The Just Society

The purpose of this document is to provide a road map to improve society for each of us.

Much has been written about a just society and some progress has been made; but, much still remains to be done. Progress has been slow because the seeds of success and failure are sown in each person. The basic conflict between good and evil spoken of by religion is about the transition from chaos to intelligent order. The evolution of the universe is about natural selection and survival of the fittest. This is a very stressful process! Intelligence is about order, efficiency, security and reducing stress.

In order for intelligence to win out over individual selfish greed, a learning process is required. As more people see the individual advantage of a Just Society, the more rapidly progress will be made.

The Just Society should provide a level playing field for the game of life. Each individual should be able to achieve at their personal best without restricting their fellow human being's opportunities. The rule of law should replace the law of the jungle.

Table of Contents:

- Observations

Thousands of years after great religious teachers and philosophers laid out principles for a good life, we still have violence, injustice, wars and blatant greed rampant in human society.

- Human Values

People have a sense of right and wrong. Healthy, well educated people strive to do what is right.

- Religion

God is our explanation for the causation of reality. There is a God. The Universe has a purpose. Each person has free will. Each person is responsible for their own decisions. There is Right and Wrong. Life is a learning experience. Any religion which does not respect the rights of non-believers is fundamentally flawed.

- Source and Use of Power

Power is derived from physical force, knowledge and money. Individuals and organizations may use their power for socially good or bad purposes. It is the responsibility of government and each of us to ensure that power is properly used.

- Economic Systems

Capitalism, Communism and Socialism have been tried and found wanting as Just Economic systems. Communism and Socialism lose out to Capitalism for efficiency. Capitalism is an efficient producer of goods and services; but, left unchecked, results in a socially unacceptable distribution of winners and losers.

- The Local Economy

The function of the local economy is to distribute the goods and services desired by local people in an efficient manner proportional to the effort exerted by the population.

- The Global Economy

The Global Economy provides an opportunity to achieve improved human productivity. But social processes must be put in place to ensure benefits are shared fairly. The Capitalist economy reacts too slowly to achieve a fair distribution of benefits.

- Free Trade

Unrestricted free trade will deliver the most efficient production of goods and services for the entire world economy if the local economies provide a fair distribution of the benefits of that efficiency.

- Role of Government

A good government is one whose rulers seek the welfare of the people, whereas a corrupt government is one whose rulers are primarily interested in selfish ends. A good government may therefore degenerate into a corrupt one if the rulers begin to devote themselves to private gain instead of public welfare.

- Politics

The entire U.S. political system is disingenuous! We need to differentiate between a tax and a social insurance program. Everyone benefits from insurance which reduces the risk of future adverse events. Government mandated social insurance should not be spoken of as a tax. Health insurance and social security should be setup and administrated as insurance systems, mandated by law and administered under contract by public owned corporations.

- U.S. Government

Government in the United States operates on a local, state and federal level.

- World Government

The world government needs to establish a uniform set of standards in which the various country governments can carry out the will of citizens of each country.

- Social Problems

In achieving various goals, problems can be identified which need to be solved in order to achieve the goal. If we really understand the problem, the answer will come out of it, because the answer is not separate from the problem.

- Law and Order

Humans have established laws to protect individuals and to protect society.

- Taxes and Insurance

How do we reach consensus on how much government the people need and how to pay for that government? Surely an educated people can make this determination in a rational manner without needless partisanship.

Perhaps we can put government on a more business like footing. Let's relate a tax paid to a service received and let the people determine how much tax makes sense for any given service at the federal, state and local level.

Social insurance programs would be mandated by law and administered under contract by public owned corporations.

- Assumptions

Implicit in everything we do is a set of assumptions. To better understand why we make decisions, we need to state the assumptions in effect at the time the decision is made. Therefore, we need to keep track of the currently active assumptions.

- Principles

Rule of Law. Individual responsibility. No lying, No cheating, No stealing.

- The Process

Using the GPP technique we can begin to get our activities and knowledge organized. We start by asking ourselves three questions:

Q1. What do we want to achieve? These become our Goals.

Q2. How do we achieve our goals? We can achieve our goals by developing Plans.

Q3. Where do we spend our valuable time? We can establish a list of Priorities to help decide how to use our resources.

- Goals

We propose the following goals:

G01. Minimize human conflict.

G02. Respect our fellow man.

G03. Protect our environment.

G04. Increase our knowledge.

G05. Solve our common problems.

- Plans

For each goal we will develop a plan to achieve that goal. We will then add to a general list of plans in order to develop a resource list needed to achieve our goals to help determine the priorities.

A01. Provide for the Rule of Law. To ensure fairness in human dealings, we shall establish a published set of rules for the conduct of our affairs. Society will ensure that the rules are modified as required to ensure fairness and enforced to maximize safety for both the individual and society as a whole.

A02. Ensure that everyone has a meaningful Job. Since there is an abundance of work to perform, there is no need to be inefficient in any job. We should all strive to find ways to eliminate unnecessary work. In the end, this will ensure that everyone achieves maximum benefit from human progress.

- Priorities

The priority list will help to make trade offs when resources are limited.

P01. Maximize individual safety

P02. Provide sufficient human nutrition

P03. Provide sufficient human clothing

P04. Provide sufficient human shelter

P05. Provide proper human health care

P06. Ensure respect for the individual

P07. Ensure individual opportunity

Recommendations

Separate the government's role of establishing and enforcing the Law from the role of running social programs. We need to differentiate between a tax and a social insurance program. Government mandated social insurance should not be spoken of as a tax.
Social insurance programs would be mandated by law and administered under contract by public owned corporations.
1. Social Security is a retirement system
2. Medicare is a health insurance system
3. Universal health care can be funded by requiring all income earners to purchase health insurance at a fixed percentage of their income without regard to their history or need. Good health care should be a benefit of membership in society.
Guarrantee employment for everyone who wants a job:
1. Eliminate all welfare payments over a brief time interval; say five years. The welfare experiment was a total failure.
2. Eliminate the minimum wage. Let the labor market establish the value of work.
3. Make the state an employer of last resort to ensure that anyone who wants a job receives one. These jobs will serve community needs and be paid from the income tax. The wage rate will be one half of the established poverty level. Jobs of last resort will require a minimum of forty hours per week of attendance on the job.
4. Adjust the number of hours in a work week inversely to the number of jobs of last resort provided by the state

Relate each tax to a specific function. Remove all non-specific taxes.

Type of tax	service provided	where collected *
income tax	national defense	federal level
	education	state level
	full employment	state level
property tax	fire and police protection	local level
sales tax	essential government services	state level
	social services	state level
inflation tax	economic stability	federal level
	rainy day funds	state level
sin tax	restoration	state level
	ex. cigerates - health care
service fee	specific government service	local/state level
	drivers license, ID	state level
	water, trash, sewage, etc.	local level
fuel tax	roads, highway system	state/federal level

* this is a collection service only - the funds are then directly transfered to the spending authority

The income tax should be progressive
Subsidize low income earners

The Five Page Summary

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A Just Society is a fair society.

The Document to start the process is at The Common View.

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