How We Can Transform America’s Broken Economic
System to Work for EVERYONE
No matter how poor or rich, ALL of our lives
can be better in the 21st century… if we
unbreak the system
by Scott Santens
Jan 20, 2015
Japan arose like a phoenix from the ruins
of World War II to quickly become the second
most powerful economy in the world.
This unbelievable feat has been called an
“economic miracle.”
Do you know how they did it?
The answer to this question may surprise you.
It involves a single American name and a single
visualization.
The name is W. Edwards Deming.
The image is this flowchart:
“Production viewed as a system” — W.
Edwards Deming
The Lessons of W. Edwards Deming
In The New Economics, Deming describes how
this chart was on the blackboard of every
conference with top management in Japan in
1950 and onward, and was seen by 80% of all
owners of capital.
It was used to teach their engineers.
It was used to inform every part of the system
of their roles in it.
Deming Lesson #1: Systems
Can you see how this one simple flowchart
could be so miraculously transformative?
It’s a circle.
More than that, it’s an interconnected feedback
loop designed for continual improvement.
The aim of the entire production cycle is
always increasing quality.
Never stop improving.
Never stop innovating.
Never stop learning.
Never stagnate.
Never accept the status quo.
Always do better.
It begins and ends with ideas.
Without ideas, there can be no improvements.
It begins and ends with suppliers.
Without raw materials, there can be nothing
produced.
It begins and ends with production.
Without production, there can be nothing to
distribute.
And most important of all, it begins and ends
with consumers.
“The consumer is the most important part
of the production line.
Quality should be aimed at the needs of the
consumer, present and future.”
— W. Edwards Deming, Out of the Crisis
Without consumers, there can be no system.
Without listening to the consumer, there can
be no improvements.
Without being able to hear the consumer through
their dollars, a system is destroyed.
A system where consumers don’t exist or
have no ability to consume, is truly pointless.
As a whole, production seen as a cycle reveals
interdependence.
Every part of the loop is a part of the system,
and every part works together with every other
part for the benefit of the entire system
that never stops improving.
How exactly did Deming define a system?
A system is a network of interdependent components
that work together to try to accomplish the
aim of the system.
A system must have an aim.
Without an aim, there is no system.
The aim of the system must be clear to everyone
in the system.
The aim must include plans for the future.
A system must be managed.
It will not manage itself.
Left to themselves, components become selfish,
competitive, independent profit centers, and
thus destroy the system.
— W. Edwards Deming, The New Economics
The year is 2015.
Our markets are globalized.
Our technology is advancing exponentially.
Our production is increasingly automated.
We have come a long way, but is our economy
managed like a system?
Is our government?
Are we working together?
What is our aim?
Do we even have one?
What is our plan for the future?
Are we even asking these questions?
Deming Lesson #2: Variation
“Follow the man, not the dog.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson
Deming considered knowledge of variation key
to management of systems, and so in possibly
the most important demonstration ever devised,
he taught his students the unavoidable reality
of random variation.
In his seminars, he would bring boxes of colored
beads and a paddle.
For every 400 white beads, there were 100
red beads, and people would be given the job
of using the paddle to capture the beads 50
at a time.
All results were recorded.
The goal with each swipe of paddle through
beads, was to get as few red beads as possible.
This was known as the “Red Bead Experiment.”
Those who scooped up the most red beads were
seen as doing a poor job.
Those who scooped up the most white beads
were seen as doing a good job.
Too many red beads, and one would be punished.
Mostly white beads, and one would be rewarded.
It should be clear that no matter what anyone
did, there would always be red beads drawn,
because red beads were part of the system.
They would only randomly vary in quantity.
Because red beads were built into the system,
those taking part in the experiment were rewarded
or punished based purely on natural random
variation.
No amount of reward or punishment would alter
the 4:1 ratio of white beads to red beads.
This ratio was set by Deming before the lesson
even began.
The rest was luck.
Without understanding systemic variation,
aside from the futility of reward and punishment,
we also make two common and extremely costly
mistakes:
Mistake 1: To react to an outcome as if it
came from a special cause, when actually it
came from common causes of variation.
