Kansas Cooperative Commonwealth Forum

There has been a lot of press lately, especially since Pres. Bush gave his inauguration speech, about the creation of an "ownership society" through Social Security reform. The Democrats have, predictably protested that Social Security reform plans as needless because Social Security is not in crisis.

Well maybe it is. Maybe it isn't. What I know is that if Bush intends to use Social Security contributions to create an "ownership society" he needs to have some folks go back to the drawing board.

I don't want to quibble with the merits of having a portion of Social Security contributions make their way to Wall Street via personal accounts. I think it can be adequately demonstrated that the risk of investing in stocks and bonds and indexes thereof can be controlled. What such investment will not do is lead to an "ownership society." Ownership implies control...and so far the Bush proposal does not include any process by which America's working people express their will directly to corporate boards of public companies listed on stock exchanges.

But even more importantly, the Bush proposal leaves out small and medium-size business ("SMEs"). America's SMEs create the overwhelming number of jobs created in USAmerica, despite a huge disadvantage in gaining access to capital. Under the Bush proposal our Social Security personal accounts will be invested on Wall Street. What do stock markets do? They trade corporate shares on a secondary market. Unless you buy a stock directly out an IPO you're just joining the endless trade of securities on the secondary market. Such activity does not directly create jobs, finance plants or buy new equipment unless someone liquidates some portion of their portolio to invest in an IPO, a primary private equity transaction or their own business. Furthermore America's workers run the very actual risk of being offered yet another way to invest in the downsizing and offshoring of their own jobs, no matter how much of Corporate America is held in trust on their behalf.

Which brings us to Bush's grand and glaring omission. This secondary money isn't headed directly to the mainstreets, farms and factories in your community, and the Bush proposal doesn't suggest a way for our Social Security personal accounts to be invested in a direct manner. SMEs create nearly all the jobs in USAmerica and right here in Kansas, and they could use the capital, and we could use the security that comes with local control of the billions of dollars that Kansans would contribute to Social Security personal accounts. Democratic leadership ought to be falling all over themselves to highlight this most interesting fact. States ought to be falling all over themselves to use Social Security personal accounts to adequately capitalize SMEs in their states.

My name is Alan Avans, and I am your host here at the Kansas CCF. I'm obsessed with political and economic matters. At the core of my obcession is the vision of a Cooperative Commonwealth that I've inherited through several different means.Why do I believe in a Cooperative Commonwealth? Because I believe in liberty! And liberty happens when persons connected by a wide sense of shared purpose, deeply rooted values and respect for the inalienable worth and responsibility of persons proceed to form communities by building upon a foundation of the social capacity for people to self-govern themselves cooperatively. And this capacity for self-governance manifests itself with a "by-the-people, for-the-people, with-the-people" approach to design and development of the ethical environment required to actualize human potential and fulfill the exalted ends for which we are being created. When we self-organize (co-operate) our various endeavors and enterprises without compulsory means then both community and liberty truly exists.The dream of a Cooperative Commonwealth is not new. Chances are that your forbears shared the vision too. I view the building of a Cooperative Commonwealth as being at the core of the American Project. This dream has shown itself with the rise of populism and progressivism in North America, the preaching and praxis of the social gospel and in my own particular religious confession, in migrations to promised lands.I believe this vision should be recaptured. My perspective on the necessity of building the Cooperative Commonwealth is the result of over 15 years of observations made about human civilization in general and as a result of involvement in the political process and in various social and economic development projects. It has grown apparent that the current systems and worldviews underlying the military-corporate-financial complex and the nation-state are fundamentally flawed, untenable and not worthy of being sustained. There is no place on the face of dear Mother Earth that doesn't cry out for an approach to human development that meets the actual economic, social and political aspirations of people of good will the world over. Further use of methodolgies and ideologies based on the outdated, inadequate and often downright dysfunctional materialist worldview can only further us along the road to global disaster. The trillions of dollars worth of time and labor spent in reaction to the world's social, economic and ecological distress will continue to meet with limited success until the underlying systems, worldviews and core assumptions are seriously examined-and dispensed with in favour of a reflexive, open and adaptive system that can evolve and facilitate the development of balanced working and physical environments in all communities, integrated according to a common social vision of social and economic justice, political liberty and the creativity of the human spirit.