Robert Reich is right.
In a recent Substack post he laid out how tariffs, monopolies, and corporate power are driving up the cost of living for ordinary people. Much of what we call “inflation” is not an economic inevitability, but the result of policy choices that favour the elites and their power over ordinary people.
Natalie Foster goes further. In The Guarantee: Inside the Fight for America’s Next Economy, she argues that this is not just about the cost of living. It is about whether we choose as a society to lay the foundations for a decent life, one in which everyone can have dignity, and feel that their life matters.
Together, they point to the same conclusion: that we need a new social contract, one that will offer dignity to all. Not just in the Americas, but everywhere.
Robert’s post inspired me to build on his work, using themes and policies from my forthcoming book The Economics of Kindness: The End of Capitalism, the Birth of a New Ecological Civilization. Societies that guarantee fundamental needs are more productive, more innovative, and less polarized, and their people are happier. Most people in the Nordic countries already live in this future.
People in other countries do not, because they have made different political choices.
In America, the choice to embrace neoliberal policies caused the transfer of $79 trillion from the bottom 90% to the élites between 1975 and 2023. In 2023 alone the choice deprived them of $3.9 trillion, enough to pay every working American in the bottom 90% $24,000, or an additional $13 an hour.
In 1979 the average American needed to work 30 weeks a year to pay for a house, car, health care, and education. Today, they need to work 53 weeks. Between 50% and 60% of Americans live from paycheck to paycheck, with minimal or no savings.
The neoliberal political order has been incredibly rewarding for the élites. For everyone else, it has been a disaster. So what’s needed? Here are 25 things we need to do to make life affordable for all.
Dignity in our Communities
1. Community Wealth
Community wealth is the clubs, non-profits, libraries, sports clubs, and neighbourhood associations that bring us together. It is the community investment funds, cooperatives, community banks, social enterprises, food hubs, and local farms that build the local economy. It is the use of institutional purchasing power to buy from local businesses. It is people’s shared effort to improve their community, and fight for what’s needed. Governments can help by providing recognition, training and resources. As an example, see what they are doing in Preston, UK.
Community wealth can also produce affordable transportation. In communities where citizens have organized to ensure that public transit is efficient and either affordable or free, where there are good walking and cycling paths, where there’s a car-sharing initiative, and where there’s a bus pass program for seniors and people with disabilities, as in British Columbia, people who choose not to own a car can save $1500 to $5,000 a year.
2. Nature’s Wealth
If you live in a community where there’s lots of green space, trees, and access to forests, farmlands and water, you’ll know what a friend nature is, both when life is good and when it’s hard. One of the foundations of nature’s wealth is a stable climate, which is where we’re in deep trouble. In British Columbia, in 2021, climate-related floods and forest fires cost $10.6 to $17 billion, representing 3-5% of GDP, with insurance only covering 5-8% of the damage. In the US, where 1 in 8 homeowners do not have home insurance, a climate disaster wipe-out means personal financial wipe-out. Floods, droughts and fires all impact farmers, adding to the cost of food, and clean water. One estimate puts the cost of future climate disasters at 15% of global GDP by 2050.
Unless we act together as a world to remove the causes of the climate crisis, which are primarily fossil fuels, livestock, and forest destruction, the cost will grow each year, adding to the cost of living. We must not allow short-sighted politicians to play climate off against affordability. We need rapid climate action to prevent the future from becoming unlivable, as well as unaffordable.
Dignity in our Homes
3. Affordable Housing
For many, the cost of housing is the biggest thing that’s making life unaffordable. To guarantee affordable housing for all, we need to build millions of units of non-profit, cooperative and social housing. We need to allow higher density in single family neighbourhoods, remove regulatory barriers, ban the purchase of homes by private equity, and give tenants and mobile homeowners help to buy their properties cooperatively. We need to protect vulnerable tenants, phase out mortgage interest tax deductions that favor homeowners, and issue tax credits to renters who spend more than 30% of their pre-tax income on rent. And so much more. We need to ditch the blithe assumption that the free market will solve the problem, and work together to ensure that everyone has a home they can afford. In Vienna, where they prioritize affordable housing, average rent is $985 a month.
