Author: demsoc ghost

Living standards have eroded, and union density is at its thinnest in more than 100 years. Public services are underfunded, and government agencies whose job it is to temper or limit the inequalities of a capitalist society have been hamstrung. This corporate offensive has as its ideological counterpart a “free-market” orthodoxy preached and shared not only by the Republican Party but also by neoliberal Democrats—those “centrists” who favor cuts in social spending, advocate deregulation and privatization, and reject accommodations with the unions.

生活水平下降了，工会密度是100多年来的最低值。公共服务的资金非常不足，而政府机构的工作就是阻止或限制资本主义社会造成的不平等。 这种企业攻势与其思想对手一样，不仅受到共和党的宣传和共享，而且受到新自由主义民主党人鼓吹的“自由市场”正统观点 – 那些赞成削减社会开支，倡导放松管制和私有化，并拒绝接受与工会协商。

The heart of social democratic thinking— the idea that the promise of each human being can develop only in a society embodying the values of liberty, equality, and solidarity and that social problems have uniquely social solutions— has been displaced by a vicious economics that equates an “efficient” economy with a deregulated one.

社会民主思想的核心 – 认为每个人只能在体现自由，平等和团结价值的社会中发展，社会问题具有独特的社会解决方案 – 已被恶性经济所取代，这被等同于一个放松管制的“有效率”的经济。

This economic convention holds that eliminating environmental and occupational health and safety regulations, combined with weakening legal guarantees of workers’ rights to form unions, is a prerequisite for economic growth. It is a conceit that says government provision is inherently inferior to private goods even as our private health insurance system fails the needs of millions. And to ensure that the provision of public goods fails, conservative policy starves the public sector and depletes its treasury by shifting the tax burden from corporations and the rich onto people in middle and low-income communities.

这个经济思想认为，取消环境和职业健康与安全条例，加上削弱对工人组建工会权利的法律保障，是经济增长的先决条件。 这是一种自负的说法，认为政府的供给本身不如私人物品，即使我们的私人医疗保险体系根本无法满足数百万人的需求。 为了确保公共产品的提供失败，保守的政策扼杀了公共部门，并通过将企业和富人的税负转嫁到中低收入社区的人身上来减少公共财富。

This conscious government policy of redistributing income, wealth and power upward, when aligned with corporate victories over unions, explains why ordinary people’s living standards have deteriorated over the past three decades. In addition, the “Washington Consensus’” dogmatic policies of “free trade” (absent any international trade provisions that guarantee human, environmental, and labor rights) and punishing IMF and World Bank “structural adjustment programs” have turned Third World nations into debtors and paupers. These policies have allowed global corporate elites free rein to force a race to the bottom as they search the globe to locate production where labor is cheapest and most vulnerable. Now these Goliath firms are free to locate operations in weak states that cannot or will not enforce human rights, labor standards, or environmental regulations. They exploit labor on a world scale while poisoning the planet.

随着企业对工会的胜利，这种有意识的政府将收入，财富和权力重新分配的政策解释了为什么普通人的生活水平在过去三十年中一直在恶化。 此外，“华盛顿共识”中关于“自由贸易”的教条政策（缺乏任何保障人权，环境和劳工权利的国际贸易条款）和惩罚IMF（国际货币基金组织）和世界银行的“结构调整计划”已经使第三世界国家变成债务人和贫民。这些政策使全球企业精英能够自由地将比烂，因为他们在全球寻找劳动力最便宜且最容易被伤害的生产地。现在这些巨人公司们可以自由地找到不能或不愿执行人权，劳动标准或环境法规的弱势国家并进行行动。他们在世界范围内剥削劳工，同时毒害地球。

The old adage that “a rising tide lifts all boats” has been replaced by a scorched earth model of economic development. This model not only despoils once-high living standards in the advanced industrial democracies; its emphasis on short-term profit and financial speculation also gives rise to recurrent international financial crisis.

古老的格言“涨潮掀起所有船只”已经被经济发展的焦土模式所取代。这种模式不仅摧毁了发达工业民主国家的一度很高的生活水平，其对短期利润和金融投机的强调也会导致经常性的国际金融危机。

Where Are We Now?

我们现在在哪里？

crises that have wiped out much of the middle classes of Latin America and Southeast Asia. And while government expenditures for legitimate national defense needs may be necessary, U.S. military spending is today neither legitimate nor prudent. The United States today spends more on its armed forces than does the rest of the world— combined! And the cost of growing and maintaining an empire is contributing to the demise of social and economic democracy at home.

危机已经消灭了拉丁美洲和东南亚的许多中产阶级。 虽然政府支出可能需要满足合理的国防需求，但今天的美国军费开支既不合理也不谨慎。 今天美国的军费比世界上其他国家军费的总和更多！ 而增长和维护帝国的成本正在助长国内社会和经济民主的消亡。

To achieve a modicum of equality and opportunity, democratic forces in advanced industrial democracies traditionally used their power politically—to create state policies that guaranteed labor rights, raised government revenues through progressive forms of taxation, and used these revenues to fund high-quality universal public goods such as free public education, accessible health care, and child care. To sustain the high levels of productivity necessary to maintain such policies, “welfare states” generously funded research and development and job training relevant to the needs of a dynamic economy.

为了实现平等和机会平等，发达工业民主国家的民主力量传统上在政治上利用其权力 – 制定保障劳工权利的政府政策，通过累进税形式提高政府收入，并利用这些收入资助高质量的全民公共服务，例如免费公共教育，无障碍医疗服务和儿童抚养等产品。为了维持维持这些政策所必需的高生产力，“福利国家”慷慨资助那些与动态经济需求相关的研发和职业培训。

That is not how the U.S. functions today, and we and the world are the poorer for it. Replacing the current free-market orthodoxy means waging an ideological battle, something socialist, liberal, and democratic movements are used to doing. While these movements may have different demands, they would not dispute the need for government intervention to rein in undemocratic corporate power.

美国今天不是这么运作的，而我们和世界相当缺乏这些。取代目前的自由市场正统意味着进行意识形态的斗争，一些社会主义的，自由的和民主的运动被进行。虽然这些运动可能有不同的要求，但他们不会反对政府干预遏制不民主的企业权力的需求。

Today, the left and the social movements operate in a peculiar context in which even those members of the public with the most to gain from government intervention no longer take for granted that federal and state aid is desirable, let alone winnable. The huge number of nonvoters in elections—even allowing for the undemocratic exclusion of a disproportionate number of African-American and Latino prisoners and ex- felons and our arcane voter-registration rules— speaks to this alienation from government. The mentality “If the pols can’t help, why vote?” creates a self-fulfilling nightmare.

今天，左派们和社会运动在特殊的背景下运作，即使是那些从政府干预中获得最多收益的公众，也不再认为联邦和州政府的援助是理想的，更不用说可以赢得胜利。 选举中大量的不投票的人 – 即使不民主地排除不成比例的非裔和拉美裔囚犯，以及我们的神秘的选民注册规则 – 都说明了这种与政府的疏远。 “如果民意测验没有帮助，为什么投票？”的思想创造了一个自我实现的噩梦。

Corporate Power Corrupts the Culture

企业势力腐蚀了文化

In an ironic twist, it was government and government intervention in the economy—and not its absence—that was blamed for the nation’s ills. Right-wing ideologues exalted private services and private charities while debasing government as inefficient provision for the undeserving. This ideological totem of “Reaganomics” still stands today. Now schools, city services, prisons, and even armies operated by private entities are considered by definition better run because they are in private hands. The underfunded postal service—and not the Enron collapse, the savings and loan scandal, or private Blackwater thugs in Iraq—has become the poster child for waste and incompetence.

