Better Quality Of Life For All Workers
In order for us to grow the economy, we must improve the working conditions for Americans here at home and not succumb them to the indentured servitude that we experience today when it comes to benefits. We believe that happy and healthy employees drive the economy and not greedy CEOs! Currently the average American gets two unpaid weeks of vacation per year and would be lucky if they get paid vacation through company benefits. Though we believe that employers should have the constitutional right to decide how they should pay and reward their employees, Americans deserve at least 30 days of vacation per year, better livable wages, and make it law for companies and organizations to have an advisory panel of hard working employees. In Italy, having a business is a humanitarian affair where the labor unions are strong. Italians live more fulfilling lives because of it and enjoy some of the longest life expectancies in the world! America deserves the same and we are more than capable of adopting these policies to improve the quality of life of our citizens while creating a sustainable environment for businesses to thrive.
Universal Basic Income
With the ongoing trend of the global economy becoming greener and the exponential improvements in technology, we need to face the fact that this transition will cause many layoffs in industries that will be heavily effected by this transition. Therefore, we agree that the access to a livable income is very important and the amount should be sufficient so that anyone who is unemployed can afford basic food and shelter. State or local governments should supplement that amount from local revenues where the cost of living is high. Job banks and other innovative training and employment programs which bring together the private and public sectors must become federal, state and local priorities. The US should take the lead on this front and not allow destructive, predatory corporate practices under the guise of “free” international trade.
Small Business And The Self-Employed
Our tax system currently discourages small business as it encourages waste with little environmental incentives and Big Business has used insider access to dominate the federal tax code. We need serious overhaul of our tax system that supports the critical needs of small businesses. Being able to use capital efficiently from our own personal income for example is central to small business competitiveness. Government should reduce unnecessary restrictions, fees, and bureaucracy and encourage business that benefits the community. One-stop offices should be established by government to help people who want to change careers or go into business for the first time. We believe that home- and neighborhood-based businesses should be supported and with the technology that we have today, government should support telecommunicating and home offices as an extra environmental incentive for not driving to work and help contribute to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions on the road.
Economic Conversion Toward Peacetime Technological Innovation
Excessive militarization of the economy during the Cold War drew much of our scientific and engineering talent away from commercial production. This decreased our commercial products’ viability in world markets. Weapons production is capital and material intensive, resulting in a low ratio of jobs created to dollars invested. The world’s general economic experience indicates that a peace economy is stronger than a military-dependent one. Therefore, we support defense technology transfer towards a peacetime technology-based economy, particularly new industrial applications and developments in the areas of advanced communications, alternative energy, non-toxic battery technology and waste management.
We need to:
- Continue with government and civilian space programs; research initiatives in sustainability science, environmental protection, ecological economics and transportation, appropriate technologies and technology transfer; environmental sampling and monitoring; systems testing; laser communications; and high speed computers.
- Devote a larger percentage of our nation’s research and development budget, both private and public, toward civilian use and away from military use.
- Oppose patenting or copyrighting life forms, algorithms, DNA, colors or commonly used words and phrases.
- Call for a federal Technology Assessment Office to examine how technology fits with life on Earth, with our neighborhoods, and with the quality of our daily lives.
- Advanced telecommunications technologies, such as fiber optics, broadband infrastructure, the Internet, and the World Wide Web hold great promise for education, decentralized economies, and local control of decision- making.
- Break up software monopolies and encourage our government to use and invest in open-source technologies.
- Support the protection of software (free or proprietary) by means of the copyright.
- Consider the application of bio- and nanotechnologies and invest in research in these fields due to their great potential, but also believe that we need to make sure they are ethical and won’t lead to negatively effecting our ecosystem.