Current Green Party Platform
IV. ECONOMIC SUSTAINABILITY


See: http://www.gp.org/

A. ECO-NOMICS

We can learn from indigenous people who believe that the earth and its natural systems are to be respected and cared for in accordance with ecological principles. Concepts of ownership should be employed in the context of stewardship, and social and ecological responsibility. We support environmental and social responsibility in all businesses, whether privately or publicly owned.

To create an enduring society, we must devise a system of production and commerce where every act is sustainable and restorative. We believe that all business has a social contract with society and the environment (in effect a "fiduciary responsibility"), and that "socially responsible business" and "shareholder democracy" can be models of prospering, successful business.

1. We call for an economic system that is based on a combination of private businesses, decentralized democratic cooperatives, publicly owned enterprises, and alternative economic structures, all of which put human and ecological needs alongside profits to measure success, and are accountable to the communities in which they function.

2. Greens support a major redesign of commerce. We endorse "true-cost pricing." We support production that eliminates waste. In natural systems, everything is a meal for something else. Everything recycles, there is no "waste". We need to mimic natural systems in the way we manufacture and produce things. "Consumables" need to be designed to be thrown into a compost heap and/or eaten, for example. "Durable goods" would be designed in closed-loop systems, ultimately to be disassembled and reassembled. "Toxics" would be safeguarded and could have "markers" identifying them as belonging, in perpetuity, to their makers.

3. We need to remake commerce to encourage diversity and variety, responding to the enormous complexity of global and local conditions. Big business is not about appropriateness and adaptability, but about power and market control. Greens support small business, responsible "stakeholder capitalism", and broad and diverse forms of economic cooperation. We argue that economic diversity is more responsive than big business to the needs of diverse human populations. Sustaining our quality of life, eco-nomic prosperity, environmental health, and long-term survival demands that we adopt new ways of doing business.

B. CORPORATE ACCOUNTABILITY

Currently, corporations posses rights no human beings do. Namely, they are seldom held liable for the personal or environmental harm they cause. We support reforms that hold the executives of a corporation directly liable for the harm resulting from their decisions.

When we look at the HISTORY OF our states, we learn that citizens intentionally defined CORPORATIONS through charters - the certificates of incorporation. In exchange for the charter, a corporation was obligated to obey all laws, to serve the common good, and to cause no harm. Early state legislators wrote charter laws to limit corporate authority, and to ensure that when a corporation caused harm, they could revoke its charter. In the late 19th century, however, corporations claimed special protections under the Constitution. Large companies used legal power to assert legal authority over what to make and how to make it, to move money, influence elections, bend governments to their will. They insisted that once formed, corporations may operate forever, with the privilege of limited liability and freedom from community or worker interference in business judgments. It is inappropriate for the investment and production decisions that can shape our communities and lives to be made essentially from afar, in boardrooms, closed-door regulatory agencies, and prohibitively expensive courtrooms. It is unacceptable to have the level of influence now being exerted by corporate interests over the public interest. We challenge the propriety and equity of "corporate welfare" in the form of tax breaks, subsidies, payments, grants, bailouts, giveaways, unenforced laws and regulations; and historic, continuing access to our vast public resources, including millions of acres of land, forests, mineral resources, intellectual property rights, and government-created research.

We call for revisiting what one Supreme Court Justice called, when referring to the history of constitutional law, "the history of the impact of the modern corporation upon the American scene." We believe that corporations are neither inevitable nor always appropriate. Judicial and legislative decisions that have made it possible for big business to stay beyond the reach of democracy need to be reexamined.

Legal doctrines must be continually seen in light of the changing needs of society. Huge trans-national corporations are artificial creations, not natural persons uniquely sheltered under Constitutional protections. It is time to look at STATUTES and PRECEDENTS to HOLD CORPORATIONS ACCOUNTABLE, even to the point of revoking charters. One point remains unequivocal - because corporations have become the dominant economic institution of the planet, they must address and squarely face the social and environmental problems that afflict humankind.

C. LIVABLE INCOME

1. We affirm the importance of access to a livable income.

2. Job banks and other innovative training and employment programs, which bring together the private and public sectors, need to become federal, state and local priorities. People who are unable to find decent work in the private sector should have options through publically funded opportunities.