具有讽刺意味的是，政府和政府对经济的干预—而不是缺席—是造成这个国家弊病的罪魁祸首。 右翼理论家们称赞私人服务和私人慈善机构，同时贬低政府的不适当的低效率拨款。 这种“里根经济学”的思想图腾依然影响着今天。 现在由私有实体运营的学校，城市服务，监狱甚至军队都被定义为运行的更好，因为它们在私人手中。资金不足的邮政服务—而不是安然垮台，储蓄和贷款丑闻，或者伊拉克的私人黑水公司的暴徒—已经成为浪费和无能的招牌。

This devaluing of the public sector has harsh real-world consequences. Witness the pathetic response to Hurricane Katrina and the high profile Bush administration scandals, including the maltreatment of veterans at Walter Reed Hospital. The interest-rate spiking and foreclosures that followed from the unregulated and flagrant predatory lending of subprime rate mortgages—foreclosures that are hitting low- income communities of color particularly hard— are also the direct outcome of the wholesale privatization of inherently governmental functions and the deflection of resources to serve corporate interests rather than socially determined national security needs.

公共部门的这种贬值在现实世界中造成了严酷的后果。我们见证了对卡特里娜飓风的令人失望的反应和布什政府的高调丑闻，包括Walter Reed医院中对退伍军人的虐待。 从次级抵押贷款的无管制和公然掠夺性的借贷—这特别打击了低收入有色社区—出现的利率上涨和止赎也是政府内在功能的大规模私有化和资源投入的偏差造成的直接结果，政府资源服务于公司利益而不是由社会决定的国家安全需求。

These crises have been eye-openers for some, reminders of what government can and should do, because reasserting a strong government role runs against the grain of 30 years of economic thinking dominated by the Right. Worse, alienation from government has become a self-reinforcing dynamic. The incessant attack on means-tested programs for the poor has led many white working- and middle-class people to forget that only progressive taxation, state regulation, and public provision can insure them the opportunity to hold a well-paying union job or afford an adequate retirement and college opportunities for their children (let alone good public schools, roads, public health, and sewage). With regulatory oversight and enforcement crippled, with state and local governments stripped of the capacity to provide seamless provision of emergency and social services, government’s failure to respond effectively to community needs or to major crises has reinforced the business-friendly mantra that government is the source of the problem.

这些危机让一些人大开眼界，提醒政府能做什么以及应该做什么，因为重申一个强有力的政府角色违背了由右派主导了30年的经济思想。更糟糕的是，对政府的疏远已经成为一种自我强化的动力。对穷人进行经济情况调查的项目被不断攻击，导致许多白人工薪阶层和中产阶级的人忘记了只有累进制税收，政府监管和公共供应才能确保他们有机会获得一份薪酬优厚的工会工作或负担得起退休生活，以及为他们的孩子提供足够的上大学的机会（更不用说良好的公立学校，道路，公共卫生和污水处理）。在监管和执法受到制约的情况下，由于州政府和地方政府无缝提供紧急服务和社会服务的能力被束缚了，政府无法有效应对社区需求或重大危机，这又给“政府是问题的源头”这一商业友好型口头禅提供了证明。

Further contributing to the muddle is a generation’s worth of ruthless media consolidation. Conglomerates have a chokehold on the nation’s most important media outlets, including radio, television/cable, and newspapers. Six giant conglomerates control the vast majority of the nation’s (and increasingly the world’s) television, movie and book production and distribution, while the cable companies and the telecoms vie over enclosing and monopolizing the Internet’s open-access structure. Not only is the news held in fewer (and self-interested) hands but the news content is also homogenized. Debate parameters are squeezed to the point where the media begins to take on the characteristics of a consciousness-molding, status-quo-affirming industry.

进一步推波助澜是的持续一个世代的无情的媒体整合。 企业集团对全国最重要的媒体，包括广播，电视/网络和报纸都有控制。六家巨型企业集团控制着全国绝大多数电视，电影和图书的制作和发行，而有线电视公司和电信公司正在封闭和垄断互联网的开放式访问结构。 消息不仅被更少的（和自我感兴趣的）手中持有，而且新闻内容也是同质化的。 讨论参数被压缩到变成媒体开始承担意识塑造的角色，以及成为一种进行现状确认的行业。

Thirty years of corporate marauding leaves the U.S. today politically despised abroad and economically unstable at home. For prosperity to be sustainable in the long run, government policy must promote democratic urban planning, environmentally conscious forms of consumption and production, far greater public oversight of corporate behavior, and global rules that promote sustainability and economic development.

三十年的企业掠夺使美国今天在国外政治上被鄙视，在国内经济不稳定。 为了长期保持繁荣，政府的政策必须促进民主的城市规划，有环保意识的消费和生产形式，对公司行为进行更大程度的公共监督以及促进可持续性和经济发展的全球规则。

Turn Fragmented Protest Groups into a Unified Progressive Movement

将分散的反抗组织转变为联合起来的进步运动

The principles of governmental responsibility in ensuring the public good described above were accepted as truisms in most liberal democratic societies up until the resurgence of right-wing ideology and power in the 1970s. Now, we need to reinvent and fight for the notion that a just society means, at the very least, a fair distribution of power between labor and capital and the universal and equitable provision of basic human needs—hardly unique socialist principles. Yet corporate elites claim we can no longer “afford the luxury” of social equity. Is this really the case? Must even the Democratic Party leadership abandon its historically articulated concern for the interests of working people and the excluded? Can we no longer achieve both economic prosperity and social justice? The peoples of Northern Europe have refused to embrace the Anglo-American style of “race-to-the-bottom” capitalism. We need to join them.

在大多数自由民主社会中，直到1970s右翼意识形态和权力再度兴起之前，政府有着确保上述公共服务的责任的原则被视为真理。 现在，我们需要重塑并争取公正的社会，这意味着至少要公平分配劳工们和资本之间的权力，以及普遍和公平地提供基本的人类需求 – 几乎不是社会主义特有的原则。 然而，企业精英声称，我们无法负担“奢侈”的社会公平。 这是真的吗？甚至民主党领导人还必须放弃对工人们和被排斥者的利益的历史性关注吗？我们能否再次实现经济繁荣和社会正义？ 北欧人民拒绝接受英美式的“竟次”资本主义风格。我们需要加入他们。

The Four Pillars of an Economic Justice Agenda

经济正义议程的四个支柱

Unfortunately, many of the Democratic Party’s leaders fail to defend the four pillars on which any just economic policy agenda must be built:

不幸的是，许多民主党领导人未能捍卫建立任何公正的经济政策议程的所必须的四大支柱：

• Progressive taxation and major cuts in wasteful military spending to provide necessary public revenue;
• 为了提供必要的公共收入，实行多重累进税制和大幅削减浪费的军费开支;
• Universal social insurance programs and high-quality public goods;
• 普遍的社会保险计划和高质量的公共服务;
• Powerful democratic labor and social movements capable of achieving equity in the labor market;
• 强大的民主的劳工和社会运动能够实现劳动力市场的平等;
• Global institutions that advance labor and human rights and provide for a sustainable environment.
• 促进劳工权利和人权并提供可持续发展环境的全球机构。

It should go without saying that to achieve any or all of these goals, we need a Congress formulating legislation and a government operating federal agencies capable of vigorously enforcing progressive regulations.

不言而喻，要实现任何或所有的这些目标，我们需要一个进行这些立法的国会和一个能够大力执行进步法规的由政府运行的联邦机构。

The fall 2006 Democratic congressional victories provide some space for social movements to advance these principles. But unless the Democratic Party national leadership abandons its commitment to balancing the budget while preserving and growing a massive military arsenal (the principles of “Rubinomics” and the “Hamilton Project”), Congress will not enact any serious proposals to create a truly universal national health care system and to fund other pressing human needs. Only if social movement pressure from below shakes Democratic leaders from their loyalty to wealthy contributors, corporate donors, and lobbyists can the political stalemate that maintains rampant inequality be reversed.

