(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Economic Democracy: What Needs Doing — 2025 Update [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2025-11-12 “A fair distribution of wealth and income and power ought to be an explicit goal of government. The debate ought to be about what’s fair and how to achieve it.” — Fred Harris, 1976 Campaign Handbook Author’s Note Fifteen years ago, in Trenz Pruca’s Journal, I published an essay titled “Economic Democracy: What Needs Doing.” It appeared on August 8, 2011 (source) in the long shadow of the Great Recession. Its central premise came from Fred Harris’s 1976 Campaign Handbook: that fairness—not growth, not efficiency, but fairness—must be an explicit goal of government. I argued then that unless we reclaimed economic democracy—the people’s right to shape the distribution of wealth, income, and power—we would soon find ourselves ruled not by representatives but by creditors. Fifteen years later, that warning has become our weather. The middle class has thinned; billionaires have multiplied like dandelions; and the Supreme Court has shrunk speech into money while expanding money into power. What follows revisits that 2011 essay—its principles, rights, and unfinished agenda—updated for an age in which the lions of finance have traded tooth and claw for algorithms and super PACs. The Parable Revisited: Lions, Gazelles, and the Market Savanna “It is not necessary to change the lion’s nature, but it is absolutely necessary that society assure that that nature does not turn on us and harm us all.” That remains true. But the lion has changed its hunting ground. In 2011 it prowled Wall Street; in 2025 it prowls cyberspace. Its claws are venture funds, its teeth are data. Where once it devoured factories, now it feeds on attention spans, rent-seeking, and debt. And yet the gazelles—working people, small businesses, public institutions—are told to admire the lion’s efficiency. The libertarian catechism has barely aged: freedom = deregulation, government = oppression, fairness = envy. But freedom, as I wrote then, “is not license.” A person cannot kill or maim another simply because he has the freedom to do so—nor should a corporation. The hand of the market is no more invisible than the hand in your pocket. The Survival of the Fittest (Misread and Misused) After Darwin came the merchants. “Survival of the fittest,” they proclaimed, as if it were a moral law rather than a scientific metaphor. Peter Kropotkin countered that it is cooperation, not predation, that defines the most successful species. He was mocked as a dreamer—much as Keynes was mocked by the supply-siders of Reagan’s era, and Harris by the neoliberals who followed him. Yet the 21st century proved Kropotkin right. During the pandemic, societies that valued cooperation—those investing in public health, social safety nets, and community—weathered the storm. Those that treated life as a private commodity paid in lives and debt. Economic democracy does not ask us to change human nature. It asks us to civilize it. The Unfinished American Contract Our Declaration of Independence promises freedom not merely from tyranny but from subjection—to kings, corporations, or creditors. Our Constitution created a mechanism to decide collectively what freedom means. But as I wrote in 2011, “Royalty by any other name is still royalty and will act in its own best interests.” We have today a new nobility: billionaires whose fortunes exceed the budgets of nations and whose whims can bankrupt towns. The merger of political and financial power that began in the Gilded Age is now algorithmically perfected. Which brings us to the unfinished business of our republic—the explicit recognition that democracy must be economic as well as political. I. The Right to Know “If we did have an express goal for sharing in privileges and responsibilities, we would demand that the government stop redistributing wealth, income and power in the wrong direction.” — Fred Harris, 1978 Campaign Handbook In 2011 I called for a Quarterly National Report on wealth and income distribution, published with the same fanfare as GDP or unemployment figures. We measure everything except fairness. Fifteen years later, that report still doesn’t exist. The Federal Reserve reports that the richest 1 percent now hold over 32 percent of all wealth, up from 27 percent in 2011. 1in the long shadow of the Great Recession. Its central premise came from Fred Harris’s 1976 Campaign Handbook: that fairness—not growth, not efficiency, but fairness—must be an explicit goal of government. I argued then that unless we reclaimed economic democracy—the people’s right to shape the distribution of wealth, income, and power—we would soon find ourselves ruled not by representatives but by creditors. Fifteen years later, that warning has become our weather. The middle class has thinned; billionaires have multiplied like dandelions; and the Supreme Court has shrunk speech into money while expanding money into power. What follows revisits that 2011 essay—its principles, rights, and unfinished agenda—updated for an age in which the lions of finance have traded tooth and claw for algorithms and super PACs II. The Right Advisors In 2011 I asked: “Why would we give to the wealthy, solely because they have been successful in making money, the right to tell us how to live?” The Trump Administration answered that question with a cabinet of billionaires and foreclosers—Wilbur Ross with offshore accounts, Betsy DeVos treating education as a speculative investment, and Steve Mnuchin, who made his fortune kicking families out of their homes. 