What if we have it all wrong? We accept unemployment, inflation, low wages, lack of access to healthcare and education, periodic recessions, ecological collapse, food insecurity and endless wars as inevitable. The underlying belief in a market driven system is the bedrock of our economy. We’ve handed our lives and resources over to a mechanism that doesn’t value humans or their well-being. But humans created this system and humans can change it. In her book Escape From Capitalism Clara Mattei makes the case that we can build systems that serve people not the market. Her organization is the Forum for Real Economic Emancipation (freeforum.org).

The cost to our nation from militarized borders goes beyond the cost of enforcement. Both legal and undocumented migrants pay into our tax system. They boost the economy by spending money on the basics like food and rent. Many of our skilled workers in tech and medicine are immigrants. They also are the backbone of construction, agriculture and food services. When we discourage people from entering or deport people already here we’re not safer, we’re poorer. John Washington takes a look at possible solutions in his book The Case for Open Borders.

When the Heritage Foundation published Project 2025 in 2023 the goals seemed so radical that many dismissed the threat as far-fetched. But as the Trump presidency steamrolls over accepted norms, court orders and public opinion much of that radical agenda is being implemented. In order to see where all this is leading one has to take a look at history and what life looked like for so many people in the past. In his book How We Win the Civil War Steve Phillips posits that the Confederacy never really surrendered and until we examine the past we can’t move forward into a better future. But he also maintains that the better future is realistically achievable. It’s all about mobilization.

For the first time in over a hundred years salmon are returning to historical spawning grounds in the Klamath River. After four hydroelectric dams were removed the river came back to life. Wild salmon, once on the brink of extinction have returned in astonishing numbers. More than just a regional victory, the dam removal from the Klamath River could be a blueprint for ecological restoration. I spoke with Amy Bowers Cordalis of the Yurok Nation about her book The Water Remembers: My Indigenous Family’s Fight to Save a River and a Way of Life.

The only metric for our economic system is the growth of wealth. Who gets that wealth or how that growth impacts people’s lives and the planetary life support system is never part of the equation. This has created the insanity of a billionaire class who can destroy entire countries while basic needs are unmet for many people and the looming climate crisis is ignored. In this episode of The Progressive Page Turner I talked with Tim Jackson, author of The Care Economy about another way to view prosperity.

How are intimate violence and geopolitical violence linked? Both are expressions of male dominance. The imbalance in our culture toward masculine values has impoverished us all. In her book All We Want is Everything Soraya Chemaly outlines how dismantling male supremacy can result in an increase in dignity, independence, agency, respect and freedom for everyone.

The saying goes that "people can imagine the end of the world easier than imagining the end of capitalism." I know it seems insane but what if we geared society to produce for sufficiency instead of profit? We might actually be able to mitigate the damage from our fossil fuel civilization if we change the mindset of infinite growth. It's time to start imagining the impossible because everything, maybe even all life on the planet, is at stake if we continue business as usual.

The imperative to stop burning fossil fuels and a proliferation of new tech gadgets like cell phones and smart everything has businesses and governments scrambling to procure the metals that make the magic happen. Mining, refining and even recycling these components comes with a heavy environmental cost. Can we realistically switch from fossil fuels to green energy if obtaining the raw materials cause environmental destruction, political instability and a great deal of human suffering? Vince Beiser traveled all over the world to document the real cost of the new economy.