2006年秋季民主党在国会的胜利为社会运动提供了一些空间来推动这些原则。但是，除非民主党国家领导层放弃在平衡预算的同时保留和发展大规模军事武器（“Rubinomics”和“汉密尔顿计划”的原则），国会将不会制定任何严肃的建议以创建一个真正的普遍的国家医疗保健系统并为其他迫切的人类需求提供资金。只有当来自下层的社会运动压力动摇民主党领导人对富有的捐赠者，企业捐款人和游说者的忠诚度时，猖獗的不平等的政治僵局才能被扭转。（备注：民主党的主流是右派，共和党是极右，美国没有左派政党。）

Even among left Democratic elected officials, how many remind the public that if corporate taxation and upper-income tax rates were restored to 1978 levels, the federal government would garner over $600 billion a year in additional revenue (or twenty percent of the current federal budget)? Or routinely mention the massive waste in our imperial military budget?

即使在民主选举产生的左派官员中，有多少人提醒公众，如果企业税收和对高收入者的税率恢复到1978年的水平，联邦政府每年将获得超过6000亿美元的额外收入（占当前联邦预算的20％）？ 还是经常提到我们的帝国军事预算中的巨大浪费？

As supporters of America’s unions, we believe that labor’s power in the marketplace must be strengthened by guaranteeing a true right to organize and to bargain collectively. But social justice cannot be achieved solely through the labor market. For all to have a decent living standard, we must also raise the “social wage” provided by public goods and social insurance and broaden its distribution. Sufficient funds to finance such goods will be available only if we restore progressive taxation and if we prune the massive waste in the military budget.

作为美国的独立工会的支持者，我们认为，必须通过保证真正的组织权和集体谈判权来加强劳工们在市场中的力量。 但是，社会正义不能只靠劳动力市场来实现。为了所有人都有一个有尊严的生活，我们还必须提高公共服务和社会保险提供的“社会工资”，并扩大其分配。 只有在我们恢复累进税制的情况下，以及我们在减少了军事预算中的大量浪费时，才有足够的资金来资助这些服务。

The weakness of the American Left has engendered a mostly defensive politics over the past 30 years. The poor have borne the brunt of welfare state cutbacks, as the value of means- tested social welfare programs has declined, and they are made available to fewer recipients. While the value of universal social programs such as Medicare and Social Security have been so far been maintained, this defense of the universal programs of the New Deal and Great Society has occurred on a terrain of a major regressive restructuring of our tax system, a significant increase in military expenditure, and (real or alleged) constraints that globalization places on a high-wage industrial economy.

美国左派的衰弱在过去30年中引发了一种主要的抵触性政治。 由于经过检验的社会福利计划的价值下降了，穷人首当其冲地被福利国家的削减影响，并且受到福利保护的人更少了。尽管医疗保险和社会保障等普遍社会计划的价值迄今一直保持不变，但对新政和大社会的普遍计划的抵触发生在对我们的税收制度进行重大倒退重组的一个重要领域， 军费开支的显著增加以及全球化对高收入工业经济的（实际或所谓的）限制。

Unfortunately, the sum of Left politics in the U.S. continues to be much less than its parts because different constituencies of the Left focus on their own most immediate, particular—and sometimes conflicting— needs. Thus:

不幸的是，美国左派政治的总和仍然远远低于其他左派的部分，因为左派的不同选民集中于他们自己最直接的，特殊的，有时是冲突的需求。 因此：

• Even the best of the unions narrowly focus on organizing the unorganized and changing the unfavorable legislative and labor board climate for organizing. This is a valuable goal in itself, one that is clearly necessary. But it is not sufficient. And it cannot succeed except in the context of a broad, progressive political climate.
• 即使是最好的工会也很少关注如何组织无组织者，改变不利的立法和劳工委员会的气氛。 这本身就是一个有价值的目标，而且很显然是必要的。 但这还不够。只有在广泛的，进步的政治气候背景下，它才能取得成功。
• Social service providers defend social provision, as they should. But they do not always see the relevance of union organizing. And public sector advocates by themselves do not have the political weight to tackle the main cause of public sector vulnerability: systematic reductions in revenue.
• 社会服务提供者应该捍卫社会供应。 但他们并不总是看到这与工会组织的相关性。 而公共部门的倡导者本身并不具备解决公共部门脆弱性的主要原因的政治权重：公共部门的收入被系统的减少。
• Private-sector unions and those engaged in living wage and raising-the-minimum- wage struggles often sound and act as though strengthening the power of labor in the private market by itself can raise working-class and poor people’s living standards. Certainly, improving the power of workers in the labor market is a key part of the social justice project. But without progressive taxation, expansion (and restoration) of high quality universal public provision and social insurance, and massive military spending cuts, our nation will not be able to provide equity for the poor and the working poor. To do so requires reconstructing the strong public sector and bringing the social wage up to at least the level underpinning the more egalitarian societies of Western Europe. And that requires politics—and politics requires allies, especially among those who can be won to resisting the privatization of inherently governmental functions. Not only can the public be persuaded to oppose privatization and increase support for the public sector, but making those connections is also one more way to begin building longer-term strategic alliances around citizen challenges to corporate control of government.
• 私营部门的工会和那些从事提高足以生活的工资和最低工资的斗争通常听起来就好像私人市场上的劳动力本身可以提高工人阶级和穷人的生活水平。当然，增强劳动力市场中劳工的力量是社会正义项目的关键组成部分之一。但是，如果没有累进税收，扩大（和恢复）高质量的普遍公共供应和社会保险，以及大规模削减军费，我们国家将无法为穷人和工作贫困者提供平等。要做到这一点，需要重建强大的公共部门，并将社会工资提高到至少是能支撑比西欧更平等的社会的水平。这需要政治 – 而政治则需要盟友，特别是那些能够在反抗将政府职能私有化时取得胜利的人。公众不仅可以被说服反对私有化并增加对公共部门的支持，还可以通过建立联系以开始围绕公民建立长期战略联盟并对财团对政府的控制进行挑战。

• Fair-trade advocates (and private-sector unions threatened by overseas competition) push for “raise-the-floor” fair trade agreements. But many other sectors of the progressive community do not see how this achievement of global labor solidarity must be central to any domestic—and international—economic justice agenda.
• 公平贸易的倡导者们（以及受到海外竞争威胁的私营部门联盟）推动“提高底线”的公平贸易协定。 但是，进步社区的许多其他部分并不了解全球劳工团结的成果如何必须成为任何国内的—和国际的—经济正义议程的核心。
• Finally, Democratic Party leaders were so traumatized by charges of being “weak on defense,” “tax-and-spend profligates” and of “coddling the undeserving” that they long ago abandoned any critique of irrational and wasteful military spending. Nor do they clearly defend the centrality of social rights to a democratic society out of fear that standing up for public goods will be attacked by the Right. Some neoliberal pundits applauded former President Clinton’s tough-on-crime policies and “welfare reform” for taking the race card away from the Republicans. But they fail to note that race wasn’t the only card Republicans had to play and, more importantly, that race remains central to most political debates. The price of Clinton’s tough-love politics meant the abandonment by the entire political establishment of any responsibility for redressing the plight of our inner cities as well as that of our rural poor. Nor could this allegedly smart politics win back Congress or cinch victory for Al Gore in 2000.
• 最后，民主党领导人对被指责为“防守薄弱”，“增加税收的蜕变者”以及“瞒天过海”非常震惊，因为他们早已放弃对非理性和浪费的军费开支的批评。他们也没有明确地捍卫处于民主社会的中心地位的社会权利，因为担心坚持公共服务会受到右派的攻击。一些新自由主义专家赞扬前总统克林顿的对犯罪强硬政策和“福利改革”，因为这些将种族牌从共和党手中夺走。但他们没有注意到，种族牌并不是共和党唯一的必须打的牌，更重要的是，种族仍然是大多数政治辩论的核心。克林顿的严爱政治的代价意味着整个政治机构放弃了任何改变我们的内城和我们的农村贫困人群的困境的责任。这种据称很聪明的政治也不能赢回国会，或者在2000年时为Al Gore赢得胜利。

The tragic and shameful aftermath of Hurricane Katrina did not fall from the sky; the neglect of its victims results from a conscious gutting of the capacity of government by both Republican and Democratic elites. As they say in New Orleans, it wasn’t the hurricane that caused the flooding; it was the collapse of the city’s inadequate levee systems that caused the devastation.

