New Direction for a New Economy
Our collective vision for Vermont’s “New Economy” has been well laid out in the nine phases of the Vermont Job Gap Study. It is a just economy where all Vermonters can meet their basic needs from housing to food, where limited state resources are used to help Vermonters meet those basic needs, where economic development is people focused with emphasis on human infrastructure, where Vermonters invest in Vermonters.
The Peace & Justice Center’s legacy is that of working on issues that create justice in an effort to work for peace. Our new direction in reality isn’t a new direction, but rather a honing and refocusing of our legacy issues for contemporary challenges. As we have seen with the current economic crisis and the “Great Recession”, the challenges facing Vermonters are those of basic needs, created by an inherently unjust economic system. For too long those struggling for economic justice have been tackling the issues in the same way the Peace & Justice Center has historically worked, by siloing the issues.
Our development of the Basic Needs Budget – the livable wage methodology – and its integration into state statute coupled with the minimum wage work of the Vermont Livable Wage Campaign, has allowed for these standards to continue to be used in current policy conversations. The Vermont standard for calculating the cost of a families basic needs remains the gold standard nationally for measuring the real cost of making ends meet. However, as we have talked to Vermonters across the state – from low-wage workers to business owners – we realized we can no longer talk about livable wages with out talking about bringing down the cost drivers for Vermonters and Vermont businesses. We realized ultimately these challenges need to be address comprehensively and holistically from a structural economic level. We must move our analysis beyond the individual to the systemic level. It is by working for economic justice at this level, moving out of silos, that we believe we can ultimately cultivate a society where all Vermonters attain self-sufficiency and reap the benefits of shared prosperity.
In our vision for a “new economy” we will work to take the conversations of basic needs to a higher level. Using the Basic Needs Budget as a frame coupled with our organizational commitment to analyzing economic issues through the lenses of human rights and racial justice will be revisiting the work from two of our Job Gap studies, which never received the organizational commitment at the time of publication to allow them to reach their policy potential.
The Vermont Job Gap Study Phase 6, known as the Leaky Bucket, and Phase 9 – Economic Development in Vermont, both filled comprehensive voids in the economic research on how Vermont’s economy was working for most Vermonters – or wasn’t working as the situation remained. These two phases of the Job Gap while rooted in understanding whether the economy was ultimately producing enough livable wage jobs – or said another way an income sufficient to meet basic needs – they moved beyond to look at the structural problems in the Vermont economy that create the circumstances which don’t allow Vermonters to meet their basic needs. As the introduction to Phase 9 stated:
“A great deal has happened since the Peace & Justice Center released Phase 1 in 1997. Notwithstanding all the good work, however, many working families continue to struggle and the long-term prospects are mixed at best. Based on the available data, current economic development policies are not producing gains for most Vermonters: inflation adjusted median household income is stagnant; health care costs are crippling businesses and families; pensions are at risk; income inequality is increasing; poverty persists at a high level; women’s wages continue to lag behind men’s; many rural areas of the state remain disadvantaged; and these problems are especially acute for a high percentage of Vermont’s people of color. “
As we move forward we will work to actualize and further analyze the many of the recommendations laid out in Phase 6 and Phase 9 including:
- Self-reliance matters: Greater self-reliance will reduce our vulnerability, keep more money in VT, and give us more control over our future.
- Expand the circle: The debate about ED policy should be more open and include workers.
- Not just wages: Reduce the costs of basic needs (health care/housing) to lower the livable wage.
- Nothing is forever: Businesses come and go. Invest primarily in people and hard assets.
- Use the tools we have: State purchasing should reward responsible contractors, favor VT businesses, and prohibit offshore contracts.
- Disclose cost shifts: Report on employers whose workers receive public assistance.
- Go local: Promote locally owned businesses (including employee ownership) because they are less likely to move and keeps profits in VT.
The conversations about localization have been heating up since The Leaky Bucket was first published in 2000, but there is still a need for comprehensive economic analysis and advocacy. By integrating these re-localization conversations, with those of basic needs, and economic development the Peace & Justice Center will takes its place in the growing economic justice movement to create a New Economy and build upon our historical successes. In a country undergoing tectonic shifts in the thinking about our economy, Vermont and the Peace & Justice Center are poised to lead by example.
