Sixty-four Reforms for a Fair Society
by Hank Pellissier
INTRODUCTION
Poverty is a crippling social disease. Poor people get sick easier, die younger, receive less education, are more depressed, stressed, pessimistic, traumatized by crime, politically dis-empowered and socially victimized.
Sharing wealth equitably is needed. A recent Oxfam study claims billionaires control enough money to end extreme poverty seven times over.
Below is a list of reforms to eliminate the shameful injustice of poverty. They serve as a guidebook to global egalitarianism; fair distribution of wealth to alleviate suffering.
Primary inspirations were Kerala (India), Rojava, Henry George, Huey Long, Thomas Piketty.
SHARE THE LAND
Agricultural Land
Limit farmland ownership to 7.5 acres per person, 15 acres for family of 4, 20 acres for large families. Worker collectives can own 5 acres per person. (Kerala, India, established these maximum amounts)
Farmland must be used; if it is unused, give it to those who will use it, but only to people educated or experienced in farming practices.
Establish rural squatter’s rights.
Urban Land
Allow only one residence per person or family. The goal is to provide everyone with affordable home ownership. If people want vacation homes, or a second home, they can swap houses temporarily. If people want to rent, they can rent publicly constructed units.
Municipalities should be designed so one-third of the area is public space.
Build vertical cities and underground cities to provide more horizontal space for public or agricultural use.
Encourage urban vertical farming to increase availability of land.
Support urban squatter's rights to live in unoccupied buildings.
Wild Land
National, state, county parks, forests, seashores, etc., should be owned, directed, and staffed by the closest municipality.
Transport
Eliminate toll roads and bridges.
Free right-of-way land privileges in the transport of water, electricity, sewage systems, telecommunications, travelers, and goods.
Borders
Support easier border crossing, immigration, and elimination of visa costs to encourage free movement of people
Replace nation-states with “vast transnational democracy” that results in “free circulation of people, and de facto abolition of borders.”
SHARE THE MONEY
Taxes
Mandate a sharp rise in progressive income tax.
Tax inherited wealth.
Religious organizations and buildings should not be given tax exemptions.
Allow no one to own more than $38 million (in the USA).
Tax luxury goods 20%.
Tax vices like alcohol, cigarettes, and sugary food & beverages 20%.
Eliminate property taxes on poor households.
Reduce automobile and truck license fees by 60-80%.
Reparations
Give reparations to groups impoverished by atrocious history:
Blacks in USA for slavery and denial of loans.
Congo ravaged by Leopold of Belgium
South Africans under apartheid
Dalits and Adivasis in India.
Africans enslaved and robbed by Europeans.
India stripped of wealth by Britain. One estimate says $45 trillion was stolen.
Income & Universal Basic Income
Surplus funds from taxes provides a “citizen’s dividend” aka, universal basic income (UBI) that is 60% of average adult’s net worth.
Tax revenue provides a “capital endowment” of $231,000 to USA citizens when they turn twenty-five years old.
Maximum salary should be no more than 8X the minimum salary. In the USA: $25/hour - $200/hour, i.e., $50,000 - $400,000 annually.
30-hour work week.
Corporations
Use international cooperation to end off shore tax havens. (10% of global monetary assets are presently hidden). Establish an international corporate tax rate and/or requiring corporation headquarters to be in the nation where their staff is employed.
Eliminate corporate monopolies by heavily fining predatory take-over activity.
Require corporate bosses required to share power with workers, for “true social ownership of capital.”
SHARE THE RESOURCES
Raw Materials
Nationalize Minerals
Nationalize Oil and Gas
Nationalize Forests
Provide food and clothes free to the poor
Technology
Nationalize Utilities
Nationalize steel mills & factories or re-organize as large worker collectives.
Nationalize Banks
Provide free public transportation
Nationalize Health Care
SHARE THE KNOWLEDGE
Free education PreK through college.
$900/month to every college student to help pay expenses while they study.
Free bus transportation & free textbooks to school children.
Three free nutritious meals a day for school children.
Class size limited to 18 in K-3, 22 from Grades 4-8, and 25 in high school.
Free adult literacy classes and free vocational training.
Free internet access — Wifi — available worldwide.
Abolish or limit intellectual property privileges and limit copyright.
SHARE POLITICAL POWER
Abolish monarchies
Political campaigns should be publicly funded - no donations from corporations or individuals.
Constitutions should be improved to promote democracy.
Presidential governments should be scrapped or changed to the parliamentary system - the latter is democratically superior.
Multiple parties should be encouraged, with coalitions of non-majority groups.
Support independence movements of secessionist groups that want self-autonomy.
Promote Tinyism, Urbanism, Localism (micro-states)
Support gender equity in political leadership. (Kerala State, India, alternates gender leadership in the mayor’s office of its six largest cities. Male mayors are followed by female mayors, etc.) (Rojava has co-leadership in its communes - one man and one woman.)
Install Direct Democracy via reforms and technology.
“Bottom up” self-governance is the goal - not “top down” governance. Promote “participatory democracy” instead of “representative democracy.” (Kerala, India has 1,200 self-governing bodies and is praised as the “vanguard of participatory democracy.”)