3. Workforce development programs must aim at moving people out of poverty - a "living wage" campaign and "living wage" standard will go a long way toward achieving this goal.

4. We urge that a national debate be held and broad public mandate be sought regarding (fiscal and monetary) economic strategies and policies- as they impact wages. This debate is long overdue. The growing inequities in income and wealth between rich and poor; unprecedented discrepancies in salary and benefits between corporate top executives and line workers; loss of the "American dream" by the young and middle-class - each is a symptom of decisions made by policy-makers far removed from the concerns of ordinary workers trying to keep up.

5. A clear living wage standard should serve as a foundation for trade between nations, and a "floor" of wage protections and worker's rights should be negotiated and set in place in future trade agreements. The US should take the lead on this front - and not allow destructive, corporate predatory practices under the guise of "free" international trade.

D. COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT

Reforms to allow communities to have influence in their ECONOMIC FUTURE should be implemented, including:

1. Locally owned small businesses, which are more accessible to community concerns.

2. Local production and consumption where possible.

3. Consumer co-ops, credit unions, incubators, microloan funds, local "currencies", and other institutions that help communities develop economic projects.

4. Allowing municipalities to approve or disapprove large economic projects case-by-case based on environmental impacts, local ownership, community reinvestment, wage levels, working conditions.

5. Allowing communities to set environmental, human rights, health and safety standards higher than federal or state minimums.

6. We support a national program of INVESTING IN THE COMMONS; to rebuild the infrastructure of communities; to repair and improve transportation lines between cities; and to protect and restore the environment. A federal capital budget should be put in place and applied in a process that assesses federal spending as capital investment.

7. We endorse DIRECT DEMOCRACY through TOWN MEETINGS, which express a community's wishes on economic decision-making directly to local institutions and organizations.

E. SMALL BUSINESS AND JOB CREATION

1. Greens support an economic program that combats concentration and abuse of economic power. We support many different initiatives for forming successful, small enterprises that together can become an engine (and sustainable model) of job creation, prosperity and progress. Small business is where the jobs are. Over the past decade and a half, all new net job growth has come from the small business sector.

2. The Green economic model is about true prosperity - "Green means prosperity". Our goal is to go beyond the dedicated good work being done by many companies (which is often referred to as "SOCIALLY RESPONSIBLE BUSINESS" or "VALUE-DRIVEN BUSINESS") and to present new ways of seeing how business can help create a sustainable world, all the while surviving in a competitive business climate.

3. We believe that conservation should be "profitable" and employment should be creative, meaningful and fairly compensated.

4. ACCESS TO CAPITAL is often an essential need in "growing" a business. There should be a comprehensive set of approaches to making loans available to small business at rates competitive to those offered big business. Financial institutions unfairly favor large corporations and the wealthy when determining how to "work" their loan portfolios. Government needs to reform current lending practices. We support "disclosure laws", "anti-redlining laws" and a general openness on the part of the private sector as to what criteria are used in making lending decisions.

5. As lending institutions have obligations to the health of their local communities, we oppose arbitrary, or discriminatory practices which act to deny small business access to credit and expansion capital. We oppose "disinvestment" practices, in which lending and financial institutions move money deposited in local communities out of those same communities, in effect often damaging the best interests of their customers and community.

6. The present tax system acts to discourage small business, as it encourages waste, discourages conservation, and rewards consumption. Big business has used insider access to dominate the federal tax code. The TAX SYSTEM needs a major OVERHAUL, to get it up and running in a way that favors the legitimate and critical needs of the small business community. RETENTION OF CAPITAL, through retained earnings, efficiencies, and savings, is central to small business remaining competitive. Current tax policies often act to unfairly penalize small business.

7. Government should reduce wherever possible unnecessary restrictions, fees, and "red-tape". In particular, the "Paper Simplification Act" should be seen as a way to benefit small business and it should be improved in response to the needs of small businesses.

8. We support the full deductibility of health insurance premiums paid by the self-employed.

9. Overall we believe that Federal and State government must pay more attention to putting forward policies that work on behalf of small business, and break their cycle of excessive welfare for big business.

