Love Thy Neighbor: The Election and the Wellbeing Economy

Voters Said the System Isn't Working

It would be easy to read last week's results as a mandate for one party. We think voters were saying something different.

What we heard, in very different places, was voters saying the current system isn't working for them. In South Carolina, only about four in ten Senate voters had a favorable view of the Republican Party, and they felt about the same about the Democrats. Annie Andrews won there anyway, as a Democrat, by inviting Republicans in. She says more than 100 South Carolina Republican leaders joined her campaign, and her own father is a lifelong Republican who once gave money to Lindsey Graham.

In Kansas, Adam Hamilton, a Methodist pastor, began his run with a listening tour of 18 towns, in rooms of 20 to 100 people, and heard Republicans and Democrats say the same thing: our leaders aren't listening. In the last week of the race he was still at it, sitting down at coffee shop tables and opening every conversation the same way: "Tell me your story." He won with the backing of two former Republican governors. Afterward, he told his congregation that listening to all those stories had left him loving the people he met.

In Texas, James Talarico campaigned in Amarillo, one of the reddest towns in the state, and said he wanted to be a senator for Democrats, independents, and Republicans alike. He won the first statewide race for a Democrat in Texas in more than thirty years.

In Mississippi, when President Trump flew in to rally for Scott Colom's opponent, Colom showed up too. He went to walk the line outside and ask people what mattered to them. They talked about gas, groceries, and health care. Colom won the closest Senate race in the country, in a state that hadn't sent a Democrat to the Senate since 1982.

For decades, voters have put new leadership in place hoping for change, and neither party has delivered it. Donald Trump won the White House by running against the leadership of both. People have grown more and more upset with the economic system, and more and more helpless to change it. This election felt different. People responded to the candidates who listened, who actually cared, and who offered a different path to the future they want. Voters crossed party lines to find them, sometimes in very unlikely places. Now is the time for the people who won to show they were listening, by turning what they heard into something real.

Both Parties Are Running on the Same Economy

For about fifty years, both parties have bent to the same forces: mega donors, the Silicon Valley elite, and the people who hold wealth and power. Both parties said they stood with working people while they walked away from them. And people know it.

Those forces wrote the rules both parties now play by. The rules say the market knows best, government should get out of the way, and you can tell how the country is doing by looking at the stock market. One party sells it as tax cuts and fewer rules for business. The other has sold it as free trade and a booming Wall Street. Either way, the measuring stick stays the same.

By that measuring stick, a lot of things that hurt people count as success. A price hike is good news for profits. A buyout that closes the local clinic is good news for investors. Tax cuts for the people who need them least, paid for by cutting benefits for the families who need them most, can look like a strong economy on paper. Members of Congress trade stocks on information the rest of us don't have, and big donors decide where politicians stand long before anyone asks what's right for people and the planet over the long run.

When the economy stops serving people, politicians hand us a side to cheer for instead of a solution. Social media gets paid for our rage, and campaigns have learned that us-versus-them is the most reliable way to turn out a vote. So people keep voting, keep switching, and keep getting the same economy back.

People see this clearly. They know their own lives better than any economist or pundit, and they can tell when the system isn't working for them. Only 17 percent of Americans trust the federal government to do the right thing most of the time, down from 77 percent in 1964. Nearly two in three voters, including more than four in ten Republicans, say the system is rigged to favor the wealthy. Their own finances tell the same story. More than a third of adults couldn't cover a surprise $400 bill with cash, and one in four skipped medical care in the past year because of the cost. Most people judge their government by whether it helps them meet their most basic needs, and right now very few think it does.

What We All Want

Take away the party labels and the complaints sound the same. Voters told pollsters they wanted Congress to do more about the cost of living and about corruption. The candidates who broke through spent their time listening to exactly that. In every one of the 18 towns Hamilton visited, people told him the same thing: nobody is listening.

Underneath that, we hear the same wishes again and again, from people who don't agree on much else. We all want a home we can afford near our work. We all want affordable health care. We all want our kids to find work that pays enough to build a life here, without starting out buried in debt. We all want the grocery store, the clinic, and the hardware store in our town to stay open and stay local. We all want food we can trust and water we can drink.

And none of us asked for subscriptions we can't cancel, rent set by an algorithm, or the nursing home down the street bought by private equity and stripped for parts.

