perhaps, the men in the audience, the worst score on the UN's gender inequality index. In a nation that prides itself on equal opportunity, if not equality, we have the lowest social mobility. 

We know from recent debates how we spend more on healthcare than any other country, and what do we get for it? Well, the highest infant mortality rate, the highest prevalence of mental health problems, the highest obesity rate, the highest percentage of people going without healthcare due to cost, the highest consumption of anti-depressants, along with the shortest life expectancy at birth. We have the lowest score of student performance in math, third lowest and middling scores in science and reading. The second highest high school dropout rate. The highest homicide rate. The largest prison population. The lowest score on the World Economic Forum's Environmental Performance Index. The second largest score on the ecological footprint index. The highest rate of failing to ratify international agreements. The third lowest spending on international development and humanitarian assistance. So much for the most generous nation on Earth. 

The highest military spending, almost as much as the rest of the world combined. And the largest international arms sales, 70% of the total. That's us. We're number one in exactly the place we don't want to be. So when we have big encompassing problems across this whole front of issues, it can't be due to small reasons. It's a system failure, and as I started saying, it's the system, stupid. So we live and work in a system of political economy. Think of it as an operating system that's now delivering terrible results. And so the argument in the book is that if we really want to change direction and lead through a better place for our children and grandchildren, we're going to have to change the system. We're going to have to drive systemic transformative change until, in effect, we have a new system of political economy, a new operating system, one that gives good results for human and natural communities. 

In other words, we've got to embed at the core of our economy and our polity new and different priorities. We've got to reprogram the operating system that the country is now on. And to do that, I think we've got to understand what the elements of this operating system are, the negative aspects of it that are giving rise to such problems. And, in general, and I'll go into more detail in a second about this, the problem, in my view, is the Titanic forces unleashed by this ruthless rapacious brand of capitalism that we have and the emergence of this national security state that is now so all-encompassing. It sounds like a radical proposition, but even Samuelson Nordhaus basic textbook on macroeconomics says that ours is a ruthless economy, and indeed it is. So, in the book, I analyzed what are the key elements of today's version of capitalism in America and the security state, and what I show is that this system, with its various interacting forces, greatly rewards the pursuit of profit and growth and power and has little concern for people and place and planet. And I'm going to turn in a moment to how we modify these key features of today's system to get to a place where the real priorities of economic life and political life are people and place and planet. But the central point I want to stress is that we have to think in terms of systemic problems with systemic change as a solution. And, finally, I conclude in this first part of the book that we need a new politics, obviously, to make it happen and that we don't have much time. I think there are really four horsemen closing down possibility in our country. 

This creeping corporatocracy and plutocracy that we just saw in the last election, fortunately, not emerging as it might have. But remember that corporations spend vastly more on lobbying than they do on the campaigns. Vastly more. Maybe an order of magnitude more. So we have this increase of money power over people power. The militarization in our society, climate disruption and what that could bring forth, and the tremendous power of the financial system to big banks and so on. So, the first point is that we live and work in this system of political economy that's failing us we need to think in terms of system change. The second point I want to make is the imperative of having a compelling vision of the future. When systemic change does come, it'll do so because people had a positive picture of a future they wanted to fight for and saw real gains for themselves and their children in making sacrifices to get there. And so, in chapter five of the book I describe an America that could be. 

I call it America the Possible. When I was researching the book, I didn't find many people who had tried to do that. So I had this thought, fools rush in. But I did make an effort to do it, and I'll talk about that a little bit in a moment. But in America the Possible we will have climbed out of the basement of the OECD that I described at the outset. We will have headed off calamities like climate change and other things that could derail the prospects for progress. We will have experience a deep transformation in the values and cultures in our society, and we will have opted for localization where we have put a lot more emphasis on localization while salvaging the beneficial and good things about globalization. Now, to realize the America the Possible, we need more than just a positive vision of what that could be. People need to also have a sense that it's a plausible future. We need to know the steps we can take, at least initially, to move towards this future. 