And how to reduce the rising utility bills? We need public utilities with regulated prices, as in British Columbia. We need tax credits for energy audits, heat pumps, weatherization, and retrofits, and rebates for people who live on a low income, as they do in Britain, France, California, Massachusetts, and New York. We need community solar projects, which can shave 10% of a utility bill. And we need a rapid-as-possible transition to 100% renewable energy, which will lower the cost of energy and reduce the risk of climate chaos, as Bill McKibben shows in Here Comes the Sun: A Last Chance for Climate and a Fresh Chance for Civilization.
Dignity at Work
4. A Higher Minimum Wage
A federal minimum wage of $7.25, as in America, is a moral embarrassment. Since the 1970s, labor productivity in America has climbed steadily, but wages have remained stagnant, due primarily to anti-union legislation. If the minimum wage had kept pace with productivity gains, by 2021 it would have been nearly $26 an hour. In 2022, Seattle supported a minimum wage of $17.27 for gig workers. Patriotic Millionaires has presented two Acts to Congress that would raise the minimum wage to $21/hour, the median cost of living for a single adult with no children, and create a federal tax exemption for anyone earning less than $41,600.
5. Strong Labour Unions
Strong unions raise wages, reduce inequality, and improve safety at work. Every nation needs to guarantee the right of workers to form a union, and eliminate non-compete clauses, which make it hard for people to find other work. They should also encourage collective bargaining. It happens in most of Europe, but less so in Canada, Britain, and America. We also need a 4-day working week for the same pay, since it has been shown to improve productivity, improve personal wellbeing, and reduce burnout.
This should also apply in the gig economy, which employs 12% of the world’s workers. It brings a kind of freedom, but with no paid vacations, sick days, unemployment benefits, injured workers compensation, or employer pension contributions, and in America, no healthcare insurance. We need legislation to give workers the same benefits and retain them as they transfer between employers, as Steve Hill proposes in Raw Deal: How the Uber Economy and Runaway Capitalism are Screwing American Workers. We also need legislation that will require gig economy companies like Uber and Doordash to have high employment standards.
6. Guaranteed Vacation Pay
In most of Europe you get between 20 and 30 days paid vacation. In Indonesia and Mexico, you get 12. In America, you are guaranteed none. Most private companies provide it, but among the lowest 25% of earners, where the cost-of-living hurts most, nearly a third have none. Time off is not an indulgence. It’s critical for happiness, health, and wellbeing. The campaigning organization Paid Leave for All is working to make it happen.
7. Cooperative and Employee Ownership
When workers own their companies the profits are shaded by the workers. Productivity rises, and inequality shrinks. We need government support to enable workers to establish new cooperatives, and to convert a business to employee ownership if an owner wants to retire and has no succession plan. The goal of Fifty-by-Fifty is that by 2050 fifty million Americans will enjoy majority employee ownership, backed by legislation and a $100 billion loan guarantee program. Bernie Sanders has proposed that all publicly traded companies, and every company with $10 million or more in annual revenues, should be required to transfer 2% or more of its stock to its employees every year, until it reaches 20%. 56 million workers would benefit. On reaching 20%, their shares would pay an annual $5,000 dividend.
8. Better Unemployment Benefits
Losing a job should not mean losing your dignity. Denmark has a ‘flexicurity’ system, which unions support, that makes it easy for a company to fire a worker. In exchange, workers get 78% of their previous wage and assistance in finding new work. Danes are consistently happy, so it must be working. Most European countriesprovide unemployment benefits at 50% to 65% of the previous wage. In Canada it starts at 40%, but falls to 22% after a year. In Britain, it starts at 20% and falls to 16%. In America it starts at 30-40% in most states, but quickly falls to 9%.