Mistake 2: To treat an outcome as if it came
from common causes of variation, when actually
it came from a special cause.
[The New Economics]
Imagine firing one employee and handing a
bonus to another, without knowing neither
act will result in any difference.
This is Mistake 1.
Imagine getting sick and thinking it’s the
flu without realizing you just experienced
food poisoning.
This is Mistake 2.
Recognizing and avoiding these mistakes is
vital to systemic improvement.
Deming Lesson #3: Knowledge
Nothing can be improved without knowledge.
The existence of a hammer does nothing for
a human being without understanding how to
use it.
Facts are just facts.
Data is just data.
Information is just information.
It’s the questions behind our observations
that create knowledge through theory.
This is how the scientific method works.
Noticing that an apple falls is just data.
Wondering why it falls, is what leads to formulating
the laws of gravity.
A system can not be improved without the application
of knowledge through theory.
If we learn something new, and don’t apply
this new knowledge, our systems can’t change
for the better.
To improve a system we must ask questions,
develop theories, test the theories, and apply
the theories.
This is how systems may be continually improved
— scientific thinking.
“At the heart of science is an essential
balance between two seemingly contradictory
attitudes — an openness to new ideas, no
matter how bizarre or counterintuitive they
may be, and the most ruthless skeptical scrutiny
of all ideas, old and new.
This is how deep truths are winnowed from
deep nonsense.”
— Carl Sagan
Deming Lesson #4: Psychology
We are human beings.
To improve systems created by human beings,
we must understand human beings.
We must understand that within a system of
human beings, there will always be variation
— everyone is different — and that if
we wish to improve our systems, we must study
the human mind and apply the knowledge we
gain to our systems to produce better outcomes.
The study of motivation is an important example
of this.
There is extrinsic and intrinsic motivation.
The former involves being given something
to do something, and the latter is when something
is its own reward.
We know how these work, but we don’t leverage
this knowledge within our economy.
Example: Paying someone to do something can
actually destroy motivation.
“This is one of the most robust findings
in social science, and also one of the most
ignored.
I spent the last couple of years looking at
the science of human motivation, particularly
the dynamics of extrinsic motivators and intrinsic
motivators.
And I’m telling you, it’s not even close.
If you look at the science, there is a mismatch
between what science knows and what business
does…
That’s actually fine for many kinds of 20th
century tasks.
But for 21st century tasks, that mechanistic,
reward-and-punishment approach doesn’t work,
often doesn’t work, and often does harm.”
— Dan Pink
Meanwhile, the relatively new study of neurogenesis
provides a truly incredible example of the
damage we are doing.
Example: Poverty and extreme inequality destroy
minds
The structure of our brain, from the details
of our dendrites to the density of our hippocampus,
is incredibly influenced by our surroundings.
Put a primate under stressful conditions,
and its brain begins to starve.
It stops creating new cells.
The cells it already has retreat inwards.
The mind is disfigured.
The social implications of this research are
staggering.
If boring environments, stressful noises,
and the primate’s particular slot in the
dominance hierarchy all shape the architecture
of the brain — and Gould’s team has shown
that they do — then the playing field isn’t
level.
Poverty and stress aren’t just an idea:
they are an anatomy.
Some brains never even have a chance.
If as humans, we are to improve our systems
in the present and for the future, we must
seek out these kinds of scientific findings
and actually apply them.
These four primary lessons are what Deming
referred to as a “System of Profound Knowledge.”
This system provides a map for understanding
human systems.
So now that we’ve got such a map, what do
we do with it?
Applying the System of Profound Knowledge
Crime, poor health, racism, poverty, extreme
inequality, unnecessary jobs, wasted productivity,
depressed economic growth, environmental degradation,
climate change — these are all red beads.
We can choose to attempt to reduce these red
beads by spending trillions of dollars on
imprisonment, on health care, on quantitative
easing, on bureaucracy, on bailouts, on fighting
epidemics, on battling floods, ad infinitum.
Or we can choose to produce fewer red beads
in the first place.
How do we produce fewer red beads?
Producing fewer red beads is the responsibility
of all of us.
It can’t be accomplished by any one part
of the system in competition against each
other.
It won’t just happen on its own.
