More Tom Friedman
Here’s Tom Friedman, calling the financial crisis “the big one” and comparing it to “the morning after Pearl Harbor.” If he really believes that, he ought to consider, at least, endorsing Citizen Dividends, a guaranteed income for every adult American.
Wielding his favorite weapon, colorful metaphors, he compares our financial system to the heart, money is blood, industries are muscles, and the whole system is congested and failing.
That’s the introduction, and it leads to griping about President Obama and the Republicans “playing politics as usual.” Obama’s too timid. Republicans are debating whether or not they want Obama to fail.
Friedman wants government to let some big companies fail, and he mentions AIG, Citigroup, and General Motors. He also thinks we need a much larger stimulus than has been proposed so far, on the order of several trillion dollars. To get there from here he proposes a Camp David summit: Obama, leading bankers and industrialists, leaders in the Democratic and Republican parties. They’ll go to the mountaintop and not come down till they have some answers.
It’s Friedman who’s being timid, his thinking congested by conventional notions. The leading bankers, industrialists, and politicians who got us into the current crisis are not able to see the way out, no matter how much time they spend talking to one another at Camp David, Davos, or through the New York Times. We need real visionary thinking from people like Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, Martin Luther King Jr., Henry George, Peter Drucker, and Buckminster Fuller, each of whom endorsed some type of guaranteed income.
Stop worrying about the economy and the financial crisis. Start focusing more concretely on ordinary Americans. Instead of spending trillions of dollars to bail out the financial system, give the money equally to every adult citizen. The same amount for everyone.
If the amount is $1,000 a month for each adult, it would be $24,000 a year for a couple. That’s more than the official poverty level for a family of four, and would lift people out of poverty without the shame, stigma, stinginess, coercion, and complications that characterize current antipoverty programs. Plus, the main beneficiaries will be working and middle class Americans.
Each of us will have more money to spend. We’ll spend, stimulating economic activity and creating jobs. Each of us will have more money to save and invest. We’ll save, and our savings will help recapitalize banks. People will have money to make mortgage payments, reducing home foreclosures.
Each of us will have some secure income even if we lose our jobs. Everyone who’s unemployed will have some secure income, and therefore the ability to manage while they look for work or create jobs for themselves, perhaps starting their own businesses.
Ordinary Americans will have the money we need to solve most of our personal financial problems. Our spending, saving, investing, job-seeking, and job-creating activities will solve our national economic problems.
What do you think, Tom? How about discussing this idea in an upcoming column?
Steven Shafarman
Tags: bank crisis, Barack Obama, economic stimulus, Martin Luther King, ordinary Americans, Tom Friedman