We must carry forward the promise that all are equal, all are free, all deserve an equal chance to pursue their full measure of happiness. In the absence of such a commitment, our democratic system of government quite simply is not sustainable. A sustainable democracy must ensure that the basic needs of the present are met, fairly and equitably, without compromising opportunities for the future. A sustainable democracy must ensure equity and justice for current generations without compromising equity and justice for generations of the future.

Questions of sustainability may sound esoteric and theoretical to most people until they begin to awaken to the ecological, social, and economic challenges that are confronting us today. The environmental movement of the 1960s reflected an awakening to the fact that industrialization was dumping more waste into the natural environment – into the air, water, and soil – than nature could possibly absorb. A political awakening eventually brought government action, resulting in the Environmental Protection Agency, Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act, and other environmental regulations.

The civil rights movement of the 1960s was a similar awakening to the social costs of discrimination, not just against African Americans, but against all who lacked the ability to protect themselves from political and economic exploitation. The Voting Rights Act, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and other government actions followed.

The 1970s also brought the first fossil energy crisis, courtesy of OPEC (the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries), and with it the realization of our growing dependence on foreign oil. The Department of Energy was one of the political consequences. During the 1980s, however, the nation retreated into denial. Protecting environmental and civil rights inevitably requires restraints on economic extraction and exploitation, and thus has economic costs. After oil prices eventually dropped, energy independence moved to the back burner of public policy.

The mounting ecological and societal problems actually didn’t go away; we just chose to ignore them. Since the early 1980s, much of the environmental and social legislation of the 1960s and 1970s has been systematically dismantled, watered down, or simply not enforced. Three decades of denial, retreat, and neglect have brought us to the ecological, social, and economic challenges of today.

The industrial era of the past 200-plus years has been fueled by cheap energy, first by wood from abundant forests and then by fossil energy from easily accessible sources. But the days of old-growth forests, surface veins of coal, and shallow oil wells are gone. Most of the remaining reserves of oil and natural gas are buried far below the earth’s surface or deep beneath ocean floors. The remaining reserves of coal likewise are more costly to mine and to burn without degrading the natural environment. There are no more sources of abundant and cheap fossil energy. Industrialization, which has dominated modern society for the past two centuries, is coming to an end. We simply cannot continue doing what we have been doing. Our current way of life is simply not sustainable.

Sustainability is a matter of social equity and justice, as well as physical energy. It is relatively easy for a few people within any given society to meet their own needs by exploiting the rest of the people. However, as human history has proven, oppressed people eventually revolt against their oppressors. Such societies inevitably degenerate into chaos or revolution. Karl Marx was right; unbridled capitalism, unrestrained by a commitment to social equity and justice, is not sustainable. Complete economic equality – meaning that all share equally – is not necessary for sustainability. Some may have more, and others may have less, but the most basic needs must be met for all, if they are met for any. Most important, the people in a sustainable society must be willing to carry forward the promise of equity and justice for all – no matter how meager or abundant their material means of living may be.

With the realization that the bounties of nature are finite comes an understanding that social equity and justice must extend across as well as within generations. Those of future generations cannot compete in today’s markets to ensure that adequate resources will be available in the future to meet their basic needs as well. They cannot vote in our elections or lobby elected representatives to ensure that economic shortsightedness does not deprive them of a healthy and productive natural environment. Those of the future are dependent on us, just as many of our opportunities were created by those before us. Surely if we have a social responsibility to ensure equity and justice for those of today, we also have an ethical responsibility to ensure equity and justice for those of the future. Furthermore, a society that fails to fulfill its responsibilities to the future is not sustainable.

Sustainability is not some new or radical idea; it’s as old as humanity. The Golden Rule – we should treat others as we would have them treat us – is as old as written history. It is a commonsense necessity for positive human relationships. It is an important aspect of virtually all respected philosophies and enduring religions of the world. Sustainability simply applies the Golden Rule across as well as within generations. We must do for those of future generations as we would have them do for us, if we were of their generation and they were of ours. In the words of President Obama, we must carry forward “that precious gift, that noble ideal,” the God-given promise that all are equally deserving of the right to pursue their full measure of happiness – including those of the future.

The pursuit of happiness. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness: these are unalienable rights of all people, according to the American Declaration of Independence. This historic document goes on to state, “That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men.” Government assurances of rights to “life and liberty” have been embraced throughout U.S. history, even though the actions of government have at times fallen short of the ideal. On the other hand, the “pursuit of happiness” has been pretty much left to the private economy. If every person is afforded an opportunity to acquire and accumulate private property – to become wealthy – we Americans seem to assume their right to pursue happiness has been ensured. However, it’s time to admit that this part of the American experiment in democracy has failed.