Nothing on that list belongs to the left or the right. Anyone would want it for their family and the people next door, and an economy measured by share prices keeps failing to deliver it.

What We Propose: A Wellbeing Economy

Most voters have never heard the words "wellbeing economy." Yet what they asked for this year echoes it almost point for point.

A wellbeing economy changes the measuring stick. Instead of asking whether the stock market is up, it asks whether people and places are actually doing well. That starts at the kitchen table, with the parent doing the math on rent and groceries at the end of the month. A good economy gives that family enough to live with dignity, and a fair deal, so they aren't paying fees they never agreed to while the people at the top play by different rules.

It reaches out to the land. Past the edge of town, a farmer watches the well run lower every summer. Our food, our water, and the next generation's chance to farm all depend on taking care of nature, and an economy that treats the land as something to use up eventually runs out of it.

And it shows up on Main Street. Take the owner of a hardware store in a small Kansas town. They have spent thirty years building it, and like most small-business owners, they have no real plan for what happens when they retire. Without one, the choices often come down to selling to an outside buyer who may not care about the town, or closing the doors. A wellbeing economy makes room for another option: selling to the people who already run the place. The owner gets paid for a lifetime of work. The employees become owners with a real say in how the business is run, which is participation people can feel every day they show up. And the store stays open, keeping the connection that holds a small town together and giving the kid who wants to build a life close to home somewhere to start. Plenty of familiar names already work this way. Around Kansas City, Hy-Vee, Scheels, JE Dunn, and Burns & McDonnell are all owned by their employees.

For investors, the case is practical. Companies owned by their workers laid off about half as many people as other firms during the last two recessions, and during the pandemic they were far more likely to keep their staff. Towns where families can cover a surprise bill, see a doctor, and stay put are steadier places to put money for the long run. When people own a share of what they build and have a floor under them when something goes wrong, communities hold together, and so do the businesses in them.

Neither party offers this today, though either one could.

What Legislators Can Do Now

A wellbeing economy is something policy can build, and much of it can start in a state capitol.

Legislators can change what government measures. In 2015, Wales passed a law that requires its public bodies to weigh the wellbeing of people today, and of generations to come, in the decisions they make. It's hard work, and Welsh lawmakers say progress has been slower than they hoped. But it shows the question "are people actually doing well?" can be written into how a government decides.

They can make sure the help we've already promised actually reaches people. Millions of families qualify for benefits and tax credits they never receive because the system is a maze. Simple tools like MyFriendBen, now available in eight states, show families what they qualify for in minutes.

They can help workers buy the businesses they already keep running. As a generation of owners retires, states can make it easier for employees to take over the hardware store or the clinic, so the profits stay in town.

They can stop companies from draining our communities. That means looking hard at private equity buyouts of clinics, nursing homes, and housing, and limiting rent set by algorithms. Lawmakers can also start with their own house by banning members of Congress from trading stocks.

And they can give people a real say, through things like citizens' assemblies, where everyday residents study a hard question together and recommend what to do. When people see their voice change something, they lean in. When they don't, they give up, and the loudest and angriest voices fill the room.

It Will Be Messy, and That's the Point

Getting there will take some of the messiness we've been trained to avoid. Real people don't fit in a left box or a right box. Someone can be personally pro-life and still not want the government making that choice for every family. Someone can want a secure border and still not want grandmothers ripped from their families. Someone can care deeply about workers and still want lower taxes and less red tape for the small business down the street. Someone can fight for racial justice and still want more police walking their block. Most of us hold values that pull against each other, and so do our neighbors.

That's the reason we have to listen. We will need to make compromises. We will need to sit at the same table with people we don't always agree with, because the people deciding have to be the people affected. And we will have to let go of the arguments built only to scare us. Fear sorts people into sides quickly, but it doesn't build anything.

What If We Chose to Love Our Neighbor?

We have tried an economy built to help money make more money. We have tried the rage machine of social media. Voters keep telling us neither is working, and they keep switching sides hoping someone will hear them.

This election opened a door. The candidates who got through it sat at coffee shop tables and asked people to tell their stories, the way a good neighbor would. A wellbeing economy starts the same way, by listening to what people need and then building an economy that delivers it.

It will mean caring for people we don't agree with, and letting them care for us. That is what it means to love thy neighbor. An economy should be a way for neighbors to take care of each other.