CHAPTER 8.

THE 80% PROPOSAL

As I said among the book's opening paragraphs,

There exists a political program that 80% of the US population would vote
for. It is an issue of a tone and approach more than specifics. Though specifics
count.. People want realistic hope, pragmatism and some serious working to reverse
negative trends. What we have been offered - by both parties - is militarism and fear
and support for old industries, and a state-corporate partnership that is hostile to the
interests of everyone, including, as people also looking for quality of life, the owners
of big capital. The leaderships of the parties shouts at us with false issues that divide
us. The Republicans offer moral outrage at the perceived lesser sins of others, and
the Democrats offer support to visible fragments of the socially but not economically
marginalized.

Despite the apparent differences in political perspectives, conservative and progressive

values are fairly close; quality of life means individual and family health, community coherence,
a vital economy, meaningful time away from work, self responsibility, and care for others, and
respect for honesty and character.
I have been discussing the reasons why there is no coherent political platform that speaks
to common values, but rather polarizes us along the lines of fairly minor issues.. Here I am
discussing the ideas that unite us and the possibilities of a politics around these goals. Let me
cycle through the argument several times, with shifting emphasis and detail.

Simply stated we propose a return to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, without
tyranny. It means bringing together the best of conservative and progressive ideas – not using the
dark shadow side of those ideas to keep us from meaningful action, from doing anything that
would upset the current narrow leadership in the country that might shift the course of the current
momentum.
We need to realize that the way the Bush presidency used the words democracy and
freedom are not an adequate representation of those values. In fact they are a major distortion.
What Bush really means is a society dominated by corporations where politics is choreographed
by the media and crucial questions are pushed aside. The values agenda, of which GardenWorld
is an evocative image, requires a commitment to a vital economy, which means a business world
innovating with high tech to meet social and individual needs with stiff environmental regulation
that drive innovation, spreads employment outward to more participation in good jobs, that are
well paying, more local and regional, and requiring more education and teamwork. It means
supporting such an economy by reducing subsidies through direct or regulatory means to old
style businesses that hurt innovation. It means a dedication to health care and education that
works across the life cycle and providing the skills and perspectives necessary for a new breadth
of participation. It means a foreign policy based on realism about the past injustices of empire
and colonization, and a dedication to a better life for all. We need a foreign policy that looks for
alignment in friendship with others in the pursuit of local versions of seeking a better life for
their people. Not just as individuals, but as families, communities, the multiple communities to
which the modern person is member. We need to realize that governing complexity is very hard.
This is to be achieved through international cooperation and respect for cultural and
political differences, not blind to deep injustice, but respectful of different approaches to
governance, putting international hope in place of a disastrous arms race of large countries
selling weapons to local warlords.
The eighty percent proposal begins with a few basics

1.Reverse the legislation that, cumulatively, is leading to concentration of wealth and extremely
unequal incomes. Because wealth is the sum of changes over time, whereas income is only for a
given year, wealth distortion is much greater than income distortion. Either is gross enough to
say without equivocation, something is rotten in the republic.
The solution may be as simple as reinstating the inheritance tax for estates above say 2
million, and raising the upper income tax brackets by 5 or ten percent. I leave it to others to do
the complex math modeling, but I believe these two changes would bring us into an era where
the current increasing concentration will turn into slowly decreasing disparities. The very fact of
this shift in direction would mean that most peaceful would have rising expectations. The result
would be increased hope and a desire to participate.
The argument against this is it is the state taking property from individuals. But none
believe that the individuals gained that wealth without the support of social regulation and social
productivity, from the language, the land, the science, and the law. These, used by the wealthy,
have not been paid for by them, and are a kind of legally sanctioned robbery. Nearly everyone
agrees that taxes are essential and a public responsibility. There is probably a tax structure that
could maintain sustainable differences in wealth which, along with social mobility - the ability of
one’s children to influence their own wealth position – would be judged as sustainably fair.
If the next tax policy was strong enough to reverse the current trends for of concentration
and establish a fairer distribution of wealth, a future sustainable tax structure that would maintain
sustainable wealth differences would be achievable. The goal should be a monitor trends so that
tax structure can prevent a new cycle with the drift towards concentration.
Next of course we need education, transportations, heath, culture. Even with extreme
reforms in each of these – which I think we need – the costs are not trivial.

