Compromise

The difference between liberals and conservatives, essentially, is that liberals believe “we’re all in the same boat,” and conservatives believe that everyone is responsible for themselves.  Liberals believe that everyone should have access to clean water, breathable air, a decent home, health care and a shot at a decent education.  Conservatives believe that nobody should get anything unless they are willing to work for it.

It’s possible to find a compromise between these two positions.  It’s not possible  to find a compromise with the extreme right wing nut jobs who have control of American politics at the moment, and who are making inroads in  some other countries.

Those people are just mean and vindictive and want people to suffer, and will never compromise with anybody, as a matter of principle.  But if you define the positions as I have above, it’s possible to reach a compromise.

Give everybody who doesn’t have a job a job.  There is work that needs to be done.  Building or restoring homes so that everyone has a place to live.  Covering all the roads of the world with solar panels.  Planting trees.  Establishing urban gardens.  Recycling absolutely everything.  Digging canals and laying pipe and setting up desalination facilities.  Creating the world of the future.

Of course, everybody needs to get paid and the question is “Where is all that money coming from?”  First, money is an abstraction.  When you have a jobs program like this going, you actually would be creating wealth.  But, back to the short term – where is the money going to come from?

Well, it’s the government that prints the money so they would just have to print enough to pay everybody.  That’s not quite as crazy and inflationary as it sounds, because almost all of the money would be poured straight back into the economy.  Some would be withheld from paychecks to pay for the houses which the homeless would be building for themselves.  Some gets taken out for health insurance, making health care affordable for everybody.  Some, of course, is going to be spent on alcohol, drugs, and junk food, but that’s going into the economy as well.

Vendors of alcohol, drugs and junk food have families to feed, too.

It wouldn’t eliminate poverty right away, or completely.  But it would eliminate the lowest level of poverty, the desperation poverty.  And, as it does that, it also makes the world a better place.  Physically, structurally, a better place.

Does anyone disagree with that?