So the third imperative in the book is the imperative of knowing that we can move confidently ahead towards this future, rather than despairing like so many people do today. So, in the book, what I do is I describe house systemic change can be pursued by driving a series of interacting mutually reinforcing transformations in our economy. And these transformations undermine the key motivational structure of the current system and replace those old structures with new arrangements needed for sustaining economy and a successful democracy. And the bulk of the book is focused on describing how we make these transformations, and I'll mention some of them to you now. In the market, from near laissez faire to powerful market governance in the public interest, from dishonest prices to environmentally and socially honest prices, from commodification to protection of the commons. In the corporation, from shareholder primacy to stakeholder primacy, from predominately one ownership model and motivational model for the corporation to new business models involving alternative forms of ownership and involving the democratization of capital. More people today belong to co-ops than have funds on the stock market. So this is economic democracy at many levels. In money and finance, from Wall Street to Main Street, from money created overwhelming by bank debt and thus controlled by the banks to money created by government as Lincoln proposed and did. In economic growth, from our current growth fetish to a post-growth society, from mere GDP growth to growth in human welfare and growth in democratically determined priorities. 

I want to pause a minute on the growth issue because we are now so deeply committed at all levels of our society to seeing economic growth as a solution to all of our problems, and by economic growth, I mean GDP growth, I think GDP growth, the more I've thought about it, is a snare and a delusion. First, it doesn't really work. We've had tons of growth since 1980, for example. The economy's grown by over  125%. And during that time, we lost 42,000 manufacturing plants, life satisfaction and wages both flat-lined for over 30 years, inequality and poverty ramped up sharply, environment declined, depression increased, trust declined all in the teeth of growth. Growth also, this commitment to GDP growth, this fetish, also deflects our attention away from trying to grow the things that really matter, putting our energy in growing good jobs and other things, and by saying that growth is the most important thing in our polity and in our society, we empower the corporations because we have to look to them to grow. And so we need to rethink this whole idea. We need to concentrate on growing the things that we really want to see grow. And we know how to do these things. We just are not part of the political discourse today. 

Transformation in social conditions from this vast economic insecurity that we have today to fundamental fairness, and from joblessness to good jobs for all who seek them. In indicators, from GDP, that's grossly distorted picture... [LAUGHTER] To accurate measures of social and environmental health and national progress. In consumerism, from our current consumerism, which is very different from consumption, and our affluenza to sufficiency and mindful consumption. From more to enough. From owning to sharing. Transformation in communities, from runaway enterprise and throwaway communities to vital local economies, from social ruthlessness to rootedness in solidarity in our communities. In our dominate cultural values, from getting to giving, from richer to better, from separate to connected, from apart from nature to a part of nature, from near-term to long-term. I've always been attracted by a statement that Daniel Patrick Moynihan made when he said that the central conservative truth was that culture really matters, values really matter and determine the fate of societies. But the central liberal truth, he said, was that a society can initially change its culture and its values and save it from itself. 

In foreign policy and the military, from American exceptionalism to America is a normal nation, from hard power to soft, from militarization to real security. The Pentagon reports it has over 600 military bases around the world in 38 countries. Other estimates, because they don't include a number of big military presences, estimate that we have over 1,000 military bases around the world. Two-thirds of the discretionary spending of the federal government is now going to national security, broadly defined. It's been said that our federal government should be thought of as an insurance company with an army. Now, if you look at these various areas, what you find is that there are a lot of people working on these individual issues today, working for deep change in these areas, and you also find, and I report this in the book, that we know a lot about the policies and other measures that are needed to move these transitions forward. And this brings me to the last big point in the book which is the forth and final imperative and that's the imperative of building a new democratic reality in our country. Because whether we are seeking the deep transformative changes that I'm talking about or mere incremental reforms, two things are absolutely imperative. One is getting busy now in the wake of this election, promoting a series of pro-democracy political reforms. The awful things we just experienced and dodged a bullet from, like voter suppression, are really reformed, and we secured the vote. 