It requires systemic transformation.
“I’m simply saying that more and more,
we’ve got to begin to ask questions about
the whole society.
We are called upon to help the discouraged
beggars in life’s market place.
But one day we must come to see that an edifice
which produces beggars needs restructuring.”
— MLK, Where do we go from here?
“In order to produce better systems, a society
should be less concerned with producing material
goods in increasing quantities than with producing
people of a better quality — in other words,
(human) beings capable of producing these
systems.”
— Levi Strauss
If we wish to transform the U.S. to continually
produce better outcomes, we must first understand
its present state, and the outcomes the system
is currently producing.
The State of the Union: 2015
Whereas each generation used to be better
off than the previous generation, that is
no longer the case.
Child poverty is the highest it’s been in
20 years.
The U.S. is 1 of only 4 countries in the world
where the maternal mortality rate is rising
instead of falling.
Sixty years ago, the U.S. had the 12th lowest
infant mortality rate in the world.
By 1990, we were 23rd.
By 2008, we were 34th.
We are now 49th.
The 40-hour work week is gone, to the detriment
of productivity.
We work an average equivalent of 6 to 8 more
weeks per year than a generation go, with
worse results.
The American middle class has not seen a raise
in 15 years.
Our middle class is 20% poorer than it was
30 years ago.
Middle class families are increasingly spending
more on basic needs while earning less.
For the first time in over 50 years, the majority
of our public school children are poor.
Our poorest 20% would now be better off in
10 other countries.
Over 40% of Americans are now living paycheck
to paycheck, so savings are practically nonexistent
amongst any but the richest.
More than 1 in 3 Americans have debts and
unpaid bills that have been reported to debt
collectors.
Hunger among seniors is up 81% since 2006.
The gap between those who eat well and those
who don’t has doubled in 10 years.
Food banks are now helping more than 46 million
Americans to eat, and are overstretched to
the point that 1 in 6 is expected to fail.
We are losing entrepreneurs.
New business creation has gone from 13% to
under 8% in the last 30 years.
These are systemic issues.
In the 21st century, full-time jobs are being
replaced by part-time jobs.
This is not any one President in action.
This is a systemic shift greatly influenced
by advancing technology and growing automation
of labor.
It just increasingly takes less work to accomplish
what we want to accomplish.
The labor force participation rate peaked
in 2000 and has been going nowhere but down
ever since, despite continually rising productivity.
Less human labor is needed now than ever before
thanks to technology, and less American labor
is possible thanks to globalization.
Jobs are trending downward and have been for
almost 20 years.
Meanwhile, U.S. income inequality has been
skyrocketing for decades.
Inequality is now the highest it’s been
since 1928 — right before the Great Depression.
The top 1% has again completely left behind
the bottom 99% in a new Gilded Age.
All of this and more in a time when our economy
has more than doubled in size, and when a
whopping 492 of the 1,645 billionaires in
the world are American.
In fact, if we totaled up the wealth of the
top 400 Americans, it would exceed $2 trillion.
This is equivalent to the total wealth of
HALF of the entire United States.
What’s going on here?
What’s going on is exactly what happens
when systems aren’t managed as systems.
Parts of the system are destructively competing
against each other instead of creatively working
together for the good of the entire system.
One may be tempted to think that because GDP
has more than doubled, this growth is evidence
that the system is working.
But is it really working if GDP could be even
higher?
According to the OECD, thanks to inequality,
all but three of these countries have lower
GDP than they would otherwise have — even
Denmark.
The U.S. economy may have grown by almost
30% in 20 years but it could have grown by
over 30%.
And that’s if we had just kept inequality
the same as it was in 1985.
Had we reduced our inequality, our economy
could have grown by over 40% or even 50% or
more since 1985.
“Policies that help to limit or reverse
inequality may not only make societies less
unfair, but also wealthier.”
— OECD, 2014
So even if we’d just prevented inequality
from growing, let alone exploding, our GDP
would be higher.
The rich would have more.
The middle classes would have more.
The poorest would have more.
We would all be wealthier.
But decreasing inequality would also engage
economic multipliers for even greater growth.