Americans obviously have succeeded in amassing wealth, controlling about one-third of all global economic assets with only about 5 percent of the global population. However, our success in the pursuit of happiness has been far less impressive. Various studies rank the United States between fifteenth and twenty-third in overall happiness, typically ranking well below “less-developed” countries such as Costa Rico, Bhutan, and Malaysia.

The lack of translation of wealth into happiness is not unique to the United States. A 2004 review of more than 150 scholarly studies relating wealth and happiness confirmed a growing consensus among researchers that wealth doesn’t bring happiness. Beyond some very modest level of material well-being – the researchers suggest a per capita income or GDP of around $10,000 – there is little, if any, correlation between the increasing wealth of a nation and the happiness of its people.[1] A 2003 British cabinet office report also confirmed, “Despite huge increases in affluence compared with 1950, people throughout the developed world reported no greater feelings of happiness.”[2] The unalienable right of all to the pursuit of happiness cannot be ensured by simply providing people with an opportunity to become wealthy.

The new research is simply confirming what our common sense already tells us. Once our basic needs are met, our happiness depends far more on the quality of our personal relationships than on our income or wealth. No amount of additional wealth can offset our basic need for positive relationships with friends and family members and, perhaps most important, our need to be treated with equity and justice within our society. Equally important, our happiness depends on our having a clear sense of purpose and meaning in life. Without purpose, there is no right or wrong, good or bad; no amount of wealth can give meaning to our thoughts and actions. We are multidimensional beings – physical, social, and spiritual; happiness requires a life of harmony and balance within the whole of our being. All we have to do to understand this is to stop and think about what really makes us happy, or keeps us from being happy.

So what is the responsibility of government with respect to the pursuit of happiness? First, the government has a responsibility to ensure that the basic physical needs of all its citizens are met. Article 25 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights at least provides a good starting point for a national discussion of basic economic rights: “Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.” By one means or another, the U.S. government must ensure that the basic physical needs of its people are met, if it is to meet its fundamental responsibility for ensuring the rights of all Americans to the pursuit of happiness.

Second, the government must be willing to give priority to the common good of all over the individual wealth of a few. The most obvious social responsibility of government is to ensure equity and justice. Furthermore, if the economy is to function for the common good, it must function within the context of an ethical and just society. For example, the government cannot ensure positive relationships within families and communities, but it can ensure that families and communities are not subjected to economic exploitation. Most advertising and marketing today is not designed to inform but instead to mislead and exploit. In addition, no one should be forced to make a choice between a family and a job. Certainly, adequate time must be devoted to work to justify one’s economic compensation, but working people must also be afforded the opportunity to carry on normal personal and family lives.

In addition, communities often lose the ability to function socially or civically when their natural environment and local economy are degraded or destroyed by outside investors seeking access to “underexploited” economic resources. The U.S. government currently gives priority to individual economic interests over the common interests of communities. For example, interstate commerce laws leave individual communities essentially powerless to protect themselves from industries that cover their communities with noxious odors and toxic wastes. The U.S. Congress has the constitutional authority to regulate commerce and thus could act to ensure the right of people to protect themselves from economic exploitation. Instead, government favors commerce over the pursuit of happiness.

Finally, the unalienable rights encoded in the Constitution provide the moral and ethical compass for both our society and our economy. Constitutional rights define what is required of Americans. Anytime our constitutional rights are compromised in the pursuit of wealth, particularly wealth beyond one’s basic needs, the quality of American life is diminished. Access to more natural and human resources will not enhance our happiness if our constitutional rights are compromised in the process. The Constitution is a creation of the people, not the government. The Constitution addresses the pursuit of happiness, not wealth. The government has a responsibility to ensure the rights of all to the pursuit of happiness.

Spreading the wealth around. During his presidential campaign, President Obama suggested to “Joe the Plumber” that rich folks should “spread their wealth around” by paying higher taxes. He was proposing tax increases on incomes of more than $250,000 per year to fund tax cuts for the middle class and working poor. The Republicans responded quickly by labeling Obama’s tax proposals as “socialist.” Obama’s running mate, Joe Biden, had made a similar statement only a few weeks earlier by suggesting that it would be patriotic for the wealthy to pay more taxes. The Republican vice presidential candidate, Sarah Palin, responded, “To the rest of America, that’s not patriotism. Raising taxes is about killing jobs and hurting small businesses and making things worse.” Is it really un-American to expect the rich to pay higher taxes?