卡特里娜飓风袭击造成的悲惨和可耻的后果并不是从天而降的; 共和党和民主党精英们对政府能力的有意识的消灭导致受害者被忘记。正如他们在新奥尔良所说的那样，飓风并不是造成洪水的原因; 这座城市的堤防体系的不完善导致了它在这场灾难中崩溃了。

On Creating an Economic Justice Agenda

创造一个经济正义的议程

If we are to reconstruct a majoritarian coalition of the working and middle classes, the poor, communities of color, the excluded, and people of conscience, we must advance and defend an economic program that redresses the structural inequality that corporate power has institutionalized over the past 30 years. The program that follows is not set in stone. It is a work in progress, an agenda for Congress that DSA hopes will begin a broad discussion of how politically to restore progressive taxation; defend and expand high-quality public provision and social insurance; empower working people in the labor market; create universal programs that are genuinely universal and that address racial and ethnic disparities; and create a global economy that raises global living and human rights standards rather than debasing them.

如果我们要重建工人阶级和中产阶级，穷人，有色人种，被排斥者和有良知的人的多数主义的联盟，我们必须推进和捍卫一个经济方案以纠正持续超过30年的由企业力量建立的结构性的不平等。 接下来的计划并不是一成不变的。 这是一项正在进行的工作，DSA希望国会议程能够开始广泛讨论如何在政治上恢复累进税收制度; 捍卫和扩大高质量的公共供应和社会保障; 增强劳动力市场上的劳工的力量; 制定真正普世的方案以解决种族和民族差异; 并创造一个提高全球人类的生活和人权标准而不是降低他们的全球经济。

The First Pillar

第一根支柱

Restore the Fiscal Capacity of Government: Progressive Taxation & Significant Military Spending Cuts

恢复政府的财务职能：累进制税率&显著的削减军费

An economic justice agenda aimed at restoring social equity and equality of opportunity in the United States would, by necessity, restore progressive taxation. The Bush administration’s lowering marginal tax rates on high-income earners (a pattern first established on the state level), cutting the capital gains tax, and eliminating the wealth tax have contributed to an annual loss of more than $200 billion in federal revenues (or nearly 7 percent of the federal budget). This gutting of the treasury will worsen if the Bush tax cuts are made permanent after 2010. Neoliberals and conservatives alike claim we cannot afford to expand public provision; they are wrong. Restoring the marginal income tax rates and corporate taxation that prevailed before the Reagan era would net the treasury at least 20 percent more in annual revenue.

目标为恢复美国社会公平和机会平等的经济正义议程必然会恢复累进税制。布什政府降低了高收入者的边际税率（首先在州一级建立的模式），削减资本利得税，取消财产税，导致每年损失超过2000亿美元的联邦收入（或近7％的联邦预算）。 如果布什减税在2010年之后永久化，那么国库的损失将会恶化。新自由主义者和保守主义者都声称我们无法承担扩大公共供应; 他们错了。恢复里根时代之前普遍存在的边际所得税率和公司税，将使财政部门的年收入增加至少20％。

For those claiming the United States is too poor to afford any new government programs in universal child care, funded parental leave, or job retraining, we would point out that our military budget now incredibly and irrationally exceeds the defense expenditure of all other nations combined. Most advanced industrial economies devote 4 to 7 percent of their budgets and only 2 percent or less of their GDP to defense expenditure. The U.S. spends close to 25 percent of its national budget on “defense,” or more than 7 percent of our GDP. If one takes into account arms exports and indirect military spending, close to 15 percent of American production is military related.

对于那些声称美国太穷而无法承担普及育儿，资助育儿假或工作再培训这些新政府计划的人，我们会指出，我们的军事预算现在令人难以置信地和非理性地超过了所有其他国家的国防开支总和。大多数先进的工业经济体将其预算的4％至7％投入其国内生产总值的国防开支中，只占其国内生产总值的2％或更少。 美国将国防预算中的近25％用于“防御”（备注：实际上当然不是防御，而是侵略，无耻的侵略压迫全世界，毁了第三世界人民的家园），占国内生产总值的7％以上。 如果考虑到武器出口和间接的军费开支，美国生产值的近15％与军事有关。

In short, the restoration of progressive taxation to the levels of even the late 1970s and a leaner, saner defense budget could immediately increase the financial resources available for domestic social programs by well over 25 percent of the current federal budget—approximately $700 billion.

简单来说，将累进税率恢复到甚至只是70年代末的水平，以及一个更精简，更理智的国防预算，就可以立即增加用于国内社会项目的财政资源，增加量超过当前联邦预算的25％ – 约7,000亿美元。

The Second Pillar

第二根支柱
Institute High-Quality Public Goods and Social Insurance

建立高质量的公共服务和社会保险

Establish Single-Payer National Health Insurance

建立单一付款人制的国有医疗保障制度

A single-payer national health insurance system—based on medical need and not on the ability to pay—is in the present political climate the only efficient and just means to provide health care for all. Currently, the U.S. spends close to 17 percent of its GNP on health care (as compared to 12 percent or less in other advanced industrial nations). Yet our health outcomes rank us near the bottom of these nations. Private health insurers spend nearly one out of four of their medical dollars on marketing and administration, while Medicare’s administrative costs are only 3 percent of the program’s total expenditure. With “single payer,” we could maintain private and non-profit provision of health care and consumer choice of primary-care physicians. The government would not take over the administration and provision of health care, but it would eliminate the wasteful and redundant private insurance industry and replace it with one insurer—a system equivalent to “Medicare for all,” and not just for the poor or the currently uninsured. The cost savings in such a program could extend coverage to all citizens; it would also make our labor markets more efficient, as workers would no longer worry that a change in employment might adversely affect their medical coverage. In addition, the huge savings in administrative costs (and elimination of wasteful insurance advertising) could be used to improve the quality of health care.

一个基于医疗需要而不是支付能力的单一付款人的国家医疗保障系统在当前的政治气候下是为所有人提供医疗保障的唯一有效且公正的手段。目前，美国在医疗保障方面的花费占GDP接近17％（相比其他发达工业国家为12％或更低）。然而，我们的医疗服务结果在这些国家中垫底。 私人医疗保险公司将近四分之一的医疗费用用于市场营销和行政管理，而医疗保险的管理费用只占该计划总支出的3％。医疗保险的管理费用仅占该计划总支出的3％。通过“单一付款人”，我们可以维持私人的和非营利性的医疗供应和初级保健医生的消费选择。政府不会接管管理和提供医疗保障，但它将消除浪费和冗余的私人保险业，并用一个保险公司取代它 – 一个等同于“人人享有医疗保障”的制度，而不仅仅针对穷人或目前没有保险的人。这种方案下节省的费用可以将保险范围扩大到所有公民;这也将使我们的劳动力市场更有效率，因为工人们不再担心就业的变化可能会对他们的医疗保险产生不利影响。此外，管理成本的巨大节省（以及消除了造成浪费的保险广告）可用于提高医疗保障的质量。

Defend and Expand Social Security

捍卫和扩展社会保障

Talk of “reforming” Social Security is code for privatizing the most valuable program to survive from the New Deal. The Social Security system insures all citizens not only against poverty in old age but also against disability and the vulnerability dependent children face when they lose an income-earning parent or guardian. This Old Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance system can readily be preserved, even expanded in scope, by raising the cap on income taxed; taxing wealth and not only income; and including state and local employees in the system. Such a program to expand social insurance would also grant citizenship to all those—such as immigrants of all status—who work in the formal economy, so they could both contribute taxes to Social Security (which they often do) and benefit from the social insurance system their taxes support. Such measures might allow the government to raise the real value of public pensions at a time when the percentage of workers covered by adequate private pensions has declined precipitously.