9. A Community Job Guarantee
In Austria, where unemployment benefit is 55% of your previous wage, the small town of Gramatneusiedl started an experiment in 2021. Each of the 150 residents who had been unemployed for more than twelve months was offered a two-month preparatory course, followed by a guaranteed job for three years that paid at least the minimum wage. Their average age was 45, and a third were immigrants or the children of immigrants. The jobs were either subsidized private sector positions, or co-designed with participants by a local non-profit. The state picked up the cost at €29,841 per person, compared to the unemployment cost of €30,000. The results, reported by Nick Romeo in The Alternative: How to Build a Just Economy, have been very rewarding.
In 2024, 7.5 million American workers were unemployed and looking for work. When we include hidden unemployment – people who are discouraged and part-time workers who want a full-time job – it rises to some 14 million people. A universal job guarantee for anyone who has been out of work for a year would eliminate involuntary unemployment, create an economy-wide minimum wage, and act as an economic stabilizer, increasing jobs, income, and consumption during a recession. Pavlina Tcherneva explains how it could work and how it could be paid for in The Case for a Job Guarantee.
Dignity through Universal Basic Services
Robert Reich included Universal Basic Income (UBI) in his list. This is one area where we disagree. I don’t deny the clear evidence that people would use the money well. If everyone got UBI, however, economic reactions would come into play. Landlords would feel more able to increase their rents. Employers would feel less need to pay fair wages. Unions would feel less need to fight for higher wages, and childcare providers would feel free to raise their rates. The money would end up in the pockets of others, leading to calls for the UBI to be increased.
It makes more sense to invest in Universal Basic Services (UBS), including affordable housing and healthcare, and free or affordable childcare, adult social care, transportation, and broadband digital services. This would reduce poverty, anxiety, and financial fear, just as UBI would. UBS would provide these things not as a welfare service, but as a public commitment to dignity and respect.
10. Universal Healthcare
Universal healthcare would guarantee care for everyone. It would improve outcomes, lower costs, boost economic productivity, end medical co-pays and bankruptcies, and make healthcare a basic human right, rather than a privilege. Universal healthcare in Canada, compared to USA, would create $6,000 to $12,000 in annual savings.
11. Better Sickness and Disability Benefits
Illness and disability are a reality of life, not a personal failure. To offer dignity, we must act with kindness. In Finland, sick workers can receive about 70% of their income for up to a year. In Canada, once you have worked for 15 weeks, you can receive benefits at 55% of your earnings for up to 26 weeks, capped at $729 per week (about $18 an hour).
America has no federal sick pay system at all. Coverage depends on your employer, or your state. In California, employers must pay sick leave at the same wage for up to 40 hours a year. In 32 states there is no state sick-leave coverage at all.
And then there is disability. In America, benefits are hard to qualify for and often inadequate. In Canada, they are more accessible, but still modest. In most of Europe disability is treated as a shared social responsibility, with earnings-related support, recognition of a partial disability, and an emphasis on dignity, rehabilitation, and inclusion.
12. Affordable Childcare
Canada is working to provide $10/day childcare across the country ($200 a month), though progress is slow. In Finland childcare is capped at $366 a month, and 89% of 3–5-year-olds participate. In France, childcare for kids from age 3 is free and compulsory, as part of the public education system. In America, where childcare costs $1,0000 a month per child, there’s no federal program, but some states help out. New Mexico is now offering free childcare to all families. Florida, Oklahoma, and Vermont enroll all 4-year-olds in free preschool, and Vermont provides free preschool for some 3-year-olds. Otherwise, it’s $1,000 a month.
13. Parental Care
New baby? In Flint, Michigan, through Rx Kids, every expectant mother is given $1,500, plus $500 a month for the first year of the child’s life. In Sweden, both parents can take up to 16 months of paid parental leave. For the first 390 days, they get 80% of pay, then it’s $20 a day. In Canada, mothers can take up to 15 weeks at 55% of their pay, and both parents can get parental leave at 55% of their earnings for up to 69 weeks. In Britain, mothers can take up to 39 weeks leave – six weeks at 90% of their previous earnings, the rest at £184 a week. Fathers can take two weeks off at £184 a week. In most of America, it’s a different story. A parent can take 12 weeks of unpaid leave, and in 13 states and Washington DC you can take paid parental leave for 6 to 12 weeks at 50-90% of your pay. In the other 36 states, there’s nothing.