10. State and local government should encourage where appropriate businesses that especially benefit the community. ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT INITIATIVES should include citizen and community input. The type and size of businesses provided incentives (tax, loans, bonds, etc.) should be the result of local community participation.

11. Pension funds, the result of workers' investments, should be examined as additional sources of capital for small business. Definitions of "fiscally prudent" need to be broadened within acceptable margins of safety to include investments beyond the current practices (and a credit rating system) almost exclusively benefiting large corporations. Investment managers need to be given discretionary powers to channel these monies, now in the trillions of dollars, into productive small and mid-sized businesses at the local level.

12. Insurance costs need to be brought down by means of active engagement with the insurance industry. Insurance pools, for example, of the kind offered businesses in the association, "Business for Social Responsibility", need to be expanded.

13. "One-stop" offices should be set-up by government to assist individuals who want to change careers, or go into business for the first time.

14. HOME-BASED BUSINESSES AND NEIGHBORHOOD-BASED BUSINESSES need to be assisted by forward-looking planning, not hurt by out-of-date zoning ordinances. "Telecommuting" and "home offices" should be aided, not hindered, by government.

F. TRADE

1. We reject trade agreements negotiated in secret and unduly influenced by corporate attorneys and representatives. In particular, we oppose the GENERAL AGREEMENT ON TARIFFS AND TRADE (GATT) and current NORTH AMERICAN FREE TRADE AGREEMENT (NAFTA). Both are threats to the constitutional power of Congress and local sovereignty, and they effectively limit the participation of citizens in decisions. Instead, they create administrative bureaucracies which will be run by corporate interests and, in many ways, will be unaccountable to public input or even legal challenge.

2. We demand that these agreements be updated to include more specific environmental, worker, health and safety standards in the text itself, not as "side agreements", and full funding of existing environmental/health commitments (for example, the North American Development Bank and Border Environmental Cooperation Commission).

3. We reject any agreement which threatens the authority of states and local communities to establish more stringent health, safety and environmental standards.

. We reject agreements that negotiate downward our basic environmental, human rights, health, safety and labor standards, including the right to bargain collectively, a reasonable minimum wage, and prohibitions against child and forced labor. The historic role of the United States has been to raise living standards, not to be dragged down by the lowest common denominator abroad.

G. RURAL DEVELOPMENT

Economic development in rural areas spans many agencies of government, but eventually comes back to prospering, healthy farms and ranch lands. Recreation, local business, schools and education, health care and energy availability; all are necessary to support diversified, successful rural economies.

1. RURAL DEVELOPMENT POLICY should begin with the local people. FAMILY FARMS are the backbone of a sustainable rural economy. They are more likely than corporate agribusiness to follow ecological practices that enrich the land; to use labor-intensive rather than energy-intensive farming methods; and to support agricultural biodiversity. Because of their smaller scale and production methods, they are more likely to produce food products that are healthier for consumers. Federal, state and local governments should provide financial assistance to small farmers to help them compete against agribusiness.

2. Price-fixing and anti-competitive actions of the corporate agricultural giants, must be confronted aggressively.

3. Programs must be implemented by the federal and state government that add value to the production from family farms to help them remain competitive.

4. Government should encourage BANK POLICIES that spread their loan portfolios beyond corporate agriculture and ranching, and the big, subsidized grazing permit holders, in order to diversify local economies.

5. We support COOPERATIVE VENTURES to broaden markets of local producers.

6. We encourage state-assisted PRODUCT MARKETING EFFORTS and RURAL DEVELOPMENT BANKS.

H. BANKING FOR PEOPLE

1. We support a broad program of reform in the banking and savings and loan industry that acts to ensure that their "COMMONWEALTH" OBLIGATIONS to serve all communities are met. We understand that the present system is skewed to service first and foremost large businesses, trans-national corporations and wealthy individuals. Since lending institutions are chartered by the state to serve the best interests of communities, the privileges that come with being given power at the center of commerce carry special responsibilities.

2. The government should take serious steps to ensure that low- and moderate-income persons and communities, as well as small business, have access to banking services, affordable loans and small-business supporting capital.

3. We support the extension of the "COMMUNITY REINVESTMENT ACT" and its key performance data provisions to provide public and timely information on the extent of housing loans, small business loans, loans to minority-owned enterprises, investments in community development projects and affordable housing.