It has been calculated that every $1 going
to a low-wage worker adds $1.21 to GDP, whereas
every $1 going to a high-income earner adds
39 cents.
It’s three times more economically stimulating
for a dollar to reach the hands of those with
few dollars than those with many.
And not only that but one shrinks the economy
while the other expands it.
But what if that $1 went instead to a worker
in a research field, like a scientist or an
engineer?
The economy would be $5 better off.
That’s thirteen times more economically
stimulating for a dollar to reach the hands
of a researcher instead of a broker on Wall
Street.
Policies like tax cuts and spending on infrastructure
are thought by many to have the largest multiplier
effects.
They don’t.
Instead, policies that put spending power
into the hands of those with the least spending
power, increases GDP most.
With all of this data available to us, one
would think we’d be throwing every dollar
we could at researchers, unemployment benefits,
and food stamps.
Instead our PhDs are being paid so little
they have to increasingly rely on food stamps,
which we are actually reducing, instead of
increasing.
That those on Wall Street are earning huge
bonuses that actually reduce GDP while scientists
who massively increase GDP are being given
food stamps to survive — which we are then
cutting despite that even further reducing
GDP — is a perfect example of a system that
is not functioning.
Does it make sense to lose 60 cents for every
dollar, when we could just as easily gain
5 dollars for every dollar?
Does it make sense to cut programs that grow
the economy and instead depress the economy
by increasing the concentration of wealth
among those who consume less?
These policy decisions are holding all of
us back, every single one of us.
No matter how rich or how poor, these decisions
are costing all of us, even the top 1% who
will likely require being taxed more to unbreak
the system.
How can being taxed more actually result in
being better off?
Imagine having a billion dollars two hundred
years ago.
If you wanted to travel somewhere, you would
be limited to horses and boats.
You could buy thousands of them, but they’re
still horses and boats.
If you wanted to start a business, your employees
would not be all that educated.
Imagine having a billion dollars one hundred
years ago.
If you wanted to travel somewhere, you would
be limited to cars and planes.
You could buy thousands of them, but they’re
still cars and planes.
If you wanted to start a business, your employees
would be high school educated.
Imagine having a billion dollars now.
If you want to travel somewhere, you are limited
to nice cars, nice planes, and even nice boats.
You can buy thousands of them, but they’re
still cars, planes, and boats.
If you wanted to start a business, your employees
will be college educated.
Having a billion dollars is not the most important
part of having a billion dollars.
It’s what you can do with it.
Even having a trillion dollars means nothing
if there’s nothing to buy.
And what there is to buy depends on the strength
of the economy, and the knowledge and well-being
of all its people.
Would you rather be a billionaire who can
travel from coast to coast in a month, or
a multimillionaire who can travel from Earth
to Mars in a week?
This is why it’s even in the best interests
of those with the most money in the world,
to support policies that grow the economy
and accelerate entrepreneurship and innovation.
Yes, it can mean spending more money, but
it can also mean the difference between owning
a bright shiny object and owning the starship
Enterprise.
As knowledge grows, as technology advances,
every human being can prosper, if we together
set that as our aim.
The rich are just as much a part of the system
as the rest of us, and we need them as much
as they need us.
The components of a system cannot all be out
for their own selfish good.
This wisdom is not new.
It as old as the Bible.
A body is not one single organ, but many.
Suppose that the foot should say, “Because
I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,”
it does belong to the body none the less.
Suppose that the ear were to say, “Because
I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,”
it does still belong to the body.
If the body were all ear, how could it smell?…
there are many different organs, but one body.
The eye can not say to the hand, “I do not
need you.”
— St. Paul, 1 Corinthians 12:14–21
We need each other.
We always have, and we always will.
So how do we start to work together to spend
less and increase quality of life for all?
Imagine you’re an engineer in the engineering
department of a car company.
Right now your department spends $100 on each
engine and $80 on each transmission, for a
total of $180.
You discover that by redesigning some components,
you can entirely remove the need for a transmission
by spending an extra $30 on the engine.
In other words, you discover you could spend
$30 more to spend $80 less, ending up $50
ahead with a better product.
It only requires you spend the extra money
in one area to save money overall, in a way
that would also increase overall quality.