We secured the voters. We get the money out of our politics. And the book has an agenda for pro-democracy political reform in it, and to do that, we're going to have to build a powerful and unified progressive movement for political reform, for transformative change. I'm told that all the progressives came together for the Wisconsin uprising, that that was a broadly engaged group that included environmental community and social justice and labor and lots of other communities. Well, unfortunately, that's not the usual pattern because progressives are siloed to an extraordinary degree, far more so than the forces on the right. And so if we're going to be able to take advantage of the positive opportunities for change that will be ours as a result of this rising popular disenchantment, as a result of ongoing crises, the progressives are going to have to come together and forge a unified progressive identity to institutionalize coordination, to build cross-cutting backbone organizations, common infrastructure, and a powerful grassroots from the bottom up movement in our country for deep change. In the previous session on the Wisconsin uprising, we were presented with a book about it started here in Wisconsin and God speed. Let's hope that it continues. The second thing I want to say about this is that it is going to require a rebirth of marches and protests and demonstrations and direct action and non-violent civil disobedience. I spent three days in the central cell block of the DC jail. 

I'm not sure I'd recommend it to anybody my age, but it was a wonderful experience. And I would do it again at the drop of a hat for even longer if I could contribute in any way to stopping this Keystone XL pipeline. And I think that is a small example, quite small, of the kind of putting all on the line that we're going to have to engage in. And no one who has followed the events in Egypt or the Wisconsin state house here or remembers the Civil Rights protest or the anti-war movements of the '60s and '70s can doubt the importance of direct action. So, those are the highlights of the points that are made in the book. Let me read a little bit to you from it, and then we'll throw it open. The passages I want to read talk about what is, in a way, the theory of change in the book, because I think so many people appreciate we've got these deep problems, and so many people would like to think that somehow we could make change happen, and I want to describe a scenario in which that occurs. The journey to America the Possible begins when enough Americans have come to some important conclusions. The first is that there's something profoundly wrong with our overall political economy, the operating system on which our country now runs. That system is routinely delivering terrible results and failing us across a broad front. 

The second conclusion follows from the first. It is the imperative of system change, of building a new political economy that routinely delivers good results for people and place and planet. The third conclusion is that, contrary to what one frequently hears, a better alternative does indeed exist. We certainly don't understand all the details of this alternative or how it will look, but we do know enough now to have confidence that something much better can be built, and we know enough to start building it. So, these conclusions are not conventional wisdoms today, but more and more people are embracing them. They are the foundations on which the work of system change can move forward. And from the vantage point they provide, we can see how the dynamics of fundamental change might emerge. As conditions in our country continue to decline across a wide front, or at best fester as they are, ever-larger numbers of Americans lose faith in the current system and in its ability to perform and deliver on the values it proclaims. The system, thus, steadily loses support, leading to a crisis of legitimacy. And, meanwhile, traditional crises, both in the economy and in the environment, grow more numerous and fearsome. 

In response, progressives of all stripes finally coalesce, find their voice and their strength, and pioneer the development of a powerful new set of ideas and policy proposals confirming that the path to a better world does indeed exist. Demonstrations and protests multiply, and a popular movement for pro-democracy reform and transformative change is born. At the local level, people and groups plant the seeds of change through a host of innovative initiatives that provide inspirational models of how things might work in a new political economy devoted to sustaining human and natural communities. And sensing the direction in which things are moving, our wiser and more responsible leaders rise to the occasion, support the growing movement for change, and frame a compelling story or narrative that makes sense of it all and provides a positive vision of a better America. The movement broadens to become a major national force. We do not know exactly how these and other forces will emerge or interact or sequence, but we do know this: that pleas for immediate amelioration, for jobs, for tax justice, for climate action, will at best be met with proposals for modest accommodations and half measures, and that the struggle for deep, systemic change will be met with fierce opposition. So an all-important conclusion emerges, namely, that the prospects for systemic change will depend mightily on the health of our democracy and the power of the social and political movement that we build. Transformative change, and even most of the proposals for reform offered by progressives in Washington today, will not be possible without a new politics in America. So pro-democracy political reform and building a new progressive movement in America must be priority number one. In the end, it will all come down to the American people and the strong possibility that we still have it in us to use our freedom and our democracy in powerful ways to create something fine, a reborn America for our children and grandchildren. 