4. We believe Congress should act to charter COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT BANKS, which would be capitalized with public funds and work to meet the credit needs of local communities.

I. INSURANCE REFORM

1. We endorse wide ranging INSURANCE INDUSTRY REGULATION to reduce the cost of insurance by reducing its special-interest protections; collusion and over-pricing; and excessive industry-wide practices that too often injure the interests of the insured when they're most vulnerable and in need.

2. We call for actions at the federal and state level to rein in "bad faith" insurance actions - including the standard practice of attempting legal avoidance of obligations; and the current widespread practice of price fixing.

3. We support recent federal legislation that acts to make policies "transportable" from job-to-job and seeks to prevent insurance companies rejection of applicants for "prior conditions". This is a move in the right direction but in no way addresses the scope of the problem, whether in health insurance, life insurance, business, liability, auto or crop insurance.

4. We support initiatives in secondary insurance markets that work to expand credit - for economic development in inner cities; affordable housing and home ownership among the poor; "transitional" farming to sustainable agriculture; and for rural development maintaining family farms.

J. PENSION REFORM

1. Working people, who own over $3 trillion in pension monies (deferred wages in effect), should have financial options for where their money is invested apart from the current near-monopoly exerted by a handful of managers, banks, insurance companies, and mutual funds. We do not believe the over-use of pension funds for corporate mergers, acquisitions and leveraged buy-outs is appropriate or productive.

Yet, the current system has allowed vast amounts of American workers' hard-earned money to be squandered on job-ending, plant-moving, corporate downsizing. The irony of investing pension funds in corporate decisions that undercut workers rights, employment, and retirement while hugely rewarding non-productive speculation should no longer be ignored.

2. PENSION FUNDS are gigantic capital pools that can, with government support, be used to meet community needs and benefit workers and their families directly.

3. Corporate-sponsored pension funds (the biggest category of funds) should be jointly controlled by management and workers, not exclusively ruled by management.

4. Federal law must be changed so that pension funds need simply seek a reasonable rate of return, not the prevailing market rate which greatly restricts where investments can be made.

5. A secondary pension market set up by the government, to insure pension investments made in socially beneficial programs, needs to be considered as one method that could greatly expand the impact of this capital market, as has been demonstrated in the case of federally insured/subsidized mortgage lending.

6. "Prudent" pension fund investing can and should be made on behalf of those whose best interests are served by having their money both make money and do good work. Creating jobs and supporting employment programs in public/private partnerships can become a priority as we seek to expand opportunities "where the jobs are" (toward small business not trans-national business). Why not look to targeting the under- and un-employed? We believe there are myriad opportunities for a profound shift to occur in how the capital of America's workers is best put to use.

K. ANTI-TRUST ENFORCEMENT

1. We support strong and effectively enforced ANTI-TRUST REGULATION to counteract the concentration of economic power that carries a severe toll on the economy. The anti-trust division of the Justice Department has had its scope and powers reduced over the past decade. Media mergers concentrating power in the hands of media giants have been ineffectively challenged. An explosion of unregulated mergers and acquisitions, spin-offs and leveraged buy-outs has overwhelmed the federal government's capacity to provide effective oversight. Financial and trading markets have become particularly vulnerable to "insider trading". Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) regulation of these markets has seriously fallen short. Overall, what we see in unchecked market power is corruption, self-serving abuse of the democratic, political process, price gouging, loss of productivity and jobs, reduced competitiveness, and an array of predatory market practices that history has documented in detail about monopolies-at-work.

2. Although the pressure on Congress from the trans- and multi-national corporations is fierce when it involves effective oversight and accountability, we call for the federal government to step up and enforce the existing anti-trust laws and regulations - and as necessary tighten the laws.

3. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) must vigorously oversee mergers where the combined sales of the company's exceed one billion dollars.

4. The Justice Department must redefine its definition of relevant market share in assessing mergers.

5. The Congress must enact its calls for "competitiveness" by stopping illegal monopolistic practices.

6. We oppose the largesse of government in the form of massive corporate entitlements.

L. ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY AND DEFENSE CONVERSION

The conversion of defense-related technologies to a peacetime technology-based economy is a major challenge. We must ask ourselves what we are to make of our nation's defense-related industrial base in the face of the collapse of the Soviet threat to our vital interests and resultant need for a winding down of "national security" spending.