What would you do with this knowledge?
What if you suggested this idea to your boss
and were told that because spending less money
on every part always results in a lower total
cost, and that anyone with an elementary understanding
of math should know this, that spending more
on the engine is a terrible idea because spending
more can’t possibly equate to spending less?
What if you felt so strongly about this idea,
that you then went directly to the CEO?
What if the CEO then told you he had signed
a piece of paper that said he would never
raise the cost of anything?
And so his hands are tied?
What would you think of your company and its
management?
Now imagine you work in the sales department
of a company.
You and your team will be sent to another
city to make some very important deals.
Your company’s travel department sets everything
up for you and your team at the lowest cost
possible.
It’s actually very good at this and has
won multiple accolades from your CEO for minimizing
costs.
In this case, they save a total of $5,000.
Thanks to these savings, you and your team
arrive at the airport at midnight.
After a 14-hour flight requiring three different
planes, you arrive at your destination with
no time to spare.
Completely exhausted and worn out, you and
your team make $15,000 in sales.
These sales numbers represent failure.
As an additional result, your company will
now need to downsize.
Meanwhile, in a parallel universe, you don’t
even have a travel department (which saves
even more than $5,000), and because your tickets
were booked with a modicum of forethought,
you and your team arrive fully rested and
make $1 million in sales.
As an additional result, not only does no
one get fired, everyone gets a raise.
Which makes more sense?
System A: The one with the parts working against
each other, each trying to maximize performance
independent of each other?
System B: The one where everyone benefits,
including the CEO for running a successful
company instead of a failing one?
The United States, as a country, by any conceivable
measure, is not the company existing in the
parallel universe… but it can be.
Remember the engineer’s engine?
The one we could spend more on to almost entirely
eliminate the need for a transmission?
We can do that.
But it’ll require a closer look at our transmission…
The following is a short list of our shared
expenditures as a society.
On the left is the total cost and on the right
is the cost per American citizen.
We spend $2.7 trillion for health care — $9,090
per citizen per year
We spend over $1.4 trillion on crime — $4,713
per citizen per year
We spend $1.3 trillion on Social Security
— $4,376 per citizen per year
We spend $1.2 trillion on education — $4,040
per citizen per year
We spend $840 billion on our military — $2,828
per citizen per year
We spend $544 billion on the “empty labor”
of workers not actually working while at work
— $1,831 per citizen per year
We spend $500 billion on welfare — $1,683
per citizen per year
We’ve spent $260 billion each year since
2001 to wage a “War on Terror” in a way
that has increased terrorism — $875 per
citizen per year
We spend $200 billion on work presenteeism
— $673 per citizen per year
We waste $180 billion on unpurchased food
— $606 per citizen per year
We lose $160 billion by not using our vacation
days — $539 per citizen per year
We spend $110 billion on corporate subsidies
— $370 per citizen per year
We spend $108 billion on the cost of hunger
— $364 per citizen per year
We spend at least $100 billion on a patent
system that decreases innovation — $337
per citizen per year
We spend $100 billion buying illegal drugs
— $337 per citizen per year
We spend $51 billion fighting our buying illegal
drugs — $172 per citizen per year
We spend $92 billion on gambling — $310
per citizen per year
We lose $90 billion commuting to and from
work — $303 per citizen per year
We spend $70 billion on the mortgage interest
deduction — $236 per citizen per year
We lose $70 billion by not legalizing and
taxing marijuana like we do alcohol — $236
per citizen per year
We are spending $1.5 trillion over 30 years
for the F-35 — $168 per citizen per year
We actually subtract $53 billion from the
economy by using coal power — $178 per citizen
per year
We lose $40 billion to suicides (40,000 x
$1 million each but the true cost is incalculable)
— $135 per citizen per year
We spend $8 billion the Pentagon can’t account
for — $27 per citizen per year
We spent about $4 billion in 2014 on our midterm
elections — $13 per citizen per year
We spend $2.3 billion in volunteering over
100 million hours of our time at food banks
to feed those of whom a majority have jobs
but aren’t paid enough to not need food
banks — $8 per citizen per year
As a society, we are now spending more than
$10.2 trillion dollars or $34,448 per citizen
every year
There exists overlap between some expenditures,
but the above also represents only a partial
list of all the money we are already spending.