2. We need a productive economy – starting at the levels of food, water, clean air, and livable
place on the land, and beyond these the infrastructure of a civilization. These are not at all
simple.
 First we need to recognize that the world economy is shifting in ways that are difficult for
the United States. Americans have to compete with the rising power of economies and the rest of
the world. The United States is now and will continue to be an increasingly small part of the
world economy. We are coming to a time when the world does not need us. The reality is now
that we are needed as consumer, not as producer. There probably is a way to lower our relative
standard of living –that is relative to the rising expectations of others – gracefully –and we need
to see this as an opportunity for the good life – I think in the context of GardenWorld - rather
than as a threat to the old one which has not been so attractive and not so sustainable.
The Bush administration has not been entrepreneurial. He and the small cadre have not
been interested in new technology or interesting projects using old technology. The
administration’s lack of interest in the education necessary for an entrepreneurial society is
profound. Basically it has been destructive and visionless. The administration has supported old
line industries that provide the money for campaigns in exchange for policies that keep things
from changing.
In this climate real profit has been made either through regulated quasi monopoly or the
complex manipulations of what is called “finance capitalism”. The result as that American
capital and corporations can move money overseas for both production and local consumption
leaving ordinary Americans out of the loop. The rich continue to have an economy they own that
just happens to be overseas, but most Americans, who already are without an economy of
production, will increasingly not be able to consume either. As I said, “The economy is doing
well, but the people are doing badly.”
What is necessary is an economy that works for everyone. Responding to the energy
crisis requires a tremendous investment in the us. If our education were producing the people
who could lead such an economy we probably would do well. We are in danger that the
technologies that can respond too much higher energy efficiency needs will come from other
countries such as Germany, Japan, and China. Germany and Japan have been on the forefront of
tough regulations that drives innovation. The result is that their products- technical solutions –
are desired in the worldwide economy in ways that ours are not. Responding to a more stringent
energy demands creates local markets in the United States. If we are smart we can develop some
of the technology and get the investment.
Environmental needs create opportunities that support and extend the energy scenario.
Tough environmental regulation will create the necessity that is the mother of invention.
Retrofitting existing buildings for water and energy conservation creates local jobs and
potentially a small contracting companies that can do the work. These jobs definitely cannot be
outsourced. The net impact of immigration and as a form of outsourcing is getting careful
consideration by the political process. The need amplified by strong environmental regulation
would reinvigorate the rebuilding of our infrastructure and the craft work of construction and
environmental maintenance.
I of course think that GardenWorld is the perfect container for an attractive and attracting
set of guidelines for this kind of revitalized economy. And such an economy is necessary to meet
the basics for our complex population and to generate the tax revenue to pay for the two enablers
of such an economy, education and health.

1. Education
2. Health
3. Foreign policy
4. Political campaign .money
5. Media

We need a return to justice with fairness, with renewed dedication to constitutionality,

and the avoidance of entrapment and plea bargaining.
Another way to vision this is to see that it involves turning downwards the destructive
rapidly rising curves tending towards real trouble (wealth concentration, environmental
degradation, wars, bad health and education hat does not educate, from pre-school to graduate
school and the professions). Rising hope then would replace rising doom. The numbers don’t
have to actually get there but they must be plausibly turned downward and moving, and to
continue moving, in a positive direction. Nothing is as dispiriting as declining expectations, and
rising expectations broadly shared raise the spirits of a whole society.
Yet me must make a vital economy in order to create the real wealth we need to spread
participation and benefits. But it needs to be less dependent on growth in sheer numbers, and
more based on quality. Aristotle gave us a great analytic tool when he said, “You can have
growth without development, and development without growth.”

Rising hope then would replace rising doom. The numbers don’t have to
actually get there but they must be plausibly turned downward and moving, and
to continue moving, in a positive direction.