1. CONSOLIDATION of the nuclear weapons complex should move toward alternative civilian technologies and non-proliferation work, not toward a new generation of nuclear weapon design and production.

2. We generally support defense TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER efforts, particularly new INDUSTRIAL APPLICATIONS and developments in the areas of advanced communications, alternative energy, and waste management.

3. Let us go forward with government and civilian space programs; RESEARCH INITIATIVES in transportation, advanced products and manufacturing; industrial applications, appropriate technologies and technology transfer; environmental sampling and monitoring; systems testing; laser communications; high speed computers; genetic mapping (with "Genome" project results in the "public domain").

4. Let us devote a larger percentage of our Nation's research and development budget, both private and public, toward civilian use and away from military use. Let us become more competitive in developing consumer products and addressing our chronic trade imbalance in this fashion - not by increasing exports of military weapons and technologies.

5. Advanced telecommunications technologies (many of which came originally from defense applications) such as fiber optics, broadband infrastructure, the "net" and "web", hold great promise for education, decentralized economies, and local control of decision-making. We believe we must move toward decentralization in these efforts - carefully protecting our individual rights as we go forward. Advanced and high definition TV, digital communications, and wireless communications hold promise and challenge. For example, the public airwaves that will accommodate the new generation of telecommunications technology should not be free giveaways to media giants. An auction and built in requirements that attach to these licenses to act "in the public interest" is needed. Technology provides a tool - we must use these tools appropriately and ethically.

Myriad opportunities for technical excellence and continued economic achievement, apart from strategic, tactical and defense-related weapons systems, are in front of us. We urge Congress, all of government, and a forward-looking private sector to take up this challenge.

M. THE NATIONAL DEBT

Every year the federal government borrows hundreds of billions of dollars. Money that should be going into new business and jobs, research and development, roads and bridges, schools and the technologies of tomorrow, has been lost to servicing the national debt (which is currently over $4 trillion dollars). Increases in the national debt are the most regressive taxes of all, the interest on the national debt passed on to the next generation.

We cannot ignore the consequences of our nation's deficits and the related costs of debt service. Foreign holdings of our debt have increased greatly and money markets have seen a large percentage of available capital flow away from productive investments, primarily due to federal borrowing.

1. We agree that actions to reduce the debt and federal deficits are in order. We do not agree that working people and small business community should disproportionately shoulder the burden, when the incurrence of the federal debt was, to a large degree, the end product of those who were on watch during the Cold War and military-defense industry buildup. We do not agree that it is an obligation of working people to pay for the hundreds of billions lost in the savings and loan bailout; the billions upon billions being lost on loopholes, tax breaks, and trans-national/multi-national corporate tax avoidance; or the hundreds of billions lost due to a failed tax code that has been, in effect, held prisoner to special-interests and has produced historic gross inequities between corporate America and working Americans.

2. During the 1980's our national debt grew from approximately $1 trillion to its current size. As we move into the next century, we must continue to move toward reduction in the national debt.

3. We believe a comprehensive approach that forms a basis to a realistic DEFICIT PLAN would include: tax increases on mega-corporate and wealthy interests; defense reductions to levels approximately $100 billion below the current Administration's planned budget for the year 2000 - a viable mix of major conventional forces and a substantial reduction in nuclear forces could bring the defense budget to between $150-$200 billion); and entitlement reductions to those who can afford reductions most (entitlement spending is over 1/2 the federal budget; one way to reduce costs substantially would be by "means testing", i.e., by scaling back payments to the six million citizens in families with incomes over $50,000 annually.

4. As our nation considers the hard choices needed to continue DEBT and DEFICIT REDUCTION, we add our voice to the debate on the side of those who do not support or consider necessary any deep cuts in domestic and discretionary spending that is our nation's essential "safety net", protecting those most in need. We will continue to oppose spending cuts in the one-fifth of entitlement benefits, including food stamps, family assistance, Medicaid, and supplementary security income, that go to the children, the lowest income, aged, blind and disabled.



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