A Main Street Fix to Wall Street’s Failure

Cover for Jobs reportThe report calls for a serious jobs program that will necessarily include short-term stimulus measures, but with its primary focus on structural interventions to shift the balance of economic and political power from Wall Street to Main Street. The authors propose a seven-part program to advance this power shift:

  1. Redefine our economic priorities by replacing financial indicators with real wealth indicators as the basis for evaluating economic performance,
  2. Restructure the money system to root the power to create and allocate money in Main Street financial institutions that support Main Street job creation.
  3. Restore the middle class by restoring progressive tax policies and a strong and secure social safety net.
  4. Create a framework of economic incentives that favor human-scale enterprises that are locally-owned by people who have a natural interest in the health and well-being of their community and its natural environment,
  5. Protect markets and democracy from corruption by concentrations of unaccountable corporate power.
  6. Organize the global economy into substantially self-reliant regional economies that align and partner with the structure and dynamics of Earth’s biosphere.
  7. Put in place global rules and institutions that secure the universal rights of people and support democratic self-governance and economic self-reliance at all system levels.