To reach an agreement on a platform we need some agreement on underlying symptoms

and causes. First, a grouping of Issues that must be dealt with, as symptoms and their underlying
causes. Then we can more logically work out what are sufficient interventions or changes to get
to where we need to go. It all goes something like

Symptoms
• Remuneration for work declining for most of population
• Environment deteriorating even in gated, rural, and coastal communities
• Infrastructure deterioration slows everyone and is dispiriting and dangerous
• Health costs and poor service means sicker people, from prenatal to ageing
• Declining Education means less employable, less employing, and less citizenship
• Too much War with arms sales and the trauma of dying and disabilities
• Worsening security as anger spreads
 • Energy costs burdening the poorest the most
• Low optimism puts life at an unfair advantage
• Expanding government that is not helping social issues breeds cynicism
• World markets askew creates damage to the rest of life, forced migrations, wars, and
disease.
• Failing Infrastructure.

Underlying
• The difficulties of managing/governing complex systems
• Increasing population which unbalances all relationships.
• Corporate power through state created corporate charters treated as private property
• Oil policy keeps us from sane technical and social evolution
• Increasingly complex forms of segregation (sex, race, class, geography, IQ, education,
age…)
• Combative rather than cooperative international relations: leading by deals and bravado
rather than by values and appeal to virtue
• Use of tech for profit rather than social benefit
• Business regulations that support big business, not small.
• Banking system that makes owning money more rewarding than creating businesses.
• The replacement of quality of life with individual consumerism.
• Professionalization as career sorting and bureaucratizing rather than deepening skills and
knowledge.
• We could say that the underlying reality is the shift from one person one vote to one
dollar one vote ( or more realistically, about a million dollars gets you a vote.
Congresspeople have no time for a conversation that does not gain money for campaigns.

Then the question is, what are sufficient interventions to turn this around? There are two
levels. The first is simply turning downward the direction of the negative curves. Second is
dealing with system fundamentals, the laws and regulations and cultural habits acquired since
WW2 that lead to institutional rewards and constraints that produce the negatives and prevent
better solutions. Some of the first can be done without the second, and it will take
experimentation to find out how much. The answer probably turns out to be more change than
we currently anticipate. Yet merely changing the directions of the curves with a long term
commitment to reversing decades long distortions would help. The Republicans made a great
deal of big issues: lower taxes, personal responsibility, smaller government (ha), use of military
and economic power for advantage not constrained by perceptions. So we need to go for big
changes. Simply stated

To do
• Healthy business
 • Healthy and educated population
• Good neighbor relations to the world
• Healthy environment
• Use tech for the good of all
• Renewed effort at legal justice, respect for law, and compassion
• Rethink bureaucracy as in the National Performance review and Reinventing
Government.

If politicians talked about this as a system, and dropped the petty stuff, the emotionally
charged issues that just get in the way, we might find voters wanting to vote rather than staying
away, which is the only way to vote "none of the above."
Ned Lamont, when running for the Senate in Connecticut, had proposed a simple agenda
of great appeal. It ain't the whole story, but it is a good beginning. His issues listed on his website
were:

• That the war in Iraq has diverted far too many of our dollars, and too much
of our attention, from our needs back home. The crisis in health care, lack of
progress towards energy independence, and struggling public schools are
examples of how our government is not leading, but allowing lobbyists and
special interests to write the rules.

• Washington needs creative solutions to old problems. I am an entrepreneur

who has built a successful business from scratch. More than 20 years ago, I
founded a company that competes successfully against cable conglomerates. I am
running with the support of Connecticut citizens, not corporate or special interests
– and I bring real business experience that government needs.

• Government has a role in ensuring fundamental rights and equal

opportunity for all Americans. Senator Barack Obama reminded Connecticut
Democrats recently what a difference good, progressive government can make in
people’s lives—from social security and Medicare to the national highway system
and the Civil Rights acts. Rather than replacing the hard-earned social safety net
with partially funded savings accounts, Democrats should be ready again to
defend and build upon all that we have accomplished—equal rights and equal
opportunity for all.