We can realize the new American dream, and America the Possible, if enough of us join together and truly fight for it. This new dream envisions an America where the pursuit of happiness is sought not in more getting and spending, but in the growth of human solidarity, real democracy, and devotion to the public good; where the average American is empowered to achieve his or her human potential; where the benefits of economic activity are widely and equitably shared; where the environment is sustained for current and future generations; and where the virtues of simple living, community self-reliance, good fellowship, and respect for nature predominate. These American traditions are not always prevailing today, but they are certainly not dead. They await us, and indeed they are today being awakened today across this great land. New ways of living and working, sharing and caring are emerging across America. They beckon us with a new American Dream, one rebuilt from the best of the old and drawing on the best of who we were and are and can be. That concludes the reading from the book and my opening presentation. So, thank you very much. I appreciate it. [APPLAUSE]  Now, I would be happy to, we have some time for discussion, half an hour or more, and I'd be happy to talk about a lot of things. 

Is this agenda too radical? Interesting. I'm happy to. How do we know if we're making progress? What are the things that we can do now? How can values really change? What is the political reform agenda? Why didn't things really change in 2008 when we had that crisis if things are so crisis-driven? I talked about money being created by government not by banks. I'd love to talk more about that. What are the policies we need for social equity in the US to roll back consumerism? To reign in the corporations? Any of those things. Whatever. They're all in less than 200 pages. [LAUGHTER] [INAUDIBLE] No, no. There was a hand up in the back. I need some prompting here. 

I will start but I want to know what's on your minds. I saw a hand up a minute ago in the back there. Did I not? Okay. Here we are. Yes. >> Given the fact that government takes all, I mean, all of the funding comes from people who run businesses, and I am a corporation, I want you to know that. I've rescued and placed a hundred animals. I've taken care of a parent with dementia living off savings I've earned. And I road my bike here. And I do ceremony with native people. 

And I'm a vegetarian. [LAUGHTER] Now, given all of that and the demonization that I'm hearing of corporation, I do find that a bit offensive, but my question would be, given the fact that our government is dependent on businesspeople to provide taxes, how can the government create jobs and sustain it? >> Well, there a lot of things there, aren't there? I don't demonize all corporations. [LAUGHTER] And I might not demonize yours, but I do think that we have, we need, there's a lot of interest these days in growing a new type of corporation. The B corporation movement. The for-benefit corporations that their states are enacting new forms of corporate chartering which allow corporations to be focused on broader social objectives and environmental objectives and not just return to shareholders. There are movements to create hybrid corporations, not-for-profit hybrids, public/private hybrids. There are movements to create new types of ownership in the corporate sector, different types of co-op and community ownerships and other things. And it's all corporations and I think that those are important developments. [INAUDIBLE] >> Every corporation starts with an individual who has an idea. >> Right. 

[INAUDIBLE] >> When it becomes large, those things might work, but for every small business owner who is a corporation, how could this translate? >> Well, I think that nothing that I have said suggests that they wouldn't be a flock of corporations out there making profit. They just need to be regulated in a way that they're not regulated now, and we need to build a firewall between corporation and state. And we haven't gotten close to that, to say the least. But you mentioned the idea of taxes also, where would the revenues come from, which I take to be the core or at least one of them. And I didn't mention in that litany of things where we are at the bottom of what Rumsfeld would have called the old OECD. We are also the least taxed of all the major industrial countries. And it goes from us up to Denmark at the highest. And Denmark's not such a bad place. People get real services from that government. The other thing that we do, of course, is spend a fortune, our fortune, your fortune, the corporation's fortune, on security and on military ventures which have cost us trillions of dollars. 

The estimated cost of the wars since 9/11, if you add it all up and assume and put in the extra money you're going to need to pay retirement and other benefits to veterans and things, there's over $4 trillion. So, there's plenty of money out there, and we're misspending it, in my judgment, on a grand scale now. And I think we, the point I wanted to make, anyhow, the corporations are getting away with far too much today. One estimate is that they looked at the 3,000 largest companies and estimated the environmental externalities, the cost that these companies were imposing on the environment and not paying for. And it added up to over a third of corporate profits from those companies. So, basically, the world and our countries and others are being adversely affected at a huge level in order to sustain corporate profits. So there are many things that need to be fixed in the system, but, in my view, there is definitely a role for the private corporation to continue to operate. They just need to operate in a very, very different way and keep their mitts off of politics. They aren't people. [APPLAUSE] >> What I can't figure out a way to deal with is sometimes corporate earnings are valuable in that the corporations, or the owners of the corporation, form foundations to support beneficent activities. 