谈论“改革”社会保障是将最有价值的计划私有化以便在新政中生存的密码。社会保障系统确保所有公民不仅能够避免老年贫困，而且能够避免残疾贫困以及易受伤害的儿童在失去有收入的父母或监护人时受到伤害。通过提高所得税征税上限，可以很容易地保留甚至扩展这个老年人，幸存者和残疾保险制度;对资产征税而不仅仅是对收入征税;并包括系统中的州和本地员工。这种扩大社会保险的计划也会给所有那些在正式经济中工作的人（例如所有状态下的移民）提供公民身份，因此他们都可以向社保（他们经常这样做）缴纳税款并从他们的税收支持的社会保险系统中受益。在充足的私人养老金覆盖的工人比例急剧下降时，这些措施可允许政府提高公共养老金的实际价值。

Create a Truly Democratic Public Education System

创造一个完全民主的公共教育系统

To truly leave no child behind, an economic justice agenda would equalize expenditure per pupil in public primary and secondary education and provide extra national funds to schools that serve disproportionately low-income and English-as-a-Second-Language students. By providing funds for universal pre- kindergarten and kindergarten (many small school districts are so poorly funded that they can only serve children ages six and up) and boosting after-school programs, we could insure that all children grow up in an environment that provides nurturing care and educational enrichment. A democratic educational policy would transform public school teaching into a well-paid and valued profession, attracting our brightest college graduates and retaining its best teachers.

为了真正不将任何一个儿童丢下，经济正义议程将使公立小学和中学教育中的每名学生的开支相等，并为不成比例的低收入和英语为第二语言的学生提供额外的国家资金作为服务。通过为普及小学开办的幼儿园和其他幼儿园提供资金（许多小学区的资金很少，他们只能为6岁及以上的儿童服务）和推动课后计划，我们可以确保所有儿童在一个提供抚养照料和丰富教育的环境中成长。一个民主的教育政策会将公立学校教学转变为高薪和有价值的专业，吸引最优秀的大学毕业生并留住最优秀的教师。

Make Higher Education Affordable

将高等教育变得可以负担

Neither federal nor state higher education budgets have kept up with a growing student population and increasingly complex technology. Public universities and colleges, created in response to demands by working people, are increasing tuition to the point where young working-class people can no longer afford to attend even community colleges. Worse, students have been made to finance their education with loans whose high interest profits private lenders, including the newly privatized Fannie Mae. Highly indebted graduates must choose lucrative jobs over socially useful ones when they even have a choice. In contrast, numerous other advanced industrial nations offer higher education that is low-cost or free. It is time for the federal and state governments to increase support to higher education, so that tuition can be radically lowered while shifting financial aid from loans to grants. In any case, loans to students should not be from banks or for-profit organizations. Only when students from all income levels can graduate free of debt will higher education offer social mobility.

无论是联邦还是州的高等教育预算都没有跟上不断增加的学生人数和日益复杂的技术。公立大学和学院是为了满足劳动者们的要求而设立的，它们正在增加学费，使年轻的工人阶级人民再也无法承担，甚至无法承担参加社区学院所需的费用。更糟糕的是，学生们通过高利贷获得私人贷款，包括新近私有化的房利美（Fannie Mae），为他们的教育提供资金。高度负债的毕业生必须在对社会有用的工作中选择有利可图的工作（备注：资本主义下”有利可图的工作“基本等于当资本家们的奴才走狗），当他们甚至有一个选择的时候。相反的是，许多其他先进工业国家提供低成本或免费的高等教育。联邦政府和州政府现在应该增大对高等教育的支持力度，以便从根本上降低学费，同时将财政援助从贷款转向捐赠。无论如何，向学生提供的贷款不应来自银行或盈利性组织。只有当所有收入水平的学生都可以免除欠债时，高等教育才能提供社会流动性。

Provide Quality Child Care for All

为所有人提供有质量的儿童看护

Increased public financing of child care, whether via nonprofit childcare cooperatives or pre-nursery schools, would ensure that the children of working parents receive high-quality care. In France, once a child is out of diapers, he or she is eligible to attend state-funded childcare facilities, often open round-the-clock to meet the needs of shift-working parents. Throughout most of Northern Europe, paid parental leave (both maternity and paternity) ensures that parents can stay at home full time with an infant child without suffering any significant loss of income.

通过非盈利性的儿童看护合作社或托儿所，增加对儿童看护的公共资助将确保在职父母的小孩得到高质量的看护。 在法国，一旦孩子脱离尿布，他或她就有资格参加国家资助的儿童看护设施，通常会全天候开放，以满足轮班工作的父母的需求。 在北欧的大部分地区，带薪育儿假（母亲的产假和父亲的陪产假）确保父母可以全天陪伴婴儿，而不会遭受任何重大的收入损失。

The Third Pillar

第三根支柱

Strengthen the Power of Working People and Their Organizations

增强劳工们和他们的组织的力量

We must immediately restore the right of workers to organize democratic trade unions and to bargain collectively. In light of corporate America’s wide abuse of current labor laws to harass and fire pro-union employees, it is imperative that Congress pass the Employee Free Choice Act. Not only would this act enable workers to form a union after a majority signed union authorization cards but it would also ensure that employers bargain in good faith with their unionized workers. Despite Ronald Reagan’s ringing defense of the rights of workers to organize democratic trade unions in Communist nations, such a right has not truly existed in the U. S. for more than three decades.

我们必须立即恢复工人们组织民主工会和集体谈判的权利。 鉴于美国公司普遍滥用现行劳工法律来骚扰和解雇工会成员，国会必须通过“员工自由选择法案”。 这种行为不仅可以使工人在大多数人签署工会授权卡后组建工会，还可以确保雇主真诚的与他们的加入工会的工人讨价还价。尽管罗纳德里根对工人在共产主义国家组织民主工会的权利进行了强烈的捍卫，但这种权利三十多年来在美国还没有真正存在过。

In order to restore the minimum wage to its historic level of one half of the average wage, it should be raised to $10 an hour and indexed to inflation. In the absence of national health care legislation, workers without adequate health insurance should be guaranteed a “living wage” of $13 an hour (indexed to inflation and the cost of insurance). The federal government must restore health and safety standards to the levels of the 1970s and strictly enforce these regulations, as well as labor rights and anti-discrimination laws.

为了将最低工资恢复到历史平均水平的一半，应将其提高到每小时10美元，并以通货膨胀为指标。在缺乏国家医疗保障立法的情况下，没有足够医疗保险的工人应该得到保证每小时13美元的“足以生活的工资”（以通货膨胀和保险费用为准）。 联邦政府必须将健康和安全标准恢复到1970s时期的水平，并严格执行这些法规，以及劳工权利和反歧视法律。

The severe cutbacks in eligibility for unemployment and disability insurance must be reversed and the eligibility period for unemployment lengthened from its present 26 weeks. Federal and state governments should expand expenditure on job retraining, active labor market policies, and life-long learning and affordable college education.

