Solutions

Something is wrong with our system.

Last night I got the privilege to listen to Van Jones speak here in Portland. It was an SRO crowd which was amazing given that his speech was at the exact same time as the State of the Union address by President Obama.

I arrived early and sat next to a black man about my same age. His name was Craig and we had a super conversation waiting for the program to start. Craig had come to hear Van talk about green jobs as he was desperately looking for work. Here was an American who wanted to contribute and yet, couldn't find any paid work.

Craig's pain was palpable. His pain is no different than millions and millions of other Americans, from every corner of our country.

Everywhere I look I see needs.

Our infrastructure is failing. Our bridges desperately need repair. Many here in Oregon won't withstand the next major earthquake we all know is coming. Our Sellwood Bridge has been closed to bus traffic for years and rates a 2 out of 100 possible points for structural integrity. You think we might be better off fixing it?

Schools, everywhere except newer suburban schools, are in need of significant improvements and upgrades. My daughter attends a Portland HS that is nearly 100 years old.

I'm guessing that more than 80 percent of our housing would benefit from energy efficiency improvements that would save money in the long run. We could put a million people to work within the next 12 months weatherizing homes using a revenue neutral model that is win/win/win for all.

We need more teachers and smaller class sizes. We need more opportunities for our youth and less prisons (American prisons now hold 1/4th of the world's prison population. Does that seem right in the Land of the Free?)

We need more caregivers and support for the caregivers we have.

We need programs for our returning veterans who come home from service with too few opportunities and too little support.

At the same time, everywhere I look I see people who need jobs and want to help.

It is a failure of our system and our imagination that we can't put these two needs together.

We are not some third world country without resources and imagination. We can fix this problem.

Jobs, Jobs, Jobs

Our culture has a strange obsession with work. I've written about this from a number of angles including our Culture of Insatiability, how a shorter work week would benefit us all , and the impact of this job preoccupation.

Daniel Quinn, one of my favorite authors, wrote Work, Work, Work, a children's book that follows a mole that spends his days digging. From sun up to sun down the mole digs holes, without any thought as to why he spends his life digging nor any appreciation of the fantastic world around him. All he cares about is his work - digging holes.

I bring this up since I was reading this morning's headline that the Tea Partiers would be looking at defense spending cuts as part of their deficit reduction plan. Clicking through to the story, I knew the article would mention the "jobs" trump card. (Our societal trump cards seem to be safety, security, children, and jobs. Just pull those into any discussion and they trump every other consideration.)

And there it was, in the second paragraph of the story:

"Cutting defense and canceling weapons could mean deep spending reductions and high marks from tea partiers as the nation wrestles with a $1.3 trillion deficit. Yet it also could jeopardize thousands of jobs when unemployment is running high."

These marginal defense jobs provide little societal value since we can't eat, wear or beneficially use the output. We'd be better off paying these displaced workers to do community volunteer work which would leave them gainfully employed, with income to spend, creating societal benefits that would be palpable.

If a job is a job is a job, why not pay these folks to dig holes? I suspect most people would see this as a waste of government resources and yet what about the hole digging jobs we'd lose as a result?

In the end, we all need to contribute to our society and there are many ways to do this beyond paid remuneration.

I hope you'll consider these ideas whenever you hear the "Jobs" trump card pulled out in a debate or discussion.

Can we afford to cure cancer?

I read an op-ed some 20 years ago that really changed my vision.  The author was discussing how the bottom line consideration for so many policies and actions was jobs.  Jobs, jobs, jobs. 

With all this importance placed on the need for more jobs, she wondered whether our society could handle putting an end to crime as millions of jobs in enforcement, prosecution, defense, prison construction and operation, probation, security, etc., would be lost.  The cure for cancer would also eliminate millions of jobs in research, treatment, pharmaceuticals, insurance, etc.  What would happen to our economy if everyone gave up smoking? 

The author also highlighted our preoccupation with the phenomena by pointing out that Native Americans didn’t even have a word for job. 

While everyone and every being has to make a living, and I believe that most people appreciate meaningful work, are jobs the ultimate reason for our being?

I realize unemployment is really high yet I proposed a systems changing solution that would immediately solve the unemployment problem as well as slow our ecological catastrophe. 

I believe we need to slow down our economic engine to solve our ecological and human social problems.  How might we increase happiness, joy and fulfillment without consuming more of the Earth’s overly burdened resources?  This really isn’t too hard to imagine.

The Brundtland report first articulated the concept of sustainable development as the sweet spot between the three E’s of Economy, Environment, and Equity.

However, the economy and society are really subsets of, and dependent on the environment.  A better graphic looks like this.

I'll let you think abou that and remind you that nature bats last and of course, there are no jobs on a dead planet.

What about a 32-hour, 4 day work week?

There is a simple, comprehensive system solution you won’t hear about. (I wonder why that is? Could it be that the powers that be are heavily invested and benefit immensely from THIS system?)

This one simple action would:

• Increases the number of jobs. 
• Provide more time off for this overworked, over stressed nation.
• Provide more family time for parents and children.
• Decrease overall commuting which both reduces our dependence on foreign oil and greenhouse gas emissions. 
• Should decrease rampant consumerism as overall incomes decrease.

The late Donella Meadows wrote a famous paper about Leverage Points and places to intervene in a system. Changing the rules of the system is a fairly significant leverage point. This is one rule change that would benefit working class Americans.