So how can we spend less on this transmission?
Election Reform
Our use of first-past-the-post (FPTP) elections
leads directly to our broken two-party system
where new voices and proportional representation
is actively prevented.
As long as we keep this system in place, our
democracy will suffer and a great many of
our voices will remain unheard, making it
exceedingly difficult to enact all/any needed
changes.
This needs to change.
What we chiefly need is the ability to rank
candidates, so that we can all actually choose
the candidates we most want to win, instead
of those we think have the greatest chance
to win.
That ability alone is the difference between
our making a choice, and it being made for
us.
CGP Grey has done an entire series of videos
about the problems with FPTP and much better
methods, so if you’d like to learn more,
those videos are really the best place to
start.
Do we really want to continue not having a
functioning democracy?
Access to Health Care
A system of universal health care — the
kind that basically everyone else in the world
has adopted except us — would save us thousands
of dollars per citizen.
If designed like Switzerland, it could save
us $832 billion.
If designed like Germany: $1.2 trillion, Canada:
$1.3 trillion, or like New Zealand or the
UK: $1.7 trillion in savings — every year.
It’s safe to say that not having a system
of truly universal health care, is akin to
burning trillion dollar piles of money.
Do we really want to keep doing this?
Access to Education
A system of universal education — the kind
that we originally pioneered and then let
others surpass us with their own — would
drastically reduce the amount we spend on
educating ourselves, while drastically increasing
the amount of people educated.
College is now free in Germany as it is in
other nations as well.
Meanwhile, in the US, outstanding college
loans now exceed $1.2 trillion.
How are people to prosper while saddled with
school loan debts?
How is the economy to thrive, with so much
money spent repaying the loans we require
to hopefully secure a job?
What’s the point of spending the time and
money to get a middle-wage job, if the amount
taken to cover the loans is then equivalent
to having a low-wage job?
How is anyone to function as a consumer — the
Alpha and the Omega of the economy — if
their paychecks go only to basic needs and
school loans and not to purchasing the goods
and services of others?
It’s safe to say that also not having a
system of truly universal education, is again
akin to burning trillion dollar piles of money.
Do we really want to keep doing this as well?
Decriminalization
Simply reclassifying what constitutes crime
would immediately reduce crime.
We spend half as much money fighting drugs
as we do buying them, and by just ending prohibition
on drugs as we did on alcohol — a more dangerous
drug — we could raise revenue and improve
lives instead of wasting revenue and systematically
destroying them.
We could stop spending about $40,000 per year
on the 20% of our prison population of 2.2
million convicted of drug crimes, and instead
raise over $70 billion in new revenue.
We could save even more money by also avoiding
the imprisonment of those convicted of many
other non-violent crimes.
Doesn’t this make more sense too, to not
fill up our prisons with non-violent offenders?
Patent and Copyright Reform
The granting of temporary protections for
creative works was never meant to function
as anything but a head start.
They were certainly never meant to be permanent,
which is what they effectively now are.
By overprotecting and creating too many barriers,
these systems no longer foster innovation,
but effectively hamper it.
Because of this, some economists now believe
it shouldn’t just be reformed, but abolished
entirely:
“The historical and international evidence
suggests that while weak patent systems may
mildly increase innovation with limited side
effects, strong patent systems retard innovation
with many negative side effects…”
“Why use band-aids to staunch a major wound?
Economists fought for decades — ultimately
with considerable success — to reduce restrictions
on international trade.
A similar approach, albeit less slow, should
be adopted to phase out patents.”
It can be argued that everything we do is
actually a remix of something already known.
By enriching the public domain instead of
keeping ideas from it, we can accelerate the
creation of new remixes that propel us all
forward.
Intellectual property creates artificial scarcity.
It is the opposite of creating abundance.
Do we really wish to actively choose scarcity
over abundance?
Homes for the Homeless
In Colorado it was estimated that the cost
to the taxpayer for each homeless individual
was $43,240.
Just housing them instead costs $16,813.
In Florida the cost of homelessness was estimated
at $31,065 per taxpayer, while just housing
them would cost $10,051.