I think, if spoken just so, without any hint of the separation of "us" from "them", he was
close to a nearly universal agenda.
We live in a society more organized to protect interests than the quality of life, to protect
international wealth more than create secure communities, to take the cream of the talent,
institutionalize it in the merry-go-round, and let the rest of the people rot. Not many are "for"
this, it is systemic, and people align with it out of felt necessity. We need to open up the space for
the consideration of larger alternatives if we are to

1. Give adequate responses to major problems

2. Get voter support for these changes.

All this is predicated on things cohering enough that we can evolve in a healthier
direction. But we must consider that history may not be so kind. Are we like political
progressives and democrats in Weimar Germany, short months from Hitler? Are we like Italy in
1924 looking for community and a balance with technology and quality of work life and finding
Mussolini attractive? I don't know the answer. We may be at a point where the use of oil summed
across nations, all of which are increasing use, matches now the fullest possible use of refining
capacity and the continual rise in use will force destabilization, creating losers? We may be
building an economy which, in is pursuit of dollars, tries to over build and collapses, missing out
on the opportunity for a wise use of skills and technology for everyone. We may be building an
urbanization that destroys the environment - but re-ruralization might be worse if it uses current
materials and energy requirements. We may be at a point where the failure of legitimate authority
may lead to strong desires for illegitimate authority to take control.

Thus it may be that deeper changes are necessary if quality of life, democracy and
families are to survive. We may need

• Rethinking how democracy works, representation, voting, informing, and the role of
money
• Restructuring economies to create fuller participation with much less extraction
• Restructuring transportation priorities
• Re-chartering corporations as publicly created, privately managed with reciprocal
responsibilities.
• The very goals of life: urban/green, use of medicine for health or longevity, place of
leisure and media, and self development. Need for social and individual
experimentation.
• The place of belief systems in viable societies, which means respecting Islam for its
appeal to those marginalized, the reality that science is a belief system, the
recognition that we need them all.

And perhaps, if all else fails, wars well fought for things we believe in. In all cases,
the need for education, art, compassion.
To take on these challenges in a spirit of courage, optimism, and with a touch of
laughter, we need to be reminded, or to create, images of where we want to go. GardenWorld:
 the use of tech and skill to create a world where humans and the rest of nature are in an
attractive balance that looks green, beautiful, and a daily joy to live in (where “live” includes
work, love community and attractive settings.). Maybe we do not have to fight. Perhaps we
can work together.

Let’s take another look at this:

Fortress individualism The 80% solution – toward

GardenWorld

• Defend, isolate, and punish • Life, liberty, and the pursuit of

• Get the wealth
• The war for oil
• Use regulation to defend and
enhance existing business
• Buy the legislature
• Shift taxes downward, cut taxes
upward
• Monopolize big business
• Outsource
• Incentives to tear down and borrow
to rebuild
• Private property rights without
responsibilities – turning the
commons into private gain.
• Treat education and health as costs
happiness
• Create a viable economy
• Be technologically advanced
• Tough environmental regulation
that drives innovation
• Public funding of elections and
new media regulations
• Support business at the local and
regional levels
• Create local jobs that are not
exportable
• Retrofit and restore existing
buildings
• Redesigning the spaces between
them as green as possible
• Use government to enhance
education and health as enablers
of participation.

The right hand side needs a vision of where it is going – GardenWorldThe choice is not a
brutal one, one characterized by “creative destruction.” Rather it asks for a slow turning of the
curves and a slow shift, from the narrowing isolation of human living in the brutally restrictive
combination of work and home, to a broader vision of a GardenWorld.
Here is the problem. Imagine the world as if it was your responsibility to manage and you
most people hoped to keep things going as they are. You would like to change but everything you
propose you realize will step up massive resistance. What do you do? Continuity or anarchy?
GardenWorld is an attempt to avoid the harsh destructive choices but to provide a path of
evolution that involves everyone. And it should provide new and attractive goals for those who
have money to spend it and for those who work to find a much higher enjoyment and what
they’re doing, including the ability to afford the higher standard of life beyond a bifurcated
treadmill of work and buy. This means quality beyond survival.

GardenWorld is not a fixed world. It is a world of nano-technology, the Internet, genetic

modification and the exploration of new materials and designs. But it is also a world of children,
sociability, a more life loving world with more art and more reflection. More difficult questions
about means and conflicts will be taken up in chapter 8. Next, a deeper discussion of
GardenWorld.