14. Affordable Food
Food is not a luxury – and yet millions of people are forced to choose between rent, heat, and food. Food banks are a welcome stopgap answer. To guarantee affordable food for all we need to restore policies like America’s SNAP benefits. We need free school meals for all children, as in Finland and South Korea – and inCalifornia, Maine, Massachusetts, Nevada and Vermont. We need fair-pricing legislation, like America’s 1936 Patman-Robinson Act, which was written to ensure that small retailers could access the same wholesale prices as the big stores. We need publicly supported restaurants that offer nutritious meals at low prices, as inBelo Horizonte, Brazil, locally run community food centres, publicly run grocery stores, and community gardens where people can grow their own food. We need nutrition vouchers that enable low income people to shop for locally grown fruits, vegetables and staples, as in British Columbia. And we either need to break up the big food oligopolies, or impose excess profits taxes when they use the fog of inflation to increase their profit margins (see #21, #24).
15. Affordable College
In Finland, France, Germany and some 15 other European countries, college education is either free or almost free. In Canada, undergraduate tuition costs around $6,000. In Britain it’s around $11,500. In the US it costs $10,000 to $15,000. This accumulates as a huge burden of student debt (see #20), which rose to $1.78 trillionin 2025. Some 30 states offer free community college education. Bernie Sanders has long been an advocate for tuition-free public colleges and universities through his proposed College For All Act.
16. Universal Adult Care
In various European countries adult social care is universal and mostly free, with an emphasis on home help and home nursing, so that people can age in place and avoid expensive institutions. In Britain, it’s means-tested, with significant out-of-pocket exposures. In Canada, where private care costs $6,000 to $15,000 a month, public care typically costs around $3,000 a month, or (in British Columbia) 80% of your after-tax income. In America, adult social care is available through Medicaid, but it’s means-tested, requiring people to exhaust their savings before they can get access. The weaker the support, the more the adult children have to reshape their lives to care for their elderly relatives. Caring Across the Generations is campaigning to make adult care accessible, affordable, and equitable, so that everyone can live, work, and age with dignity.
Dignity through Economic Security
17. Increased Child Benefits
Raising children should not push a family into poverty. In Canada, a low-income parent receives Child Benefit at $666 (US $480) a month for each child under six, and $562 (US $405) for each child aged 6-17. The higher your income, the less your child support. In Europe, various nations pay around $200 per month per child, plus free or near-free childcare, generous paid parental leave, and tax credits, which come to more or less the same value as the Canadian system.
In America you can get a federal child tax credit of up to $2,200 a year ($183 a month) for children aged up to 17 if you owe taxes, and up to $1,700 a year ($142/month) if you don’t because you have little earned income. It arrives as an annual, not a monthly payment. During Covid, in 2021, it was increased to $3,000-$3,600 per child, and to age 18, and low-income families received it as a monthly payment.
Campaigners like the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities want a permanent return to the 2021 credit, fewer or no earnings requirements, inflation indexing, supplements for newborns, and more effort to include the poorest families. 15-17 states, mostly governed by Democrats, offer an additional child tax credit. Of these, 11 pay refundable credits, sending low-income families a check in the mail. In Colorado, parents can get an additional $3,200 per child per year, up to age 16. In Minnesota it’s up to $1,750, paid monthly. In New York, California, and Utah it’s an additional $1,000 per child. In the 33-35 other states, mostly governed by Republicans, there are no additional credits.