So we think of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation -- educational activity. So there is a good part of some of what they earn, then you have to question how they earned it once they have it. And I was trying to figure out, flying in an airplane once between here and somewhere else, that is there a way to, on a small scale, deal with the way our tax system works for the contributions that corporations and individuals can make to get those channeled more toward democratically determined outcomes? So I'm not saying that Bill and Melinda Gates are not supporting the same thing that they've said in the educational agenda by money that they're throwing around at different educational things. And so is there a way that you can say, well, if you donate here to a national pool of money, you can get two times the tax deduction or you can get a tax deduction in the amount you donated, but if you donate it to a smaller, private foundation or to a more narrow cause, somehow, than national, you'll only get half that or a quarter of that. >> That's a very interesting suggestion. The question, I've been asked to try to repeat the questions, the question has to do with the corporations that do make very large charitable contributions often, and the individuals that very often make very large charitable contributions, are there ways to affect that so that it's more uniformly good for society? I think I have to tell you, Buddy mentioned that I helped to start an RDC. Well, we did that with a big grant from the Ford Foundation, and I started the World Resources Institute a little later with a big grant from the MacArthur Foundation, and I'm very happy with what the Moore Foundation is doing to protect global biodiversity and so on and so on. These are very positive. I think a more rigorous look at the foundation community would find that there are a lot of things you might not approve of going on. And there's a lot of avoidance of some of the tough issues that our society faces today. 

The foundations, in general, I think, have become a lot more risk adverse than they were the days they created some of these institutions and causes. But it's an interesting idea to speculate how that could be channeled, how these great fortunes could be encouraged to spend in positive directions. And I think there could be. There could be ways of affecting it. So much of what I believe is important, and I think probably most of you believe is important, only works if we really have decent government, right? And right now, when you think about, well, if our government could be more effective in implementing section 501(c)3 of the Internal Revenue code to really give extra incentives and channel funds to things that really were positive, but right now our trust in government to do the right thing is pathetically low. In the public opinions polls, it's vanishingly low. So I think that's why I put this straightening out the government. It's not just that the government is being sort of bought over, but it's also that our government, over the decades now, has been so harassed, so maligned, so depleted of people that it really does lack a lot of the confidences that we need. So we have got to build confidence in government, and we've got to build a truly democratic government. If we do that, part and parcel, then a lot of the things that we would want government to do become a lot more attractive if we really are in control. 

And your suggestion of having sort of an extra benefit, perhaps of a federal matching or something like that, for certain charitable contributions for certain causes, if we really had the kind of democracy we wanted, that would be a very, very neat thing, I think. Very positive contribution. Yes? Yes, please. >> I'm curious. You used the term public good, which is one that I'm kind of fond of, but I'm also aware that it's lost almost all meaning. That there's not consensus on what public good would be or what good government would be. So I'm wondering how do we get back to a point where those terms have some meaning on a broader spectrum? >> Well, I think the answer to both questions is an act of faith, really. But it's an act of faith in each other. It's an act of faith in democracy. And if we have to say that public good is what the democratic society at it's best determines to do, but we need the right kind of democracy to get there. 

And that's why I think this whole governance issue is so fundamentally important. We can have a government that does the right kinds of things. Reagan, unfortunately, turned out to be right now when he said government is not the solution to your problem, government is the problem because it is a lot of the problem. And you're experiencing some of that here in Wisconsin right now. But I don't think there's any antidote to that other than real democracy, and that's why, I think, and back to this issue about job creation. We know from experience in this country and other countries how to create jobs, but it requires a lot of government action. Franklin Roosevelt put a lot of people to work in short order, and we had a component of the original much maligned and unfairly maligned stimulus package that was focused on job creation. We have huge unmet needs in our society, right? Green energy, infrastructure, all kinds of caring and teaching and other things, huge unmet needs where we need to put people to work, but government is going to have to be the intermediation that ensures that we invest in those areas. There's nothing magic in the private sector that is going to put investment resources where we really need it and where the jobs would do the most good. We need a government that works for us. 

