I agree with your focus on the larger issues, not just the little details of “tax codes and pie charts”, but I think your proposed Marshall Plan of just “building stuff that elevates people’s quality of life.” is both naive and doomed to failure.
Let’s start with naive (bear with me, I’m not just being negative). Look at Japan’s attempt at implementing this plan, building highways to nowhere etc. Didn’t work to foster economic growth. If all the hospitals and schools get built in my neighborhood, and all the heavy industries, strip mines, and trash dumps get built in yours that’s not really going to help our society find its way forward. Look at all the stuff we’ve already built that “elevates people’s quality of life”: roads, sewers, bridges for example. How many of them are falling into ruin through lack of maintenance?
I think that last thought is pointing to the direction we need to go. I think we need to fundamentally change our way of thinking about our economy. We need to stop focusing on growth and start focusing on sustainability. Building more stuff just for the sake of building? Extracting more of the planet’s finite resources, squandering them on projects that bring real, actual but short term benefits to a limited (or minority) segment of the population? Bad idea! Instead we need to adopt a mindset of working with what we’ve got, sustainably. Maintaining and repairing infrastructure. Extending it so it serves the whole community and not just the select few. Finding ways to work with nature through things like locally based, permaculture agriculture instead of petrochemical fertilizers, mono-culture mega farms, and food transported half way around the world.
You know the sorts of things I mean. Everybody’s got their favorites, so let’s get started. But let’s ditch the attitude that newer is better, that growth (along with greed) is good, that life is about winning or losing.
