A New Economic Blueprint
A New Economic Blueprint
Natalie Foster on America’s Fiscal Future
Background: Last week, Maureen Conway of the Aspen Institute Economic Opportunities Program and U.S.C professor Dr. Manuel Pastor interviewed Natalie Foster, author of the recently published The Guarantee: Inside the Fight for America’s Next Economy, about how to provide economic opportunity for all Americans.
Natalie Foster is the co-founder and president of the Economic Security Project, an organization that strives to address the economic inequality and financial instability experienced by many individuals in the United States.
To start the interview, Dr. Manuel Pastor introduced the main issue: “Designing a society where insecurity is the norm is designing a society that is bound to fail.” Foster strives to change our society's main issue by implementing the narrative of “the guarantees,” which opens a future where our government can promote human flourishing instead of incentivizing insecurity as a foundation of our society.
The guarantees consist of seven constants the government should guarantee: income, health care, family care, good work, education, and inheritance.
Guaranteed Income
Real world examples in the United States for guaranteed income include:
Michael Tubbs, former mayor of Stockton, CA, provided five hundred dollars a month to 125 families with no strings attached.
The Magnolia Mother’s Trust foundation gives a thousand dollars a month to African American mothers in Jackson, Mississippi for one year.
In addition, Foster considers the Expanded Child Tax Credit to be a guaranteed income program.
So how do we create more change to guarantee income? Policy is the way you scale this idea into the country. Pilots have been a path to show other individuals how to create policies at their own state levels.
Guaranteed Housing
Housing is a fundamental guarantee that should not be completely left to the private market. Foster’s housing guarantee consists of three parts:
Protecting renters and tenants.
Producing more housing units.
Preserving affordable housing.
The United States is not producing enough homes, resulting in a shortage of 4-7 million homes. Foster highlights Montgomery County in Maryland, which built over 1,000 units for middle class Marylanders.
Guaranteed Good Work
When we invest in families and communities in the agency and resources they need to survive, individuals are then free find work with qualities that are ideal to their circumstances:
Meaningful to them on a personal level, such as small businesses.
Has enough flexibility to allow parents, for example, to pick up young children.
Pays enough that they can maintain only one job to pay for everything they need.
The Role of Government Action
According to Foster, government has a responsibility to their citizens to create the conditions for sustainable, flourishing lives. For Dr. Pastor, the foundation of stability is not found in markets or government action, but in a “to turn to each other” for the mutuality that brings us all together to use the government as an instrument to create a change.
The first steps of actions to entrance effective change in our democracy are to invest on:
Activism
Social mobility
Community building/bridge building
From Individual Action to Community Action
Foster urges listeners to remember we are the individuals who can create change within our government, if we personally advocate and bring forward our problems as a community. In return, Foster sees the possibility of progress toward a guarantee-based system of government in support of its citizens.
For more, watch the full Aspen Institute interview.