Yes? I'm sorry, you were next, ma'am. >> Because this gentleman mentioned charitable foundations and this and that and Bill Gates who has horrible, horrible projects with his so-called charitable foundation. >> If you look deeply, you might find some real problems, yeah. >> Having been very lucky to grow up in a country where I had freedom from religion not just of religion, which is quite important to me, I think charity is much, much way too dependent on things in this country. And until Americans realize that this is a myth, charity is not a good thing, and I also think that a lot of the stuff which is done by charity and people say, oh, PBS is supported by this foundation, that foundation, it should be supported by us as a democracy not by mister rich so and so who can put his pennies where he wants. That is not appropriate. But there is such brainwashing in this country it's scary. I taught very, very poor white children. Eighth graders who could barely read in English, and I had to teach them French which was quite a challenge. So we had to focus on oral stuff. 

I would show them pictures so they would have an idea how other people live, and they would tell me, Mrs. Mitchell, nobody in France has houses like this, only we in the US have houses like this. This is dirt poor kids. If people are brainwashed to this point, how can you change? >> Well, I think we do have a lot of misconceptions in the country. On your points about charitable contributions, the secret to the US charitable contribution world is deductibility. >> Uh-huh. >> It comes right out of your taxes, and most countries don't have that. And this is why we have this group. And the 501(c)3 language is, I think, something like charitable, scientific, educational, and religious categories get deductibility. So it is a mixed picture, I agree. Having lived off of the foundations all my life and seen them do so many good things, I think we do have to find a way to get the best out of that process and not the worst. 

In terms of the misconceptions, you heard that litany of things where the US is at the bottom, where I began. [INAUDIBLE] [LAUGHTER] We're number one in a lot of ways and incarceration is one of them, both absolutely and as a percentage of the population. It's huge. And I did mention that. But I think two of the people who were on the panel at 12:15, Robert McChesney and John Nichols, wrote a wonderful book about how to save journalism. I'm getting around to say that if our media don't come through for us, you do despair about how we can never reach the public with all the messages. Our religious communities are another place that could do a much better job of communication with constituents. But I think in their book they pointed out that journalism in the US was in deep, deep trouble, and they present the statistics on that declining number of reporters and resources available to the reporters that are left, and they proposed that the US, basically, joined a host of other advanced countries and have publicly supported journalism. And they point out that the countries that do that rank more highly on the Economist Democracy Index than we do. By a long shot. 

So, again, do you trust government to create a fund to support journalism? Well, if it were done in the right way by the right government with real democratic participation and controls and transparency and accountability, yes. And I think we do need if we're going to save our journalism. Yes, sir. You've had your hand up. >> I certainly agree with you that the need for systemic change, and you mentioned briefly about growth models and concerns for the environment. It seems to me that all of our ruthless capitalism or just plain capitalism, our whole economy is based upon mining the resources of the planet as though it were all infinite, and we're learning over and over and over again that we live on a finite planet. So it seems to me that one of the most fundamental systemic changes we need to make is from a mining economy to a biologically sustainable economy, and the natural step is about that. I'm wondering your thoughts on how we make that transition, how we get people talking about realizing that when the clamor is for growth and jobs, that growth needs to be sustainable growth and not rampant growth. >> Well, I think a lot of people do appreciate now, what was it someone said? The only people who think that you can carry on with exponential growth on a finite planet are either mad men or economists. [LAUGHTER] And I think a lot of people, more and more people are coming to that conclusion. 

So what do you need to do to make it salable, so to speak? I think I talked a little about this. Basically, it seems to me, you have to ask people why do you want growth? What do you want out of the economy? And show people that the better way to get it than merely ratcheting up GDP and consuming more and more resources endlessly. And I think we can do that, and we can do it at a fairly high level and at a very specific level. At a high level, a friend of mine named Peter Victor has got a wonderful book called Managing Without Growth where he models the Canadian economy, and what he shows is that over a period of years you can go to a steady state, no-growth economy, which has very low unemployment, very low poverty, very high reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, and it's basically a very attractive future, and it's not built around endless growth. So we can do it modeling. Another great book on this subject is called Prosperity Without Growth from Tim Jackson in the UK. And I think you can demonstrate it at the local level along the lines of what I was describing, that we can provide jobs. We will never provide the jobs that we need in this country by simply expecting GDP growth to provide them. I don't know what level of GDP growth we're going to have, but to put the American people back to work, we've got about almost 15% of the public now can't find either jobs or at all or full-time jobs. And to really put people, we couldn't grow at a rate that would solve that employment problem even if we didn't have republicans. 

