The Seventeen Solutions: Bold Ideas for Our American Future

by RalphNader (Author)

• New

  Illustrated
  2012

  $17.67

  In 2007, Ralph Nader published The Seventeen Traditions , a small-format, thoughtful survey of seventeen lessons in ethics and values he took away from his small-town Connecticut childhood. Now, five years later - in a much more desperate time - he returns to this bite-size, accessible format to offer seventeen ambitious but common-sense solutions to the nation's seemingly intractable economic and social problems. In The Seventeen Solutions , Nader surveys the stark, concrete contrasts between the kind of society and economy America can and should have, and the way most people now have to live - and live without. In a hard-hitting introduction and seventeen tightly focused chapters, he chastises corporate America (of which the government is now essentially a subset) for the dispossession of the American people. His solutions include: Cracking Down on Corporate Crime; Getting Corporations Off Welfare; Requiring National Charters for Corporations; Fundamental Tax Reform; Reducing the Massive Military Budget; Innovative New Programs to Create Job Growth; Returning Control of the Public Forum to the People; Returning Control of Science and Academia to the People; Overthrowing the Hydrocarbon Empire; Ending the Commercialization of Childhood; Replacing Spectator Sports with Participatory Sports; Fostering Community Control of Health, Housing, Credit, and more; Rebooting Civic Education; Reforming the Criminal and Judicial Systems; Facilitating Large-Scale Recruitment into Civic Reform Groups; Promoting Organized Watchdog Groups Nationwide; Starting The Engine-Recruiting Wealthy; and Progressive Citizens to Make a Difference. In an age when the Occupy movement is raising consciousness about the inherent potential for excess and cruelty within the American economic system - yet still struggling to provide solutions - Ralph Nader's radical yet practical Seventeen Solutions offer fodder for debate, and important ideas designed to save the country before it's too late.