One of the most basic of democratic principles is that all people are “created equal” and thus are of equal inherent worth and have equal rights under the law. Americans seem to agree that government is responsible for ensuring the basic political and civil rights encoded in the Constitution. However, there is less agreement on government’s responsibilities for ensuring the economic rights of individuals. However, according to a recent national survey, more than three-fourths of Americans agreed that the U.S. government is responsible for ensuring that citizens can meet their basic needs for food, health care, and education – with a solid majority even among Republicans.

In fact, the U.S. government today functions as if we all have basic rights to at least some measure of food, clothing, shelter, education, health care, and even environmental health. However, there is no consensus regarding what measure of each represents a basic right, rather than a government handout. When pushed for a direct response, President Obama stated that he believes health care is a basic right of all Americans. However, he clearly is not willing to use the power of government to ensure that all have equal access to all levels of health care. President George W. Bush once said that all Americans already have access to health care because hospital emergency rooms are required by law to provide treatment for anyone in urgent need. The question of Americans’ right to health care is not whether, but in what measure. The same is true for food, clothing, shelter, education, and environmental health.

We are inherently unequal in our ability to meet our basic economic needs because we are inherently unequal in our ability to produce or acquire things of economic value. We are born with unequal abilities, inculcated with unequal aptitudes, and endowed with unequal inherited wealth. Certainly, we can influence our economic achievements through our own initiatives. However, there has never been a society in which all people could meet their basic needs without help from society as a whole. Promoting the general welfare is a necessary, constitutional function of government. Those who have wealth, or the ability and aptitude to acquire wealth, must be willing to share with those who are unable to acquire an equal measure of those things to which they have equal rights.

Government economists, conservatives and neoliberals alike, have promoted economic development as the means by which the basic economic needs of all should be met. A rising economic tide is purported to lift all people to higher levels of prosperity. Since the early 1980s, government regulations of private enterprises have been systematically weakened and dismantled to remove constraints to economic growth and to increase employment. Taxes have been slashed, particularly for corporations and wealthy investors, with the promise that increased investment would create more jobs. Free trade has been promoted as a means of making the world’s economic resources accessible to more investors. The government’s responsibility to ensure the economic rights of its people has been largely reduced to providing economic incentives for the wealthy to create employment opportunities for the poor. It hasn’t worked.

The private economy employs potential workers only in relation to their ability to produce things of economic value. Rather than employ the less economically productive people at home, U.S. corporations have moved their operations to other countries, where desperate people have been willing to work longer hours for lower wages. The wages and salaries of even the more productive U.S. workers have been depressed toward poverty levels. The meager benefits that have trickled down from economic growth have trickled down to entrepreneurs and workers in other nations. Economists should not have been surprised at these consequences. To rely on the market economy to ensure economic rights is to deny or ignore the existence of such rights.

If “spreading the wealth around” is socialism, then Adam Smith was a socialist. In Wealth of Nations he wrote, “What improves the circumstances of the greater part can never be regarded as an inconvenience of the whole. No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the greater part of the members are poor and miserable.” Smith clearly understood the necessary role of government in a capitalist economy. For example, he considered public education to be a basic right of the poor and responsibility of government, without regard to any benefit to the economy. He understood that people had an inherent right to meet their basic economic needs and that those needs would not be met by a capitalist economy.

Ensuring economic rights requires money, meaning taxes that otherwise could be used to pursue individual economic interests. It seems reasonable to ask those who have benefited most from the economy to bear the cost of ensuring the economic rights of those who have benefited least. Some will be undeserving, just as some are undeserving of their political and civil rights. There are also legitimate questions regarding how much wealth should be “spread around.” But there is no greater responsibility of government than to ensure the inherent rights of its people.

Green economics. One priority of the economic stimulus program of 2009 is to create a new “green economy.” The proposal is to use government spending to promote new “green jobs” in renewable energy, energy conservation, and mitigation of global climate change. Various environmental advocates and organizations have developed long lists of environmentally friendly technologies that promise cost savings capable of repaying initial investments within twenty, ten, or even five years. It might appear that environmental problems such as fossil energy depletion and global climate change could be solved by providing industry leaders with appropriate technical information and modest government incentives to adopt “greener” economic alternatives.

The economy is ultimately dependent on the health and productivity of nature and society. So a new green economy might seem to make good economic sense. It’s also true that many “green technologies” might pay for themselves in twenty, ten, five, or even fewer years. However, long-term ecological problems, such as fossil energy dependence or global climate change, simply cannot be solved through good economics.