[LAUGHTER] So we really need to focus on growing jobs in a more direct way. But I think that to show that we can meet our challenges without simply invoking growth, both in the micro sense and the macro sense, is very helpful. In the book, I talk about the limits to growth and the limits of growth, and they're very different. The limits of growth, Herman Daley has this wonderful expression, uneconomic growth, in which he shows that under certain conditions, and he thinks we are there now, the marginal benefit of an additional unit of growth causes more cost than it does create benefits in the society. And so that's one way of expressing the limits of growth. Limits to growth are all the constraints that trying to achieve the passed levels of economic growth are up against today. In Boston one of the major investors is a man named Jeremy Grantham. Maybe GMO has some of your money invested for you. It's a huge company in Boston, GMO Corporation. It has nothing to do with genetically modified organisms. 

And the G is for Grantham. Anyhow, he's done these amazing reports now in which he shows that everything is getting shorter in supply and that the cost of commodities across a huge front and not just energy are going to go up and up and up and will constrain our growth possibilities. And that's only one of a half dozen factors that are sort of headwinds that are going to pose limits to growth. And in that context, it just doesn't make sense to try to run your whole society on the theory that you're going to outgrow these problems. And one of the worst problems is this idea that somehow we need to grow, all my life I've been told we need to grow the economy so we don't have to face the redistribution issue. [LAUGHTER] Well, we've grown the economy. As I said, it's gone up phenomenally in recent decades, and we have a worse distribution problem. Yes, please. >> Thank you for saying that. My question is, what would be wrong with doing the obvious? Put the resources where they're needed. 

Have the government create the jobs like FDR did. Create the jobs in education, healthcare. Have healthcare jobs be about healthcare and not about profits for insurance companies. Have the jobs be about cleaning up and solving the disastrous environment. I like all the things that you're saying, agree with them, except you virtually sound like you're apologizing for it every time you say "but the government really does have to be involved in this," and I'm just, I understand what, to some degree, I understand what the blockade is that we can't move forward like this, but why can't we talk about a vision in which we take these resources and put them where the glaring, bleeding need is. And in terms of charities, besides for the deduction issue, the other really obvious issue about charity is where's the representation when billionaires decide where they're going to put money? And when Hurricane Sandy struck, it seemed like a lot of people recognized maybe it is a good thing that FEMA's not just purely run by charity, at least if Chris Brown and Bush aren't in charge of FEMA. But still in New York right now, so the lights went back on and the subways are running except in Red Hook where people have no water, no heat, no toilets, let alone jobs, food, and who's attempting to take care of them is the occupy movement. So people know what to do, people knew what to do in the Capitol here to take care of each other, what would be wrong with deciding that we're going to talk about putting the resources where we know they need to go? >> Nothing. [LAUGHTER] And that's really what the book talks about. It talks about the democratization, investing in democratically determined priorities. 

The democratization of wealth and capital. And I think that we do need to, as I was trying to say basically the same thing that you said. We have these huge unmet needs, and we have tremendous resources to spend if we would spend them properly and we could reallocate. But that intermediation, those decisions have to be made in a democratic process, and we need government to do it. And if you look at, right now investment is in the hands of the banks. They're more concentrated now than they were before the recession. And, basically, the money is being invested for high  financial return. That's where it's going. High financial return. The highest they can find, and if they're not happy with it, they just sit on the money. 

