THE GUARANTEE

A well-reasoned call for remaking economic policy to level the playing field for the dispossessed.

Aspen Institute fellow Foster, co-founder of the Economic Security Project, advocates for the Guarantee Framework, a series of reforms in which the “government of the wealthiest country on earth takes responsibility for ensuring that every American’s basic needs are met.” These basic needs include health care, housing, access to education, and so forth. Against those who would characterize this approach as socialism, Foster counters that American-style capitalism already grants numerous guarantees to the wealthy, such as property and patent rights. In any event, she adds, opposition to it is racist, given that so many of those who would immediately benefit from such guarantees are people of color. At heart is the argument for a guaranteed income, a basic tenet of “an economy that works for everyone.” Elaborating on a crowdsourced agenda called the “Contract for the American Dream,” Foster adds more planks to the platform: taxing the very wealthy at higher rates, forgiving student loans, protecting renters from groundless evictions, building affordable housing, and so on. Along with those ideas, the author considers bills proposed by Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and others that would give workers greater representation in corporate decision-making and, in Sanders’ case, “require large businesses to direct a portion of their stocks into a worker-controlled fund.” Naturally, she notes, the present Congress is generally ill disposed toward such equity, though it can move when it wants to: In 2020, in the throes of the pandemic and its economic shock, Congress passed a bill providing emergency financial assistance to “vulnerable communities.” What remains, Foster suggests in this evenhanded discussion, is to enshrine the rest of the Guarantee Framework to protect just those communities on every front.

A cogent argument for an economy benefiting working people.