N9: Public Investment

From education to healthcare to housing to public safety, we put our Public Gains back into America. That’s how we work to make sure public options are available to protect the promise of the American Dream for all Americans. Let’s call this commitment Public Investment. Our Public Investment is how we provide public options that meet the American standards of equal freedom, equal security, and equal opportunity.

The school system is our public option for learning. The police are our public option for security. The postal service is our public option for shipping. Social Security is our public option for retirement pay. The courts are our public option for justice. We can offer public options for credit, transportation, housing, healthcare, communications—for everything essential to American Life.

Public options are how we fulfill the promise of our social contract to one another. Our commitment to Public Investment is how we: (1) maintain safety nets for all, (2) provide equal access to resources to pursue the American Dream, (3) support fair and healthy competition, and (4) protect all Americans from the abuses of predatory bad actors.

When we don’t commit to public options up to American standards, there’s no true equal freedom, no true equal security, and no true equal opportunity. Many Americans live just one bad event away from getting wiped out. Contributing Americans don’t have tools we need to follow our dreams. Small businesses can’t compete with bigger corporations. And all Americans have to “take it or leave it” from Counts, when for anything essential to life, “leave it” is never a real option.

Armed with extreme money, the Counting Class can choose to purchase whatever freedom, security, and opportunity they please for themselves. Counts have no use for public options. They can afford to take apart the public options Americans put together.

Counts often lecture Americans about how to make Public Investment more efficient. But their real objective is to get us to settle for less than our American standards. For the Counting Class, “efficiency” is really about cutting down Public Investment and limiting public options. Public options reduce potential flows of Free Income for Counts. And the more value Americans see in Public Investment, the more likely we are to rein in extreme money and reclaim our Public Gains.

The real waste and inefficiency happens as Counts divert money out of American Life to pile up Money Counts. When Counts throttle the money we need for Public Investment, Contributing Americans are left with less freedom, less security, and less opportunity.