WHAT IS PROGRESSS TODAY?

Watching the latest scandal of self-interest run amok engulf the Trump White House, I find myself thinking about something Keith and I wrote in the Conclusion of ORGANIZED MONEY. We are explaining why we think it is essential that progressives work for restorative capitalism and why organized people and organized government are not enough.

Here’s what we say (on page 243):

Progress today means unbinding our ideas and institutions from the financially enhanced vise grip of regressive policies and practices. Conservative money supports diplomacy that seeks to literally and figuratively wall us off from the rest of the world. It gives us economic polities that stoke inequality at home and abroad. It gives us social policies that divide us by race, ethnicity, gender, and sexual identity. It gives us environmental policies that ignore science and deny climate change. It gives us propaganda that spreads lies and calls the truth fake news. As a result we suffer self-infliected wounds from individual and institutional decisions that reward self-interest without regard for the common good, from economic choices that favor the wealthy over everyone else, and—the heart of our message—financial actions that reward harmful regressive policies.

If the strength of a nation is its ability to disagree productively, we need to agree and disagree not only with our votes and our voices, but also with our money—what we own, what we spend, where we live, and why we save. We live in a financially lopsided world tilting to wealth over well-being; we need to restore our national moral balance. Control of our money is one-side in favor of conservative goals and against progressive ones. We need to make the playing field more level, the skill levels more equal, and opportunities to get on the field more just.

We need to organize money. I hope you will join us as we start to do that. We’d love to hear your ideas and invite you to share them with us at info@organizedmoney.org or in the comments below.