The economy places a significant premium on the present relative to the future. Market interest rates and internal rates of return for businesses are economic values. At a market interest rate of 7 percent, a dollar ten years from now is worth only fifty cents today, because fifty cents invested at an interest rate of 7 percent would be worth a dollar ten years from now. A business that generates a 15 percent internal rate of return doubles its initial investment in five years. It simply doesn’t make economic sense to invest in something that will repay only the initial investment within five or ten years when you have investment opportunities that will double initial investments in the same amount of time. This is economic reality.

That said, many U.S. businesses are choosing green technologies for purely economic reasons. As natural resources – energy, minerals, water – have become scarcer, their prices have gone up, making new green technologies economically competitive. Walmart, for example, has initiated a company-wide program to save fossil energy, which also reduces greenhouse gas emissions. However, such businesses are reacting to the short-run scarcity, not the risk of long-run environmental degradation or resource depletion. It also takes time for businesses to respond to changing market prices and economic costs. Thus, many businesses have not yet taken advantage of the newly emerged “green” economic opportunities.

Therefore, government incentives might prove beneficial in encouraging corporate America to develop profitable green technologies and to take advantage of green economic opportunities. However, such programs will only “get the low-hanging fruit.” Even the best economic decisions cannot solve the long-run challenges of ecological sustainability. The world is a living ecosystem. When living things are allowed to become sick, they may not recover, no matter how great the economic incentive to find a cure. If the economy couldn’t respond quickly enough to save itself from an economic collapse, how can we conceivably think that it will respond quickly enough to prevent an ecological or social collapse? Perhaps we can muddle through a global economic catastrophe, but humanity might not even survive a global ecological catastrophe. If people are misled into believing that free markets can somehow meet the ecological challenges of today, then advocation of “green economics” will become an obstacle to necessary changes in public policy.

“Ecological economists” admit that the economy provides inadequate incentives for addressing many ecological problems. Businesses have no incentive to consider many environmental costs because these costs have little or no effect on economic returns on investment. If public policies were designed to effectively “internalize” these “external costs,” the costs would have to be considered in making economic decisions. Ecological economists contend that if all relevant ecological and social costs and benefits were internalized, including those expected to accrue to future generations, then markets would ensure long-run ecological sustainability.

Ecological economics is a vast improvement over a blind faith in free markets. The contributions of nature and society to the economy are at least recognized as having economic value. However, some important values are simply not economic in nature and thus cannot be measured in dollars and cents. Personal relationships have purely social value, in addition to any economic value we may derive from them. We are social beings – people need people. Ethical behavior has purely moral value, in addition to any economic value we may derive from ethical acts. We are spiritual beings – we need to feel worthy and worthwhile. When we attempt to internalize the economic value of such things, we ignore the social or moral value, which may far exceed their economic value.

Even if we could accurately access social and moral values, bringing them into the economy would not ensure ecological sustainability. Once they were assigned an economic value, the use or misuse of nature would be at the discretion of those who had enough money to pay the assigned economic costs. It would be acceptable to pollute and exploit the resources of nature, as long as the polluters and exploiters were willing and able to pay the dollar-and-cent costs. Toxins would be dumped in the backyards of those who couldn’t afford environmental protection. The rights of future generations to a healthy and productive environment would be for sale to today’s highest bidder. This kind of society simply would not be sustainable.

In a democracy, values that are purely social or relational in nature, such as environmental justice, must be determined by a vote of the people, not by buying and selling. In a democracy, everyone has an equal vote, regardless of how much money they may have. Ethical or moral values, such as the rights of future generations, must be determined through a process of consensus. If something is ethically and morally wrong, we can’t make it right by paying for it – or voting for it. Consensus is the best process we have for deciding what is right and wrong. Once we reach a consensus that something is wrong, we just shouldn’t allow people to do it.

Economics will be important in addressing emerging environmental issues; rising prices will ration ecological resources as they become scarcer. The current financial crisis is a clear indication of the imprudence of relying on economic incentives, even to ensure the long-run health of the economy. In many instances economic incentives are even more clearly inadequate or nonexistent, such as coping with fossil energy depletion and global climate change. Thus, we must work together, through government, to ensure the long-run well-being of our society and of humanity. Government programs designed to create and sustain a new green economy should be a permanent government responsibility, not simply a short-run economic stimulus.

Consent of the governed. The election of Barack Obama as president was widely interpreted as a call for fundamental change, but it did not reflect a major shift in the balance of political power in America. In fact, as the delicate balance of power has shifted from election to election, the electorate has grown more committed to a growing set of conflicting values. Divisive issues, such as abortion, guns, religion, welfare, environmentalism, patriotism, and imperialism, rise to the fore as each campaign becomes more negative and vicious than the last. Regardless of which party holds power, our government is rapidly losing the “consent of the governed.”