So, as a result, the big banks are, today, funding mountaintop removal. They're funding the Keystone XL pipeline. They're still funding the fossil fuel industry to a heavy degree. They're funding the destruction of the planet's climate. And what we need is a system which focuses investment on areas of high social and environmental return and huge unmet needs. And that focusing requires government action. And that means we have to have a decent government. And I don't mean to be defensive about the fact that we don't have a decent government right now because we're going to have to work on building that government if people are going to be willing to entrust it with big things like that. For example, we talked about the giant corporation. I talked about building the small corporation, the new innovative forms of corporation, from the bottom up, but one of the proposals that's been made, and I talk about it in the book favorably, for reigning in the giant corporation is using the public utility model for a whole range of corporations that aren't now regulated. 

The public utilities in our states affect and determine, allow, the investment decisions and not just the rates set by energy companies. And if we had a government that we could apply that same model to the regulation of a lot of other corporate sectors which had grown too big to fail or were near monopolies or other things, but we need a better government if we're going to entrust them with big responsibilities like that. So we've got to build that better government. A more competent, more democratic, and more worthy of our trust. And that's why I say I think this building the political movement for deep change in our political process, we just went through a really awful experience, politically, in this campaign, and it worked out okay up to a point. And I hope that doesn't deflate what should be, in the wake of this election, a movement for pro-democracy political reform that would not only try to amend the Constitution but would create matching federal funding for elections at a high enough level, like Senator Durbin has proposed and others, to attract candidates who would forgo big contributions. And we need to have independently described congressional districts. We need to have automatic registration of voters in the country. Every other major country, I think almost every other, it's a default position. When you get to be of voting age, you're automatically registered. 

And on and on. We need a real overhaul of our election machinery and our approach to salvage our democracy in the face of this creeping corporatocracy and plutocracy. Not to mention lobbying reform which is another huge area. They have a chance now to do in the filibuster. The democrats do. They have a majority in the senate. You can do in the filibuster if you do it at the beginning of a new congress with a bare majority vote. You don't need the 60 votes, or two-third votes, or anything else. So I think the democrats have got to get their act together and do in this filibuster. There were hundreds of filibusters in the last Congress. 

Stymied all kinds of things. We've had some hands. I don't know if we're running out of time or whatever. Hi. >> Thank you so much for calling out the word capitalism because I think that's a word that we don't talk about when we talk about we need progressive reform. Because you're calling out the system and I think it's a problem. And I just wonder, because you kind of skirted the are we an anti-capitalist movement or are we just really going to struggle for social democracy. And the reason I question that is you see during the election, even Tammy, who we all adore, started talking about this was a win for the middle class. Well, no. I consider myself part of the global working class. 

I'm not part of the 10% that's the most wealthy in this world. We're all part of the 90% or 99%, and I'm wondering if you've kind of incorporated any-- and your thoughts going forward. >> Well, I love occupy, and I love what they've done and I love what they're still doing in the Sandy context. I think, the way I describe it is that we need to push transformative change until we have built a new system of political economy. And in the book, I say it's not going to, when we have gotten there, it won't resemble today's capitalism and it won't be yesterday's socialism. It will be something new. And I think it is a struggle to get there, but this sort of rapacious, ruthless version of this corporate consumer capitalism, in the book as it's described, would fade into the past, and we will have something new. It may be something beyond capitalism altogether. I don't know what to call it. But I think the starting place is to see the need for transformative change in these various sectors. 

To see the types of changes that are needed.  To realize that that involves a real democratization of wealth, a democratization of capital. More democratic control over investment decisions. More worker ownership. More democratic involvement in the economy. More public/private hybrids operating as business type entities in there. So, I don't know exactly what to call it. Socialism doesn't describe it. Democratic socialism doesn't describe it because the old terms all relate to who owns the means of production. Is it the public or is it the capitalist? And what I describe in the book is something that we haven't seen yet, except in aspects of it, predominately in Europe. 

One of the great, I think one of the things that the right-wing has done is to demonize Europe, and now Europe has managed to oblige them. [LAUGHTER] With this debt crisis. But a friend of mine named Stephen Hill wrote a great book called Europe's Promise, and it was a description of the sort of European system as it has evolved since World War II versus the American system. And he really threw down the challenge to the US. So, there are a lot of positive models for the directions in which we need to go in Europe, I think, not to mention healthcare. In Vermont, we're going to go for single-payer. What about Wisconsin? [APPLAUSE] Thank you very much. [APPLAUSE] >> Thank you, Gus.