Funding Visions – Solving the World’s Problems
We may be able to end homelessness, hunger, and extreme poverty in America without raising taxes or demonizing any group. We can do this by implementing a specific set of policy changes in the areas of income, healthcare, education, and housing that simultaneously mitigate root cause issues. Most of the policy changes needed are well known and extensively studied but cannot be implemented individually for various reasons. However, when a specific set of these policy changes are refined and implemented together, they can become economically, politically, and socially implementable. In addition, these policy changes will reduce our healthcare, education, and housing costs. This website briefly documents why this holistic approach is needed and a starting set of policy changes that when refined and implemented together may be able to end homelessness, hunger, and extreme poverty in America.
Why is a holistic approach needed?
Our problems with homelessness, hunger, and poverty are very complex and inter-related with many other issues. Many solutions only focus on easily identified issues in only one area, such as food for hungry, healthcare for the poor, or housing for the unhoused. Such solutions do help but seldom address the root issues that are generating our problems. Implementing a solution in one area will always cause issues (both positive and negative) in other areas. These other issues can easily cause a “good” solution to be unimplementable.
A more holistic approach that evaluates the impact of simultaneously implementing solutions from different areas can help “good” solutions to become more acceptable. By implementing solutions from different areas together, the positive effects of some of these solutions can offset the negative effects of others. In addition, solutions from different areas can help support each other. Hence a set of solutions implemented together may become acceptable to entities that would otherwise oppose some of the solutions in the set. This may allow root cause issues to be more easily addressed.
How does technological advancements and trade impact poverty?
Mitigating poverty has always been related to the availability of low-cost goods and services. Increasing the availability of low-cost goods and services has always depended on technological advancements and trade. Technological advancements and trade create new industries, new jobs, and increased income for many people. But they also disrupt existing industries, jobs, and wages. This has created great hardships for some people and constant demands for government assistance to mitigate the problems being created.
Using a more holistic approach, a plan to essentially end extreme poverty in the America has been developed. This plan identifies solutions to mitigate root issues in the areas of income, healthcare, education, and housing. It then analyzes the impact of implementing these solutions together. It hypothesizes that a set of such solutions can be found that if implemented together will lower costs enough to be economically, politically, and socially acceptable. The plan is called the Community Support System (CSS).
The goal is to provide better healthcare, education, and housing at lower costs while guaranteeing all Americans enough income to lift them out of poverty. This needs to be done in ways that should be acceptable to conservatives (who want less government, lower taxes, balanced budgets and more individual responsibility) and liberals (who want fewer social problems, more equal resource allocations, and more equal opportunities). This also needs to be done in ways that respect traditional American values that give people realistic opportunities instead of constant government handouts.
The following links briefly describe the core problem areas addressed by the CSS plan, possible solutions in each of these areas, the theory that the CSS is based on, and projects to help establish whether or not the CSS plan is credible enough to justify more intensive investigations.
Collectively these policy changes will:
- Cost less than what we are now spending on welfare, healthcare, and housing.
- Raise all American incomes above the poverty line.
- Give all Americans access to quality healthcare with a focus on preventive care and lifestyle choices.
- Help students to understand and deal with the non-academic experiences they may encounter in life.
- Expand the role local schools play in mitigating local social, economic, and/or political issues.
- Give all Americans access to affordable housing by building quality housing at lower costs.
Each of the proposed policy changes have the following characteristics:
- They are well known and have been extensively studied.
- They address root issues that are causing social problems.
- They only effect communities that voluntary adopt them.
- They will have little or no effect on the situations of most Americans.
- They would not be feasible and effectively mitigate our homelessness hunger, and poverty problems if implemented by themselves.
However, as stated earlier, when refined and implemented together, the proposed set of policy changes should become more feasible and greatly mitigate our homelessness, hunger, and poverty problems.
Developing the CSS plan will require intensive discussions, research, refinements and pilot projects. These activities will generate a long list of reasons why the CSS plan will not work as intended. However, by using this list, we can engineer a set of policy changes that will be more acceptable. This process needs to be repeated until a generally acceptable set of policy changes is found.
Pursuing this project can be challenging because it requires evaluating the impacts of simultaneously implementing policy changes in many different areas (income, healthcare, education, housing) and from many different points of view (economically, politically, and socially). This can be difficult to coordinate in an academic environment where everyone specializes. There is no department of holistic studies to coordinate such activities.
We are looking for a group that is interested in coordinating efforts to verify whether or not the CSS plan is credible enough to justify more intensive discussions and investigations. If you know of such a group, please email david@fundingvisions.org
A more detailed but still general description of the CSS plan with some supporting documentation can be found in the last part of the book Redesigning America for the 21st Century: Solving our Healthcare, Income, Education, and Housing Problems
For more information email David@fundingvisions.org
Please note: Funding Visions does not solicit, nor does it accept, donations. February 7, 2025