The 53 percent popular vote majority for Obama, while decisive, does not represent a consensus, nor did the 59 percent majority for Ronald Reagan in 1984. A consensus requires general agreement on the values and principles that will underlie future decisions, not simply a majority vote to determine who gets to make those decisions. Consensus does not require unanimity, but it does require acquiescence rather than defiance. As our Founding Fathers articulated in our Declaration of Independence, it is only from the consent of the governed that our government “derives its just powers.” Lacking that consent, our government has no just power to govern.

As Abraham Lincoln proclaimed before our devastating Civil War, “a house divided against itself cannot stand.” Unless we reestablish the consent of the governed, our nation cannot stand. We are led to believe we cannot possibly reach consensus on issues such as abortion, gun control, or prayer in public school; the conflicting values are too deeply held and too emotional to resolve. We are told we can’t reach consensus on environmental and social issues because they reflect fundamental differences between conservative and liberal values. Conservatives argue that we can’t afford to deal with such issues, while liberals argue that we can’t afford not to deal with such issues.

In Colonial America, the issue of slavery was volatile and emotional, and the American economy was built upon the institution of slavery. Early Americans didn’t think it possible to establish a national consensus concerning slavery or to afford the economic costs of abolishing slavery. As a result, they endured a civil war. The emotional and economic costs of that war far exceeded any cost of time and energy they might have expended in building a national consensus. America may not again degenerate into civil war, but the emotional and economic costs of failing to restore the consent of the governed could leave little more than an empty shell of a once-great nation.

The first step toward consensus must be to agree on the fundamental purpose of government. Those on the political Right seem to believe the basic purpose of government is to secure private property rights – to ensure the right of individuals to acquire and accumulate wealth. This is what a “free market,” capitalist economy is about: the generation of individual wealth. Anything that slows economic growth, such as environmental protection or redistribution of income, is labeled as socialism. Those on the political Left seem to believe the fundamental purpose of government is to ensure equity and justice, as long as equity and justice don’t interfere with economic growth. Both Left and Right defend funding of public education, public health care, income assistance, and environmental protection in terms of their ultimate economic benefits, not as basic rights. The political Left and Right may disagree on a range of social and environmental issues, but they seem to agree on the priority of capitalism over democracy.

The American Declaration of Independence clearly states that the purpose of government, at least our government, is to ensure the “unalienable rights” of all people, including “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” It also clearly states: “That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men.” The most fundamental purpose of our government is to ensure that all receive an equitable and just measure of those things to which we have unalienable and thus inherently equal rights.

One of the most basic principles of our democracy is that all people are “created equal” and thus are of equal inherent worth – in spite of our inherently unequal ability to produce or acquire things of economic value. Our government has a constitutional responsibility to ensure equity and justice for all, regardless of the political volatility or potential economic consequences. A critical failure in this regard in the past, the acceptance of slavery, established our nation on an unsound footing and led to the great Civil War. The 2008 election was but a small step in our long recovery from that legacy.

Our inherent and unalienable rights are not limited to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The preamble to our Constitution gives our government a responsibility to “establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.” Our legal rights are embodied in our Constitution, including the initial Bill of Rights and later amendments. However, differing interpretations by the Supreme Court have eroded the public consensus regarding our constitutional rights and even the basic purpose of our government. With Supreme Court decisions so often divided five to four, we agonize over each new appointment to the Court. With each decision and each appointment, new constitutional rights may be granted or denied, even though the Constitution remains unchanged.

The Court has not specifically addressed many important questions confronting our society today, such as the rights of all to food, clothing, shelter, education, health care, or a clean environment, or the rights of future generations to opportunities equal to ours. Fortunately, our Constitution was meant to be amended, as “new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change,” returning to the words of Thomas Jefferson. Article V of the Constitution defines the amendment process – clearly a process for building consensus among the governed.

A set of constitutional rights defined by scholars, intellectuals, or politicians cannot be imposed on the people. The Constitution must reflect the values and ethics of We the People. It must be created and recreated through the consent of We the People, not by scholars, intellectuals, or politicians. Constitutional provisions cannot be imposed on the people. The Constitution must include only those provisions by which We the People have consented to be governed – for the common good. We must ultimately conclude that all people, including those of future generations, have a right to meet their basic economic needs and a right to a clean and productive environment. We are spiritual, social, physical beings. We must carry forward the promise; we must care for the earth and must care for each other, as we care for ourselves. Only then can we claim our God-given right to an equal chance to pursue our full measure of happiness.