3 These were not advisors; they were auctioneers. Biden’s team restored competent economists and antitrust reformers such as Lina Khan and Jonathan Kanter, but the revolving door still turns, and the doorknob is gold-plated. Solution: Democratize advice itself. Citizen panels drawn by lot should review major economic regulations. Labor and co-op representatives must sit on advisory boards. Regulators should face lifetime bans from joining the industries they once policed. After Cannae, the Romans swore never again to send an unfit general into battle. We should swear never again to send a banker to regulate banking. III. The Right to an Equitable Sharing of Burdens In 2011 I called deficit hysteria “a fraud.” Fifteen years later that fraud still pays dividends. The 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act slashed corporate rates and delivered 83 percent of its benefits to the top 1 percent. 4 By 2020 U.S. billionaires’ combined wealth had risen by $1.8 trillion while food-bank lines doubled. 5 The pandemic did not create inequality—it exposed it. Economic democracy demands that taxes measure contribution, not cunning: • Restore true progressivity with marginal rates above 50 percent for ultra-high incomes. • Impose a wealth tax on assets over $50 million. • End corporate subsidies. • Apply a modest financial-transaction tax. Deficits can be paid down. Democratic trust cannot. Debt is not our greatest deficit. Fairness is. IV. Subsidies to Those Who Should Compete We still shower public money on private giants: fossil-fuel producers posting record profits; agribusiness conglomerates under-paying field labor while collecting federal crop insurance; and defense contractors over-billing the Pentagon then funding the lawmakers who approve their contracts. The 2017 tax law alone handed oil and gas companies an estimated $25 billion windfall. 6 Tariff-related farm bailouts sent nearly 60 percent of payments to the top 10 percent of agribusinesses. 7 Principle: No subsidy without reciprocity. Public investment in private enterprise must earn the public an equity stake and repayment with interest. When a market cannot survive without subsidies, it is a monarchy in disguise. V. The Best Government That Money Can Buy “Money is not speech nor is it a metaphor for speech. Money can buy speech and it can prohibit speech.” — 2011 essay When I wrote those words, the Supreme Court had just detonated Citizens United v. FEC. I called it “as dolorous a blow to democracy as Dred Scott.” I wish I’d been wrong. Since then dark-money spending has quadrupled. 8 One-fifth of the 2024 campaign war chest came from fewer than 400 donors. Reforms: • Ban campaign donations by major federal contractors three years before and after contracts. • Mandate beneficial-owner disclosure for PACs. • Create public election vouchers to amplify small-donor voices. Democracy cannot be bought retail or wholesale. It must be maintained by subscription—paid for equally by all. VI. Two New Rights for a New Era The five rights I proposed in 2011 remain unfinished. But two more have become urgent. 1️⃣ The Right to Digital Transparency The modern economy runs not on oil but on data—and that data belongs to you. Every click, movement, and purchase feeds algorithms that shape what you see, earn, and believe. Yet citizens who supply this fuel have no say in how it is used. Digital democracy requires: • Transparent and auditable algorithms in employment, credit, and public services. • Personal ownership rights over data—including the right to profit from it or withhold it. • Regulation of major platforms as public utilities under democratic oversight. If banks once foreclosed on homes, algorithms now foreclose on choices. 2️⃣ The Right to Ecological Balance No distribution of wealth is fair on a dying planet. Floods, fires, and droughts are the interest payments on our loan from nature. The goal of economic democracy is not merely to share what we have but to preserve what we must: • End fossil-fuel subsidies. • Invest in renewables. • Ensure that communities most harmed by pollution control their own remediation funds. Fairness without sustainability is only a pause before collapse. VIII. Conclusion: Reclaiming the Purpose of Economics Economics was never meant to be a priesthood. It was a branch of moral philosophy—the study of how a society should distribute its gains and burdens. We have allowed that purpose to be replaced by ideology and algebra. As I wrote in 2011, “Economics follows the goal we set for it. Economics does not set the goal.” Our goal must again be fairness. A society that cannot define fairness cannot define freedom. A government that refuses to measure fairness will eventually forget it. And a people who no longer believe in fairness will no longer believe in democracy. Fred Harris was right in 1976. He is still right today. The debate ought to be about what’s fair—and how to achieve it. That is the unfinished business of our time. Footnotes & References Footnotes Federal Reserve, Distribution of Household Wealth in the U.S. (2023): https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/dataviz/dfa/distribute/chart Congressional Budget Office, Trends in the Distribution of Family Wealth 1989–2022, Oct 2024: https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/2024-10/60343-family-wealth.pd U.S. Office of Government Ethics, Cabinet Assets Report (2019). ↩ Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, The 2017 Trump Tax Law Was Skewed to the Rich (Jun 2024): https://www.cbpp.org/research/federal-tax/the-2017-trump-tax-law-was-skewed-to-the-rich-expensive-and-failed-to-deliver Oxfam, Inequality Kills (2022): https://www.oxfam.org/en/research/inequality-kills Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, Corporate Tax Breaks and Fossil Fuel Windfalls (2020). ↩ U.S. Government Accountability Office, Agricultural Subsidies (2021): https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-21-287 Brennan Center for Justice, Dark Money Hit a Record High of $1.9 Billion in 2024 Federal Races (May 2025): [https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/dark-money-hit-record-high-19-billion-2024-federal-races]( Further reading / Additional sources [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/11/12/2353527/-Economic-Democracy-What-Needs-Doing-2025-Update?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/