A Healthy 21^st Century Economy

This administration will modernize our nation’s economic policy and reorganize our economy to meet our current needs and the needs of future generations without depleting vital resources, damaging life-supporting ecosystems, or harming other life.

The size of the global economy is one of the two major multipliers in calculating human impact on the Earth (population size is the other). Since humankind is currently demanding nearly twice what the planet’s biosystems can sustainably provide, as journalist Christopher Ketcham wrote, we must pursue

“contraction and simplification, a downsizing of the economy and population, so that Homo sapiens can prosper within the regenerative and assimilative capacity of the biosphere. In other words, we must live within our planet’s biophysical limits.”

So, economic growth will no longer be a U.S. policy goal; it will be a sign of failure.

Our number one economic priority is to contract the economy until we are no longer in overshoot

Our number two priority is to reorganize our economy into a healthy, 21st century economy that focuses on meeting human needs without harming other life or leaving a dead planet for future generations. Ours will be a “wellbeing” economy focused on simple, healthy communities, efficient resource use and the elimination of wasteful consumerism.

Since globalization hides impacts from us, monetizes and dehumanizes our economy, and requires more energy than localization, my administration’s economic policies will support relocalization. The closer to home we meet our needs, the better.

In order to have good lives for over 300 million Americans while we shrink our economy, we’ll:

Eliminate or reduce waste
Encourage and support a return to manufacturing durable products that last and can be repaired
Criminalize planned obsolescence
Consider restricting advertising that convinces us we need things we generally do not need
Diminish frivolous and status consumption through taxes or fees
Encourage and incentivize a dramatic reduction in work hours, resulting in employment for all while decreasing emissions, waste and costs
Support collaborative local economies, tool-shares, time-banks, etc.
Dramatically reduce air travel – through education as much as possible, but also through taxes or fees
Implement luxury taxes
Increase taxes on passive income

Keep in mind, also, that as our population contracts, our economy must meet the needs of fewer people, so it can naturally contract.

We’ll all need to stop wasting money. For example, many of us spend more than necessary on gas for our car because we speed and drive wastefully. We’ll work to change that. Our National Ecological Overshoot Project will help you keep that front of mind.

We’ll root out waste in government:

Air travel will be severely curtailed; virtual meetings will be the rule
Offices will not get expensive makeovers
We’ll end expensive air shows by Air Force and Navy pilots (The Navy’s Blue Angels program cost $39 million in 2012; the Air Force’s Thunderbirds cost well over $60,000 per hour of flight; a single F-35 costs over $30,000 per hour of flight. Hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of gallons of jet fuel are burned every year by these programs. This isn’t the behavior of a nation realistically facing a climate crisis.)

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