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ACCORDING TO LIZ - In a recent City Watch article, Ken raised some good questions about what working Americans should be focused on instead of the Epstein drama, and the foibles and transgressions of our men in the White House.
While my opinions may differ from some Dr. Alpern embraced in his November 20th article, here are some responses to his questions albeit from a small-c conservative point of view.
- How do we make housing affordable?
Remove the profit motive from land speculators, rental consortiums, building monopolies and, most importantly, the incentives that various levels of government keep doling out that the foregoing capitalize on. And too often help the recipients of their campaign cash craft the small print for ensuring that they are first in line for taxpayer largesse.
- How do we make energy affordable?
Go green. Bring back solar incentives. Push forward with wind power. Invest in the American infrastructure including expanding programs that conserve energy.
Furthermore, renewables provide other significant savings – in people’s health, as employers of a skilled and better paid workforce who pay more in taxes, in lower pollution and higher savings, in sustainability and a greatly reduced reliance on declining natural resources and dependence on other countries with potentially conflating priorities.
- How do we make water and utilities affordable?
Penalize polluters of our aquifers even, or especially, if it drives them out of business; integrate all utilities and utility infrastructure nationally and, again, remove the profit motive, learn some lessons from Seth M. Seigel’s Troubled Water: What’s Wrong With What We Drink. And I would be remiss not to repeat the obvious – go green.
- How do we make health care affordable?
Take a leaf from the playbooks of Australia, Canada, Cuba, Japan, New Zealand, Scandinavia, Singapore, the U.K. and too many more to mention, and treat health care as a human right not a goldmine for medical conglomerates and pharmaceutical giants to profit at the expense of American lives and American taxpayers.
Make sure that it’s health care for people not health coverage incentives for corporations, lathering on huge costs for executive bonuses, fancy head offices and high-priced advertising.
And have rigorous government oversight (something we could use more of at City Hall) of all social benefits but in a way that the deserving get what they need promptly but the corporate embezzlers behind most frauds quickly land behind bars. And not in the cushy prisons for white-collar crimes but doing hard time with criminals like them who create hardships for other Americans.
- How do we make food affordable?
Victory gardens. Make it easy for people to grow their own food.
Stop subsidizing agribusiness. Make food production and distribution as local as possible so it’s not necessary to breed variants that are impervious to damage during travel and go back to tastier and nutritious varietals. Stop with the best buy date mania that covers corporate assets and leads to mass destruction of perfectly good comestibles.
Encourage people to pack along their own bags and containers every time they shop and divest the packaging businesses from the produce end of the industry. Establish cottage industries where people live to produce foods that are now canned, boxed, frozen or otherwise.
- How do we make home/condo/apartment construction affordable?
See #1. Also, assess what permits and bylaws are really needed – do we need a kitchen and multiple bathrooms for every multiple-unit dwelling, or can people share more than a gym and a games room?
There can be no one-size-fits-all approaches to construction, especially in the ever-changing microcosms that make up Los Angeles.
- How do we make running a business affordable?
Scale regulations so they make sense. Dis-incentivize mergers, buyouts, stock buybacks and other big business practices that benefit investors at the cost of individual entrepreneurs, family-run companies and consumers.
Face down the greedy corporate purveyors driving stupid decisions for short term gain that result in long term pain.
Focus on supporting local enterprises to provide good employment and vibrant regional economies while limiting job flight, shipping costs and pollution.
- How do we make college, and even a K-12 education, affordable?
Look at Mexico, Scandinavia and Russia. Borrow the best of their systems and add American know-how and can-do to make ours brighter and better.
- How do we make raising a child affordable?
Shared services and state investment from birth through whatever post-secondary education they choose to ensure every child has the best chance to be the best they can be.
- How do we make retirement affordable?
Remove caps on Social Security and Medicare and make the necessary changes to charge withholding on and uniformly tax net revenue, including self-employment and passive earnings, so payroll taxes are not disproportionately borne by lower wage earners.
Encourage shared multi-generational communities with the services and support for older Americans to shelter in space with friends and family for emotional engagement and localized services so that they don’t suffer the indignity and isolation of being warehoused, degenerating their quality of life and accelerating the end of their days.
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Three final thoughts:
First, for too long sales and consumption taxes have been the go-to solution for governments facing budget breaches. A better approach would be to levy incremental assessments on wealth – by imposing a small tax on Wall Street transactions and removing payroll caps, by charging fees to the absentee owners of empty housing, and any other policies that don’t take food out of the mouths of children and remove the roofs from over their heads.
Second. The world desperately needs to embrace a redistribution of wealth that provides for equality everywhere, an enhanced democracy and a far broader and more resilient tax base. This includes expediting a transition to clean energy, fresh water, nutritious food, quality education and health care, economic justice, social justice, reproductive justice and bodily autonomy. For all. And the rights to freedom, to cultural and community self-direction, to speak freely, organize, and create without constraint, and to the preservation of the common good.
Last, but certainly far from least, the United States must lead in the shifting of priorities from those of aggression to those of peace. Death and destruction are eating up more and more of the country’s economic prosperity, its political credibility, and the future of all mankind.
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P.S. As someone who lived a block off Bondi Beach when I was working in Australia, and who grew up on the periphery of the Jewish community in Montréal, and in countries around the world, my heart goes out to all Australians, all those of the Jewish faith, and all humanity during this year’s Festival of Lights.
(Liz Amsden is a former Angeleno now living in Vermont and a regular CityWatch contributor. She writes on issues she’s passionate about, including social justice, government accountability, and community empowerment. Liz brings a sharp, activist voice to her commentary and continues to engage with Los Angeles civic affairs from afar. She can be reached at [email protected].)