必须扭转对失业和残疾保险资格的严重削减，失业的资格期限从现在的26周开始延长。联邦和州政府应该扩大就业再培训，积极的劳动力市场政策，终身学习和负担得起的大学教育支出。

•Enact a Just Immigration Policy

颁布一个公正的移民政策

Massive migrations of exploited workers, refugees, displaced farmers, agricultural workers, and asylum seekers result from an unjust global political and economic system that works for the benefit of transnational corporations and at the expense of the world’s peoples. Immigration to the United States does not only result from the “pull” of greater economic opportunity. It is also caused by the “push” of growing economic inequality and exploitation in developing societies. Much of the current wave of migration to the United States from Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean can be traced to NAFTA and other unjust “free trade” agreements that enabled subsidized U.S. agribusiness to flood these societies with cheap produce, destroying the livelihoods of millions of small farmers and other rural workers. The export-oriented, often capital-intensive form of manufacturing imposed on them by the IMF, World Bank, and WTO also limits the number of good jobs in the urban economy of these developing nations.

被剥削的工人，难民，流离失所的农民，农业工人和寻求庇护者们的大规模移民是由不公正的全球政治和经济制度造成的，这种制度有利于跨国公司，成本却由全世界人民承担。移民到美国不仅是由于更大的经济机会的“拉动”。也是因为发展中国家日益增长的经济不平等和剥削。当前从墨西哥，中美洲和加勒比海地区向美国的大部分移民浪潮可以追溯到北美自由贸易协定（NAFTA）和其他不公平的“自由贸易”协议，这些协议使得美国接受农业补贴的企业能够用廉价农产品淹没这些社会，破坏数百万小农和其他农业工人们的生计。国际货币基金组织（IMF），世界银行和世贸组织（WTO）强加给他们的出口导向型和资本密集型制造业也限制了这些发展中国家的城市经济中的良好的工作岗位的数量。

The same story can be told about African migration to the nations of the European Union. We can stem the “push” for mass immigration from the developing world only if these economies are allowed to develop in equitable and internally integrated ways. Such development would require the national and international regulation of corporate power by free trade unions and democratic governments, as well as the democratization of international economic regulatory institutions.

同样的故事可以讲述非洲移民到欧盟国家的原因。只有允许这些经济体以公平和内部一体化的方式发展，我们才能阻止来自发展中国家的大规模移民的“推动力”。这种发展将要求自由独立工会和民主政府对国内的和国际的公司权力进行监管，以及国际经济监管机构的民主化。

But reducing or even eliminating the economic forces driving mass immigration is not enough. In the meantime, we must develop humane policies to respond to the migration of more than 12 million people already living in the United States. The presence of a vast number of highly exploitable workers—workers without legal status in this country—leads to the proliferation of low-wage, unsafe, and insecure jobs for all. Employers can more easily discriminate against young African Americans, particularly unskilled young men without high school diplomas, when there is vulnerable immigrant labor to exploit, and the availability of a reserve army of the barely employed endangers union wages and union contracts in many areas— notably among lower-skilled construction and factory workers. We need an immediate end to the deportations that keep immigrant workers living in fear and prevent them from exercising the few rights they do possess. We need to pass comprehensive immigration reform legislation that grants immediate permanent resident status to undocumented workers currently in the United States and establishes an expeditious and non- punitive road to citizenship for these workers and their families. Such an immigration bill must not include guest worker programs that further exploit these workers and undercut all workers’ rights to organize and to secure humane wages and working conditions.

但是，只是减少甚至消除推动大规模移民的经济力量是不够的。与此同时，我们必须制定人道政策，以应对已经居住在美国的1200多万移民。在这个国家，大量高度可剥削的工人 – 无法律地位的工人 – 的存在导致针对所有人的低工资，不安全和没有保障的工作激增。雇主可以更轻易地歧视年轻的非洲裔美国人，特别是没有高中毕业证书的非技术青年，当有脆弱的移民劳工可以剥削时，以及几乎没有工作的后备军队可以在许多领域危及工会工资和工会合同 – 特别是低技术建筑工人和工厂工人。我们需要立即停止让移民工人生活在恐惧之中的驱逐行为或阻止他们行使他们拥有的少数权利。我们需要通过全面的移民改革立法，立即赋予目前在美国的无证工人永久居民身份，并为这些工人及其家庭建立一条迅速的和非惩罚性的公民身份之路。这种移民法案不得包括进一步剥削这些工人的客工计划，并削弱所有工人的组织和确保人道工资和工作条件的权利。

In addition, we must not devote additional resources to militarizing the nation’s borders. Since the passage of the restrictive 1994 Immigration Reform Act, the federal government has spent more than $30 billion on border enforcement. This has not deterred unauthorized border crossings. Instead, it has lined the pockets of “coyotes,” or smugglers who serve the needs of exploitative employers searching for cheap labor. The practice of human smuggling has already led to the cruel, painful deaths of some 4,000 people in the deserts of the Southwest and in the holds of ships.

此外，我们决不能投入更多资源来使国家边界军事化。 自1994年限制性移民改革法案通过以来，联邦政府已在边境执法方面花费了300多亿美元。 这并没有阻止未经授权的过境。 相反，它已经排列了“郊狼”或走私者的口袋，他们满足了寻求廉价劳动力的剥削性雇主的需求。 人口走私的做法已导致西南沙漠和船只中的大约4,000人的残忍和痛苦的死亡。

•Control Corporations by Expanding Democracy

通过扩大民主控制企业

Rolling back the privatization of inherently governmental functions can start with fighting the move to subcontract vote counting.

回滚对本土政府功能的私有化可以从打击分包计票开始。

We need to organize and protect certain parts of the natural, social, and political commons. Community-based trusts and co- operative ventures need to be bolstered by fiscal, tax, and financial policies that balance or eliminate the deeply embedded advantages collectively known as “corporate welfare.” We also must curb monopoly patents on property related to public health and products developed with research funded at least in part by taxpayers.

我们需要组织和保护自然，社会和政治公地的某些部分。 基于社区的信托和合作企业需要通过财政，税收和金融政策加以支持，这些政策可以平衡或消除被称为“公司福利”的深层次优势。我们还必须遏制与公共健康相关的和至少部分由纳税人资助的研究开发的产品的垄断专利。

Because they create serious public harms, recidivist lawbreaking companies should be forced into receivership and restructured to eliminate the sources of criminal behavior. Similarly industrial sectors involving inherently dangerous technologies that pose a fundamental public health threat or inordinate costs borne by the public should be restructured under federal charters that require them to undergo transitional planning (e.g., force tobacco companies to stop advertising for new customers and direct a portion of their revenues to public hospitals to offset some of the costs of secondhand smoke, as well as to tobacco farmers seeking to convert their operations).

由于他们造成了严重的公共危害，累犯公司应被强制接管并重组，以消除犯罪行为的根源。 同样，涉及固有危险技术的工业部门会造成对基础公共卫生的威胁或导致公众承担过多费用，这些工业部门应根据联邦章程进行重组，这些章程要求他们进行过渡性规划（例如，强制烟草公司停止为新客户做广告并指导将一部分收入用于公立医院，以抵消二手烟造成的部分成本，以及帮助寻求改变其业务的烟草种植农民。

Fuel and power companies that refuse to invest in sunrise technologies that will help society make the transition away from fossil fuels should be threatened with nationalization. Any bailout of strategic sectors (e.g. the auto industry) should come with significant requirements to redirect their operations toward solving such national policy challenges as mass transit.

