In a Perfect World / The Power of the Vote
By Lolly DePaulo

A Fair Share: Imagine what we could do if everyone voted. In fact, imagine what we could do if only ten percent more people had voted in the last election. Bush wouldn’t have been able to steal the vote with such impunity. And, we wouldn’t be in the mess we are in today. So, let’s hypothesize that in 2004, those 10 to 20 percent of the disenfranchised and disgusted actually wake up and realize they have been throwing away their rights. What if they vote? We could give the power of government back to the people. We could create a nation truly devoted to “liberty and justice for all.” How? First, we could throw the bums out! Fire all of the legislators who pass laws that favor the one percent of the population that controls most of the wealth, let’s elect people who are willing to be public servants, people willing to work for us, the 50 percent not getting our fair share.

A Living Wage: After firing the corporate lackeys, we would tell our public servants what we wanted them to do for us. I’d start by demanding laws that put people back to work. And, we don’t want more of their crappy McDonald’s or Walmart jobs (a full-time worker at Walmart can make only $15,000 a year.) We are going to demand jobs that pay a living wage. Let’s look at some of the figures: Despite a great increase in wealth for the privileged few of this country, unemployment has reached the highest numbers since the depression. And for those who do work, they now work longer and harder (17% more since 1983) while their wages have gone down 3.1 percent in the same time period. Jobs continue to vanish at the rate of 75,000 a month ( August report: U.S. Labor Department says 600,000 jobs lost since January) as companies shift their labor force to poor countries where workers get starvation wages (some factories in China that sell to the big companies such as Walmart hire workers for .08 cents an hour and young people work up to 14 hours a day, seven days a week in these factories). So, let’s vote for politicians who would put the 3.2 million who have been laid off back to work rebuilding this country.

Rebuilding Our Country: We would demand mass transportation. Let’s face it. The quality of our lives would be greatly improved if we preserved the driving of automobiles for weekend outings and traveled to work and school on commuter trains or fast, frequent bus service. And think of the money that would be saved on gas? Plus we would no longer need to invade other countries for their fossil fuels. Simultaneously, millions more could be hired to rebuild the inner cities so that people who don’t like to commute could work close to home. Imagine all the great paying jobs that would be needed to build the new apartment complexes to house those residents of the new beautified cities. Many more people would then find jobs setting up shops, restaurants and other businesses to serve the resident’s needs. Of course, there are plenty of you who don’t want to work at a high paying job if it involves physical labor, or boring repetitive work, OK, how about putting people to work expanding and improving our school system?

Expanding and Improving Our Schools: Politicians know college students don’t vote, (participation of 18-21-year-olds has declined 15% in the past 25 years) so why should they bother improving schools? We need more teachers, and, they need to make more money. It is absurd and unrealistic to expect one person to give meaningful instruction in classes of 38-40 pupils. We could also build more junior colleges that would provide free, high-quality technical and vocational training, as well as serve the needs of those students who want to become doctors, lawyers, scientists, engineers and teachers. Four-year colleges would also be free. Why not? Let’s make education available to anyone who is willing to put in the time and effort necessary to become proficient in their chosen field. What about graduate school, how would we fund that? A good way would be to expand the distribution of student loans. And, best of all, we could vote for politicians who passed laws that forgave all student loans unless the recipient made more than $50,000 a year after graduation. And while we are at it, let’s set up a system of cheap, high quality child-care.

Day Care for Everyone: How about making day care available to working parents and students with children? A child’s brain is formed in the first five years of life. Abilities in art, music, language and in social skills are “hard wired” during these crucial years. Safe, clean, loving and stimulating child-care centers would do more to create healthy and happy families than perhaps any other social program. Let’s look at some figures. It can cost up to $100,000 dollars a year to keep a prisoner in solitary confinement at Pelican Bay (a maximum-security prison in California) or about $25,000 to house an ordinary inmate. That same amount of money could fund thousands of children in day care facilities that could perhaps PREVENT criminal and antisocial behavior. Public schools were once considered utopian and unrealistic when they were proposed in the middle of the nineteenth century. Politicians thought the children of workers were too “simple” to be educated and none of them thought girls or people of color were fit for anything other than menial jobs. All of those doubters have been proven very wrong indeed. One of the great equalizers in our society has been public education. The enormously successful Head Start program could be expanded to include younger children, including the babies of the working classes.

A Clean, Uncontaminated World: We could also put people to work cleaning up the environment. Everyone knows that our mother earth is in great distress and many pessimists think it is only a matter of time now before the earth says enough is enough. But, it still isn’t too late. We can vote for politicians that pass laws friendly to our world. Bush&Co has overseen more legislation that is damaging to the quality of air, water, and land than any president in the history of this country. We could turn this around. We could force companies to stop spewing poisons into our air and water. We could force them to stop feeding our cows hormones and other harmful substances. We could restock the lakes and oceans with fish, we could protect our national and state parks and wilderness areas making them safe from the encroachment of BIG CORPORATIONS!! And with the great increase in the public good that would result from all of this people friendly legislation, we would find our health improving and our lives becoming more meaningful and happier. Of course, people would still get sick but not at the rates we are suffering now. And, when we did get sick there would be universal health insurance to take care of us.

Universal Health Care: Let’s provide every man, woman and child in this country with health insurance. The crazy-quilt measures currently being used are not only wasteful, inadequate and provide lousy care, they are also incredibly expensive. We are currently spending $200 billion dollars a year on health-care, yet 40 million Americans have no coverage and another 60 million have very inadequate coverage. A single-payer system would be a lot cheaper and would provide better care. Look at Europe or Canada or Japan. They all have single payer systems and they all enjoy far greater health benefits from their systems. Of course that means not giving the drug companies and HMO’s the free ride they are currently enjoying. Again, fire the politicians who refuse to get serious about regulating the big drug and chemical companies that currently control our access to treatment and to medications.

In conclusion, a better world is not only attainable, not only workable, but is fundamental to our survival as a species. So, how do we get the cold cash to implement our vision? Easy! Instead of squandering our tax dollars on a bloated military that spends ($400 billion in 2003) almost as much as all other countries combined ($450 billion), we could get out of the business of world dominance. We could use our status as the only superpower to relax and enjoy the benefits of peace. There is so much that could be done with our abundance! The Borgen Project has estimated it would take only $19 billion to end world hunger and malnutrition. It would take $10.5 billion to stabilize world population growth and five billion to stop ozone depletion. Only $33 billion could buy us safe, clean energy alternatives and $17 billion could fund the development of renewable energy such as solar and wind power! Think of it!! We could all live in a world of peace and prosperity, a world of clean air and clean oceans, a world of just laws and just states. We could create a perfect world.