By Sarah van Gelder of Yes! Magazine

At a time when millions of Americans are without work, the political debate has taken a bizarre turn. Instead of discussing how to make the public investments necessary to get Americans back to work, the political right has used the deficit “crisis” to push for cuts in workers’ rights and pay, without explaining how the economy can recover if potential consumers are too poor to buy anything. The focus now is on draconian cuts in the social safety net that the unemployed and their families need more than ever and for even less regulation of the finance institutions that brought the economy to its knees.

The left is pressing for more government spending to jump start growth, but that approach has its limits, too. An economy founded on perpetual growth in energy and resource use, consumerism, throwaway products, climate pollution, and depletion of the Earth’s biodiversity is a dead end. And even during the boom years of the 1990s, some were accumulating unheard of wealth while others saw incomes stagnate as living wage jobs disappeared.

What we need is livelihoods, fairness, and ecological sustainability, which together is our best bet for an economy that can support American families.

There are millions of people with talents, skills, and the desire to work. There is a backlog of work that needs doing: people who need food, homes, and education; communities that need bike lanes, rapid transit, renewable and reliable sources of energy, and rebuilt bridges and water systems. There are empty factories and offices, natural resources, and skilled workers ready to pitch in.

But our economy no longer seems up to the task for putting these elements together.

Good Jobs, Locally Grown

Video: How Bellingham, Washington is keeping jobs close to home.

The problem is not that we’re broke. It’s that transnational corporations and the extremely wealthy have captured federal government decision-making, skewing policies to allow the exhaustion of the Earth and the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of billionaires, while undermining job security for everyone else. Government money floods into unstable big banks and financial institutions, while small businesses, homeowners, state and local governments are left to sink or swim on their own.

Creating sustainable jobs will require restructuring our economy to more equitably share the work and wealth of this country, without destroying the foundation of all economies—the natural world.

Sarah van Gelder is co-founder and executive editor of YES! Magazine, a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas with practical actions.

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