拒绝投资太阳能技术以帮助社会摆脱化石燃料的能源和电力公司们应该受到国有化的威胁。 任何对战略部门（例如汽车行业）的救助都应该有明确的要求，就是将其业务重新定位，以解决像大规模公共交通这样的国家政策挑战。

•Challenge the Power of Corporate- Dominated Media

挑战公司对媒体的控制的权力

Challenging corporate control of the media is essential to restoring democratic discourse and resisting corporate power. Although the American people collectively own the airwaves, with an estimated access value of $750 billion, the public receives virtually nothing in return for spectrum licenses the FCC grants for free to corporate broadcasters. Regulatory palliatives—including the public interest doctrine—have been eviscerated, as public television and radio are co-opted and community voices are marginalized. We need trust busting to break up media monopolies where one corporation can simultaneously control radio, television, newspaper, and cable service in a single media market. Federal dollars in the form of grants or small business loans can go to nonprofits looking to start local newspapers, cable stations, low-watt radio stations, and even satellite radio connections. The federal government should fulfill its commitment to expanding and modernizing the Internet the way it did in funding the U.S. highway system and rural electrification by ensuring that any future rollouts of high speed connectivity be available in every community, regardless of income or population concentration.

挑战公司对媒体的控制对恢复民主话语和反抗公司权力至关重要。尽管美国人民共同拥有的电波的估计价值为7,500亿美元，但公众几乎没有收到过频谱许可证，而这是FCC免费向企业广播公司提供的。随着公共电视和广播被私有化，社区声音被边缘化，而包括公共利益原则在内的监管缓和措施已被彻底清除。我们需要信任破产来打破媒体垄断：一家公司可以在一个媒体市场内同时控制广播，电视，报纸和有线电视服务。赠款或小企业贷款形式的联邦资金可用于那些希望开办当地报纸，有线电视台，低瓦无线电台，甚至卫星无线电连接的非盈利组织。联邦政府应该履行其承诺，就像为美国高速公路系统和农村电气化提供资金一样扩大和现代化互联网，确保未来在所有社区高速连接都可用，而不管收入或人口集中情况如何。

•Institute Democratic Public Regulation of Finance Markets

建立对金融市场的民主公开监管机制

Thirty years of neoliberal Democratic and “free-market” Republican administrations have destroyed the publicly accountable federal regulation of capital and financial markets that the social movements of the Great Depression imposed upon a resistant capitalist elite.

三十年来，新自由主义的民主党和“自由市场”共和党政府摧毁了大萧条时期的社会运动对资本主义精英的抵制所促成的对公众负责的联邦政府对资本和金融市场的监管机制。

The disasters of 30 years of “free-market” mania—duplicitous accounting practices, corporate stripping of pension fund assets, predatory lending, and “mega-bank” marketing of nontransparent, speculative financial instruments—has brought the productive economy to its knees.

30年来的“自由市场”疯狂 – 双重计量实践，公司剥离养老基金资产，掠夺性贷款和“大银行”营销不透明的投机性金融工具 – 这些使生产性经济陷入了瘫痪。

To rein in global capital’s scavenging for short-term speculative gain, democratic, public control of the financial system must be reasserted, rebuilt, and improved. Such democratic regulation would include:

为了控制全球资本对短期投机收益的追逐，必须重新确立，重建和改善对金融体系的民主的和公开的控制。这种民主监管包括：

1. Restoring the 1938 Glass-Steagall Act’s separation of finance banks from commercial banks;恢复1938年Glass-Steagall法案对金融银行与商业银行的分离;
2. Instituting vigorous federal and state regulation of financial “rating agencies,” so highly risky, speculative financial instruments are no longer certified as “investment grade” and “credit worthy”;对金融“评级机构”实施严格的联邦政府和州政府监管，所以高风险，投机性的金融工具不再被认定为“投资等级”和“值得信任”;
3. Re-creating a federally regulated savings and loan industry whose sole purpose is to provide affordable mortgages to middle- and working-class home buyers;重建联邦监管的储蓄和贷款业，其唯一目的是为中产阶级和工人阶级的购房者提供负担得起的抵押贷款;
4. Strengthening federal and state support for worker- and consumer-owned credit unions that provide affordable credit to working- and middle-class consumers.加强联邦和州对工人和消费者拥有的信贷合作社的支持，为工人阶级和中产阶级消费者提供负担得起的信用贷款。

•Reframe Political Democracy as a Public Good

将政治民主重塑为公共利益

The present system of financing political campaigns with private contributions is fundamentally anti-democratic. It is, in effect, a system of one-dollar/one-vote instead of one- person/one-vote. Even with the netroots sparking wider interest in campaign funding, the bulk of contributions still come from less than 1 percent of the population.

目前通过私人捐助资助政治运动的制度从根本上来说是反民主的。实际上，这是一个一美元/一票而不是一人/一票的制度。即使互联网众筹引发了更广泛的竞选资金来源，大部分捐款仍然来自不到1％的人口。

This results in a system of legalized bribery where big contributors buy privileged access to public officials and where politicians favorable to wealth and privilege benefit, tilting the legislative playing field toward concentrated wealth on every issue.

这导致了一个合法化的贿赂制度，其中大型捐助者购买特权进入公共部门，政客们从财富和特权中受益，使立法领域在每个问题上都倾向于集中财富。

Public financing of campaigns has been adopted by several states under the slogan “Clean Money, Clean Elections” and should be enacted nationally, as proposed by Minnesota’s late Senator Paul Wellstone and others.

一些州在“干净的金钱，干净的选举”的口号下采用了公共筹资活动，并应根据明尼苏达州已故参议员Paul Wellstone及其他人的提议，在全国范围内进行这一活动。

The Fourth Pillar

第四根支柱
Develop Global Institutions that Advance Labor and Human Rights and Provide for a Sustainable Environment

发展全球部门以增强劳工权利和人权以及提供一个可持续的环境

The struggle for social justice at home is inextricably tied to the struggle for social justice abroad. Thus, an economic justice agenda would press the U.S. to support the creation of international trade and investment agreements that provided for sanctions against violators of basic human and labor rights. It would also press for the creation of international courts to address crimes committed by multinational corporations. While the world may indeed be flattening and greater economic and cultural global integration may be inevitable, it can only benefit the vast majority of the world’s people if democratic social movements, political parties, and trade unions regulate such processes. And unless the U.S. takes the lead in curtailing greenhouse emissions and substituting renewable energy for fossil fuels, there can be no future for the movement for social justice—or even for human existence.

国内争取社会正义的斗争与国外争取社会正义的斗争是密不可分的。因此，经济正义议程将迫使美国支持制定国际贸易和投资协议以制裁那些侵犯基本人权和劳工权利的人。它还要求设立国际法庭来处理跨国公司犯下的罪行。尽管世界可能确实在变平，而更大的经济和文化的全球一体化可能是不可避免的，但如果民主的社会运动，政党和独立工会对这些进程进行监管，世界上的绝大多数人只会从中受益。除非美国率先削减温室气体排放量并用可再生能源替代化石燃料，否则社会正义运动—甚至人类生存都不会有未来。

The neo-liberal policies of the current IMF and WTO guarantee the ability of capital to invest in countries whose governments suppress basic labor and human rights. Absent democratic control of international institutions, the power of capital to pursue its parochial, short-term interests will remain unchecked. The U.S. must renegotiate “free trade” agreements such as NAFTA so that developing nations regain the ability to regulate the behavior of foreign investors and to control their economic destiny.

当前国际货币基金组织（IMF）和世贸组织（WTO）的新自由主义政策保证了资本投资的能力体现在那些政府压制基本劳工权利和人权的国家。如果没有对国际机构的民主控制，资本追求其狭隘的短期利益的权力将不受制约。 美国必须重新谈判“自由贸易协定”，例如北美自由贸易协定（NAFTA），以便发展中国家重新获得监管外国投资者的行为和控制其经济命运的能力。

Restructuring the global economic system to enable developing countries to build more integrated and equitable economies would curtail the “push” factor behind global migration. Greater labor rights in the advanced industrial world would curtail the unquenchable thirst of corporate agriculture and food processing industries in the United States—as a raise in wages and benefits would compel these industries to increase labor productivity.

