We need to build a Statue of Responsibility in the San Francisco Bay to balance our Statue of Liberty in the New York harbor. This will be to symbolize the balance between freedom and responsibility. The country as a whole must re-commit ourselves to a sense of responsibility and acknowledge our debt and our obligations to society. These responsibilities include: national fiscal responsibility; responsibility for doing good in the world, including fighting hunger, poverty, and war; responsibility for the earth, especially global warming; responsibility to obey laws, a code of ethics and a code of etiquette; and so on.
Introducing the Responsibility Party
The Responsibility Party stands for individual responsibility. Each American citizen has a responsibility for the well-being of the country, and the world.
Summary: We must accept the reality of world leadership and act accordingly. History has called the U.S. to be world leaders, especially in the realm of morality. This excludes the U.S. being world leaders in production and consumption of luxury goods and the destruction of the planet. This moral leadership of the U.S. is in our national self interest in that it gives every American a sense of purpose, a sense of dignity, and a sense of meaning.
We are destroying the earth. Does this make sense? Why don’t we just buy axes and begin chopping our houses down? This is the U.S. long-term goal in foreign and domestic policy: to destroy the earth. And we encourage other countries to do the same. We are on a race to the bottom: “Let’s see which country can destroy the earth the most.” Every country wants bigger cars, bigger houses, taller buildings, more consumer goods, more pollution, more global warming, fewer animal species, less natural resources, less fresh water, more draughts, more hurricanes, and less foods. As we drive to our big homes in our luxury air-conditioned cars, we can sit in bumper-to-bumper traffic and gaze at the hot, polluted, over-crowded world around us. And we can be proud of our accomplishment as a nation: we are developed; our economy is growing; we are helping all economies to grow. Is this what we really want?
A weakness of the free-enterprise system is that regardless of how developed the country becomes people are always struggling for basic needs. Many people are only a few paychecks away from being on the street. Thus we could assure that all citizens have access to basic needs at a reasonable cost. This is essential for a civilized society. Thus all luxury goods and services could be taxed at a high rate and all essential goods and services could be free from taxes or even subsidized. We could label as RED all products and services that are harmful to our health, to our quality of lives, to the environment, and to the economy. These would be mostly luxury products. We could label all products as YELLOW that are neither harmful or beneficial. We could label all products as GREEN that are helpful to our health, to the quality of our lives, to the environment, and to the economy. With federal, value added tax, we could tax the hell out of red products (no one would be harmed); have little tax on on yellow products, and no tax (and even subsidies) on greed products. Here are some examples of proposed red products: big houses, big cars, big boats, clothes (which are almost all luxury), meat, milk, sugar, other animal products. Here are some examples of green products: small houses, public housing, small cars (including hybrids) fruits, vegetables, grains.
Instead of railing about the 8% unemployment rate, we can just give jobs to those unemployed, who want to work. We could offer to hire them all for minimum wage plus health benefits. We could pay them for internships, for training, and for public works. We can pay for guaranteed employment partly by the following: turn prisons into factories; give disabled people jobs they can do; continue the welfare-to-work policies; have similar unemployment benefits-to-work policies; increase taxes on the rich and use the money only for guaranteed employment. Everyone can agree that a willing and ready worker should have least have a right to a job making minimum wage.
Summary: In order to maintain our position as a leader in the world; in order to maintain our national security; and in order to continue to pursue policies that will help the world, we must get our economy in order. This can only be done by austerity. The secret to accomplishing a balanced budget and debt repayment is that everyone must sacrifice. To compensate for the sacrifices everyone must make, we can make it a priority to increase the quality of life in the United States. Even with austerity, the quality of life can be increased. Here are some policies that can increase the quality of life for everyone: 1) a code of ethics and etiquette; 2) more enforcement of laws and decrease in crime; 3) socialized medicine; 4) strict immigration control, and so on.
See for more details on policies for an increase of quality of life for the American society
A code of etiquette:
https://yohana1.sg-host.com/2020/09/07/a-national-code-of-etiquette/
As our economy grows, our quality of life is decreasing. Our laws are not considered to be moral imperatives. Moral relativity and multi-culturalism is causing a deterioration of our codes of behavior and our ethics. To increase the quality of life of the country, we could have a national code of ethics and a national code of etiquette. This code would not be enforceable by law and by civil suits. It would simply be an agreed-upon code. We could vote on the various acts that are considered unethical or rude every four years and those getting over 80% approval would be considered the agreed-upon standards.
All citizens could be guaranteed access to basic needs if a job was provided for them. People unable to work could be guaranteed these basic needs. This basic needs include: basic health care, basic housing, basic food, and basic education (for all ages).
Sooner or later, after we get out of our taboo against “socialism” we can arrive at a system like other successful systems in the world: Scandinavian countries, Germany, France, and Canada. Free enterprise doesn’t work in health care. A patient arriving via ambulance in a Hospital emergency room isn’t in a position to shop around for the best deal. And health care professionals seeking maximum profit aren’t necessarily the best health care providers. We should have one system with its goal maximum basic health care for minimum price. Health care about the basic level can be paid with insurance.
There is little question that our schools are failing us. Make it easier to get rid of poor teachers and principles. We can’t have thousands of children suffer for the job security of one person. There is no correlation between money spent and academic performance. We must separate out children who cannot or will not cooperate with the teachers and the rules of the school, especially those students who will not do homework or cause disruption in classes. These students are one the main causes of poor academics in classes.
We have a choice: world government or world destruction. Which do you choose? All of our domestic and foreign policy should have a world government as a long-term goal. That is a world we have conquered these problems: war, poverty, unnecessary disease, hunger, ignorance, and oppression. This will take a long time. But we must begin now.
We can’t afford any more wars. The first war against Iraq cost as much as the Vietnam War. The second war in Iraq and Afghanistan has cost as much as World War II. And the U.S. went more in debt that we did in World War II. The country is broke. Broke, broke, broke. We use a credit card for 40% of what we spend. But we still want to be world leaders. We have a moral duty to be world leaders. The only way we can do this is by a less expensive military. And this means a universal draft.