In Utah, the cost of homelessness was estimated
at $16,670 per taxpayer, while just housing
them would cost $11,000.
We know it saves more money to just provide
homes, than to let people be homeless.
However, we also know that “cash payments
increase the welfare of recipients to a greater
degree than do transfers-in-kind of equal
cash value.”
And it is this knowledge, that leads us to
possibly the single most effective change
of all, affecting the greatest number of our
wasteful and counterproductive expenditures.
We can just start giving everyone money.
This is how we can stop fiddling with our
transmission and instead improve our entire
engine — Universal Basic Income.
The Improved Engine of the United States
A basic income would reduce the need for health
care.
A program tested in Canada reduced the need
for health care by close to 10%.
A basic income would reduce crime rates.
A program tested in Namibia reduced all crime
by over 40%, and the most extreme crimes by
as much as 95%.
A basic income would directly reduce income
inequality.
A basic income could reduce the demand for
higher education that is now effectively required,
while also increasing the ability of those
who wish to pursue their educations to do
so.
Basic income experiments reflect this.
A basic income could eliminate the bureaucracy
of our welfare and pension programs by nullifying
the need for them.
A basic income could eliminate the waste of
people doing nothing at work by allowing them
to reduce their hours and to quit “bullshit
jobs”.
A basic income could reduce the waste of the
military functioning effectively as a jobs
program by ending the need for jobs to live.
A basic income could reduce the waste of work
presenteeism and overwork, and make it so
that people don’t feel forced to go to the
office when they should stay home or feel
forced to work more than is optimal.
A basic income could help reduce the waste
of unpurchased food by allowing more people
to purchase it.
A basic income could reduce the waste of unused
vacation days by allowing people to actually
take them.
A basic income would allow for the elimination
of mostly invisible subsidies and deductions
that presently help mostly the few, replacing
them instead with visible cash that helps
everyone.
A basic income could decrease the economic
losses of commuting by better allowing people
to live closer to their jobs or further away
from expensive areas where jobs are centralized.
A basic income could reduce the invisible
tax on the poor that is lottery tickets and
other forms of gambling by their no longer
representing the only perceived way of getting
ahead.
A basic income could better enable the transition
from coal to green energies.
Much of coal production exists because there
are no other jobs to be found.
A basic income would reduce the epidemic of
suicide by increasing mental health through
the reduction of stress and increases in security.
A basic income would increase productivity
by allowing those who hate their jobs to quit
and those who want those jobs to take them
instead of remaining unemployed.
Fully voluntary work increases commitment.
A basic income would shift work towards intrinsic
motivation by allowing people to pursue the
work they intrinsically wish to pursue.
This increases productivity and raises wages.
A basic income could create a more engaged
and active citizenry by increasing every citizen’s
autonomy and ability to participate as citizens.
A basic income could replace the role unions
once played, by granting everyone sufficient
bargaining power at the individual level thanks
to the ability to say “No.”
A basic income would reduce all the costs
of hunger.
It would eliminate poverty entirely, and every
one of its costs right along with it.
This has already been scientifically tested
and long known.
A basic income would transform all income
earned from work into discretionary income.
With everyone’s basic needs covered, everyone
could power the economy as a consumer.
This means a stronger, wider, more decentralized,
and more stable people-powered economy.
A basic income guarantee is how we can spend
more on our engine to spend less on our transmission.
How much more?
Why not start at just above the poverty line
with a monthly income of $1,000 for adult
citizens and $300 for youth citizens?
This would cost an estimated $3 trillion,
but the total savings it stands to introduce
in reducing the more than $10 trillion we
already spend, along with the social and economic
growth fostered as a result, are almost incalculable
in value.
The Engine Improvement That Pays for Itself
Canada did a study to determine how much money
could be saved on adults by spending just
$1 on them when they’re young.
They concluded $1 would save $3 to $9.
It means that tomorrow if we started just
providing $300 a month as a youth citizen
allowance, we would not have to spend $900
to $2,700 a month on everyone as adults as
the costs of crime and medical care.
This also means that when kids became adults,
a basic income as high as $2,700 per month
would cost not a penny more than we already
spend, but without all the crime and poor
health.