重塑全球经济体系，使发展中国家能够建设更加一体化和公平的经济体，这将会减少全球移民背后的“推动”因素。在先进的工业世界中，更大的劳工权利将削减美国企业在农业和食品加工业中的不可抑制的欲望 – 因为提高工资和待遇将迫使这些行业提高劳动生产率。

•Treat The Global Environment as the Ultimate Public Good

将全球环境当作终极公共利益

A healthy environment, the ultimate public good, is gravely threatened by a system that rewards insatiable corporate greed. The threat to the planet due to carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of fossil fuels will be a major challenge facing humanity in the 21st century.

一个健康的环境，终极公共利益，正在受到一个鼓励永不满足的企业的贪婪的制度的严重威胁。 由化石燃料燃烧产生的二氧化碳排放对地球构成的威胁将是21世纪人类面临的主要挑战。

We believe that it is possible to sustain economic development in the developing world while protecting natural resources and controlling the burning of fossil fuels. While it is true that development increases per-capita energy use, massive evidence shows that birth rates decline as societies develop industrially. Therefore, it would be self-defeating to attempt to protect the world’s environment by keeping in place the enormous gap in the standard of living between the global north and the global south.

我们认为，在保护自然资源和控制化石燃料燃烧的同时，有可能维持发展中国家的经济发展。 虽然发展确实增加了人均能源消耗，但大量证据表明，随着社会的工业化发展，出生率会下降（备注：这是因为在农业社会中，儿童是经济资产，很小就能干农活；而在工业社会中，儿童不是资产，而是负担，父母需要承担儿童的抚养教育成本，而在成年之后后代才能参加工作。）。因此，通过保持全球北方和全球南方之间生活水平的巨大差距来试图保护世界环境将是一种自我失败。

The United States is both the world’s largest producer of CO2 emissions and—at least among developed nations—the most inefficient consumer of energy. Therefore, the responsibility for dealing with this crisis falls on U.S citizens more than any others. Improvements in public transportation and regional planning can not only dramatically reduce energy waste, commuting time, and stress but also begin to reverse the race and class segregation characteristic of suburban sprawl. As a start, we need massive programs for research and development of renewable energy resources, public transportation, and retrofitting of buildings for energy conservation now. The kind of changes that would reduce U.S. per capita energy consumption, even to European levels, will require a level of domestic mobilization not seen since World War II. The high-wage jobs that would be thus created would not be exportable and would renew the possibility of a confident, upwardly mobile industrial working class.

美国既是世界上最大的二氧化碳排放国，也是—至少在发达国家中—最低效的能源消费国。因此，应对这场危机的责任落在美国公民身上比其他任何人都要多。公共交通和区域规划的改进不仅可以大大减少能源浪费，通勤时间和压力，还可以开始扭转在郊区蔓延的种族和阶级隔离特征。首先，我们需要大规模的研究和开发可再生能源，公共交通以及现在用于节能的建筑改造项目。 这种将美国人均能源消耗降低甚至达到欧洲水平的变化将需要一定程度的国内动员，这是自第二次世界大战以来从未见过的。 由此产生的高薪工作将无法出口，并将重新可能出现一个自信的，向上流动的工业工人阶级。

A transformed U.S would provide a quality of life equal or superior to what we have now. The challenge of climate change is an economic, scientific, and labor issue much more than a traditional environmental issue. Therefore, we advocate that the labor movement take the lead in pushing Congress to enact a massive program of public investment in energy efficiency and renewable energy, as proposed by the Apollo Alliance, which sees clean energy and more jobs as reinforcing each other. Fresh water and biodiversity are also renewable but finite resources being exploited unsustainably. The privatization of water, another essential public good, is a critical issue in much of the world and needs to be resisted and reversed.

经过改造的美国将提供与我们现在相同或更优越的生活质量。气候变化的挑战是一个经济，科学和劳工问题，远不止传统的环境问题。因此，我们倡议劳工运动率先推动国会制定大规模的关于节能和可再生能源的公共投资计划，正如阿波罗联盟提出的那样，该计划将清洁能源和更多就业机会视为相互促进。淡水和生物多样性也是可再生的，但有限的资源被不可持续地利用。水的私有化是另一项重要的公共利益，在世界大部分地区都是一个关键问题，需要被抵制和扭转。

In short, we need a global Marshall Plan for sustainable development to reverse the race to the bottom in wages, taxation, health, and environmental regulation. It can be funded by a global punitive “Tobin tax” on speculative transfers of funds and currency in and out of the financial and stock markets of developing nations.

简而言之，我们需要一个全球性可持续发展的马歇尔计划，以扭转在工资，税收，健康和环境监管方面的比烂。它可以通过对发展中国家的金融和股票市场征收对全球投机性的资金和货币转移的惩罚性的“Tobin税”来获得资助。

Bringing it all Together

将这一切放到一起
Reverse Inequality through Social Solidarity

通过社会团结逆转不平等

Absent a democratic state providing for basic human needs and a democratic framework allowing people to make those needs known, capitalism engenders inhuman levels of social inequality. For all citizens to flourish, they must have equal access to high quality, equitably financed education, health care, childcare, and housing. In addition, only through publicly provided social insurance can we protect ourselves against the vicissitudes of the market and the course of life, such as unemployment, illness, disability, and old age.

如果没有一个民主国家提供基本的人类需求和一个民主框架以允许人们知道这些需求，那么资本主义会产生不人道的社会不平等。 要使所有公民健康发展，他们必须平等地获得高质量的和公平资助的教育，医疗保障，儿童照顾和住房。另外，只有通过公共提供的社会保障，才能保护自己免受市场变迁和生活变化的影响，如失业，疾病，残疾和衰老。

The economic justice agenda sketched above is not a comprehensive program for social and economic justice. We will need additional measures and careful democratic oversight of state provision to ensure that these programs lead to a truly just society. Expanding access to health care services will be as important as expanding health coverage if the United States is to eliminate the racial disparities in the population’s health. Nor will increased public spending to create a high quality education system for all eliminate the need for affirmative action programs that take into account race, class, and gender inequalities, as well as the isolation of the inner city poor.

上面所概述的经济正义议程并不是一个全面的社会和经济正义计划。 我们需要采取额外的措施和对国家供应进行认真的民主的监督，以确保这些项目带来一个真正公正的社会。如果美国要消除人口健康方面的种族差异，扩大医疗保障服务的获取将与扩大医疗保险的覆盖面同等重要。增加公共开支以创建高质量的全民教育系统也不会消除对考虑到种族，阶级和性别不平等的平权行动计划的需求，也不需要孤立内城穷人。

By uniting behind a program that restores faith in democratic government, re-institutes progressive taxation, defends and extends public goods and social insurance, restores and expands labor rights, and builds just global institutions, democratic forces can curb the power of corporate elites and reverse corporate globalization’s exacerbation of inequality. The corporate domination of U.S. politics and society has undermined ordinary people’s living standards most egregiously over the last thirty years, most perniciously for those already beaten down. Only by democratizing the distribution of power in the United States can we restore the promise of the American Dream to those who have seen it taken away while extending that promise to those previously excluded from full membership in our society.

通过一个恢复对民主政府的信任的计划团结起来，重新实施累进税制，维护和扩大公共服务和社会保障，恢复和扩大劳工权利，建立公正的全球机构，民主力量可以遏制企业精英的力量并扭转企业全球化加剧的不平等局面。在过去的三十年中，美国政治和社会的企业主宰严重地破坏了普通人的生活水平，对于那些已经被打倒的人来说，这是最危险的。 只有将美国的权力分配进行民主化，我们才能将美国梦的承诺恢复到那些看到它被剥夺的人，同时将这一承诺延伸到那些以前被排除在我们社会之外的成员身上。