Draft - New Economy Working Group Ten Top Framing Messages

       I.      System Redesign: The financial meltdown is our wake up call. We do not have a broken economic system in need of repair; we have a failed economic system in need of fundamental redesign. To respond to the social and environmental needs of the 21^st century, the new design must feature a new financial and money system, new real wealth performance indicators, a redistributive framework, new ownership models, and new models of wealth creation that recognize the difference between real living wealth and phantom financial wealth.

    II.      A Real Wealth Economy: Real wealth includes all things that have intrinsic values, such as land, labor, knowledge, health, and education. The most valuable forms of real wealth are beyond price: healthy, happy children; strong families; caring communities; a secure, dignified, and meaningful source of livelihood; healthy, biodiverse ecosystems; and peace. A real wealth economy is devoted to enhancing the quality of life for all, in contrast to a phantom wealth economy devoted to making money for the few in order to control and consume real wealth produced by others.

 III.      A Life Serving Money System: Money is merely a number of no intrinsic value created from nothing when a bank issues a loan. Yet, because most essential transactions in a modern society depend on money, those who control the creation and allocation of money control the society. We have allowed Wall Street to achieve monopoly control of the creation and allocation of money and thereby to make its values and priorities the values and priorities of the society. It is a largely predatory system engaged in creating money from nothing with a simple accounting entry when they issue loans, charging exhorbitant fees and interest, deceiving borrowers, falsifying securities ratings, and extracting public bailouts on threat of withholding credit and crashing the economy. We must replace the predatory Wall Street money system with a life-serving money system that functions as a properly regulated public utility responsive to the needs and priorities of just and sustainable Main Street economies.

 IV.      Sustainable Consumption: The human future depends on reducing aggregate human consumption and sharing resources equitably to balance human use with the regenerative capacity of Earth's living systems. Instead of managing the economy to maximize consumption, we must manage it to maximize well-being.

    V.      Resource Reallocation: To meet the essential needs of people and nature on a finite planet, public policy must support an equitable reallocation of resources from harmful and nonessential to healthy essential uses. This includes reallocating from war to peace, from automobiles to public transit, from urban sprawl to healthy cities and rural reclamation, from advertising to education, from speculation to productive investment, and from producing extravagant display to producing the essentials of a healthy and productive life.

 VI.      Indicators that Measure What We Want: We give priority to the results we measure, so we must assess economic performance against indicators of the results we really want: healthy children, strong families, caring communities, and vital, species diverse natural systems. Growth and profits are only means, not ends, and should be so treated. GDP and other financial indicators are measures of cost, not benefit.

VII.      Economic Democracy: Reducing extremes in wealth and income—between and within rich and poor nations—is essential to strengthen democracy, improve human health, strengthen community, and bring human consumption into balance with Earth’s regenerative capacity.

VIII.      Community Control and Self-Reliance: Markets need rules that maintain the conditions of socially efficient resource allocation—including local control, cost internalization, balanced trade, the absence of private monopoly, and a just distribution of economic power. Properly regulated markets support local democratic self-rule and allow each community to manage its local resource base to optimize the sustained and self-reliant production of goods and services to meet the essential needs of all its members within a framework of fair and balanced exchange with its neighbors and the free sharing of information, technology, and culture. Wall Street correctly views these rules as barriers to the global concentration of unaccountable corporate power and works tirelessly to eliminate them. Democracy, economic justice, and environmental sustainability all depend on restoring appropriate market rules to restore community control and self-reliance.

 IX.      Community Accountable Enterprises: The Wall Street economy is comprised of large, limited liability corporations controlled by Wall Street investors and devoted to serving Wall Street values and interests. Healthy Main Street economies are comprised of human-scale, locally owned and accountable enterprises that recognize that their primary purpose is to provide beneficial goods and services that meet the needs of their neighbors and build community wealth within ecological constraints.

    X.      Citizen Leadership: A corrupt system cannot reform itself from within. The leadership for change must come from informed and engaged citizens who recognize the need for a balance between individual and community needs and are committed to creating a world that works for all.