So why not start a universal allowance for
our children immediately, and consider their
basic incomes as adults entirely paid in full?
No more poverty.
Less crime.
Better health.
Higher productivity.
Accelerated economy.
Expanded democracy.
More happiness.
Even greater intelligence.
These are measures of a functioning system
working for everyone.
This is the systemic production of fewer red
beads.
It’s also just what the doctor prescribes…
The United States of America used to dream.
We used to aspire for greatness.
We pushed the envelope of what was possible.
When did we lose that?
When did the status quo become more important
than what could be?
When did playing it safe triumph over proving
the naysayers wrong?
It doesn’t have to be this way.
We can push for greatness again.
We can do the “impossible” and show the
world what can be done when a nation of mutually
empowered individuals recognizes not only
our independence but our interdependence.
America was not built on the idea of every
man for himself.
It was built on a higher ideal.
It was built on our common security and common
purpose.
It was built on the idea that a government
should serve its people — not some of its
people — all of its people.
“We the People of the United States, in
Order to form a more perfect Union, establish
Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide
for the common defense, promote the general
Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty
to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain
and establish this Constitution for the United
States of America.”
Hallowed words, right?
One of these words, we can’t even use any
more today without a stigma attached, and
yet the word “welfare” is in the preamble.
This was a primary point of the entire document,
to create a system of government that assured
we were all better off together than as individuals;
that by working together, we could secure
our liberty.
We could achieve so much more than we ever
could as individuals, and we could do this
not only for us, but for each and every succeeding
generation.
“I must study politics and war, that my
sons may have the liberty to study mathematics
and philosophy, geography, natural history,
and naval architecture, navigation, commerce,
and agriculture, in order to give their children
a right to study painting, poetry, music,
architecture, statuary, tapestry and porcelain.”
— John Adams, Founding Father and 2nd President
of the United States
We had an aim.
Long-term thinking was built into the national
contract.
The intent was to build a system that would
always improve, and the very basis of this
system was the guarantee of our general security.
Every generation was to be better off than
the last, and with each generation, more would
be free to pursue that which they most wished
to pursue, because each generation would be
more secure than the last.
The year is now 2015.
How secure do you feel in this day and age?
We have lost our way.
We have become a nation of got-mines where
once we strove for union.
We have become a nation seeking war over tranquility,
injustice over justice, tax cuts over welfare,
lack of opportunity over liberty, and short-term
profits over long-term posterity.
If we are to rediscover our way as a nation,
systemic thinking is required and an aim must
be set.
My suggestion for our new aim is the same
as that of W. Edwards Deming:
Everybody wins.
Nobody loses.
I submit that if we are to achieve this aim,
we should manage our society as a system,
and this system should always improve.
We should use all our tools and knowledge
to make constant improvements.
We should not let our individual ideologies
hinder us from this goal, and we should put
greater importance on what science reveals
to us as potential ways forward.
Where science points the way forward, we should
step.
This nation was not built for the pursuit
of money.
It was built for the pursuit of greatness.
How do we measure greatness?
Is it GDP?
Or is it something else?
Robert F. Kennedy thought it might be something
else.
Kennedy was not alone and others continue
to join the chorus for an economic ruler other
than GDP.
If we begin to use another ruler, we may learn
something new about ourselves and how we compare
to others.
In the case of the “Good Country Index”,
we’re not in the top 10.
We’re 21st.
If instead we measured happiness, in 2013
we ranked 17th.
Are these the kinds of lists we want to strive
to top instead of GDP?
Do we only want to be measured as creating
the most wealth of all developed countries,
or do we also want to be measured as doing
the most good or being the most happy?
Are we even the most developed country?
“With the storehouse of skills and knowledge
contained in the millions of unemployed, and
with the even more appalling underuse, misuse,
and abuse of skills and knowledge in the army
of employed people in all ranks in all industries,
the United States may be today the most underdeveloped
country in the world.”
— Dr. W. Edwards Deming, Out of Crisis,
1982
Focusing on our untapped potential, W. Edwards
Deming considered the United States to be
possibly the most underdeveloped country in
the world.
But we can change that.