18. A Guaranteed Minimum Income
In France, Spain and Germany everyone is guaranteed a minimum income set at 40-50% of the nation-wide median disposable income, around $1,000 a month. In Germany, you can get additional help for rent and heating. The European experience shows that to make starvation impossible; cash help needs to be paired with full housing coverage and universal health care. When someone’s income falls below this threshold they tend to eat less, to spend less.
In Britain, people who are struggling can apply for Universal Credit. A single adult can get £400 a month (£13 a day), with additions for children, rent, health conditions, unpaid care, and childcare. You have to attend regular work coach meetings, and keep applying for jobs. If you don’t, you can lose it all. 55% of anything you earn comes off your benefit. Typical private rent in Britain is £900–£1,350 a month for a one-bedroom or small two-bedroom. In London, a one-bedroom flat is £1,700–£2,000 a month.
In Canada, a single person can get up to $1,060 a month, plus a yearly $533 tax rebate. In America, the only support struggling individuals can get is SNAP food stamps up to $290 a month, which can’t be spent on anything else. If you don’t meet the work requirements you can only get them for 3 months in any 36 months, and you must work for 80 hours per month, or participate in approved workfare or training. This is why 770,000 people were homeless in 2024, living in a shelter, car, or on the street, and an additional 3.7 million people were doubled up in someone else’s home, or couch-surfing, because they couldn’t afford to rent.
The Economic Security Project is campaigning for a guaranteed income – regular, unconditional cash payments to ensure that all Americans can meet their basic needs. In addition, certain groups need a targeted Basic Income. Wales has targeted 18-year-olds leaving care, giving them £1,600 a month for two years. California’s HOPE Fund for Children gives $4,500 to every child who lost a parent to Covid, and every kid in foster care. In Florida, they have trialled a guaranteed income for people who have just left prison.
19. Social Inheritance Bonds
Inheritance laws are a knife that is cutting our societies in two. On one side are those who inherit property and savings. On the other side there are those who inherit nothing. The injustice can be partially remedied through Baby Bonds, using income from inheritance taxes to give every child $1,000 each year on every birthday, rising to $2,000 for children in the poorest families. The funds would earn 3% a year, and could be withdrawn for education, to start a business, or to buy a home when you reach 18. The investment for a child from a poor family would grow to around $46,000. The French economist Thomas Piketty wants a universal capital endowment through which every young person would receive 120,000 Euros ($140k), financed by a progressive tax on private wealth.
20. Debt Resolution
In Britain, in 2024, 6.7 million people struggled with debt. Christians Against Poverty found that 93% of its clients with debts had sleepless nights, 74% were scared to open the door, and 49% were scared to leave the house. This is the economics of cruelty, not kindness.
We need to find ways to forgive medical and student debt. Medical debt burdens 100 million American households and is linked to 66% of bankruptcies, but it sells for a cent on the dollar, so $100 can clear $10,000 of debt. By 2025 the non-profit Undue Medical Debt had used gifts from donors to clear $20.3 billion of debt, relieving anxiety for 13 million people. In 2024 total medical debt was around $220 billion, so a government could write it all off for $2.2 billion. With free public health care, future medical debt would cease to exist.
Then there’s student debt. In America, in 2026, 42 million people owed $1.8 trillion, 50% more than in 2014.Elizabeth Warren’s solution is to cancel the first $50,000 for everyone with an income under $100,000.Members of the Debt Collective want the entire lot canceled, arguing that it would boost America’s GDP by $108 billion a year for ten years, narrow the racial wealth gap by 40%, and be the biggest economic stimulant in recent US history.
Dignity through Good Economic Policy
21. Fair Market Competition
In the 1930s, during America’s New Deal, monopolies were restrained through antitrust laws such as the Robinson-Patman Act, but with the arrival of neoliberalism in the 1970s both Democrats and Republicans stopped enforcing them. The result is that we face monopolies and oligopolies in much of everyday life: big tech, banking, internet providers, meat-packing, airlines, rail freight, credit cards, payday lending, health insurance, agricultural supplies, the media, publishing, funeral homes, credit scores — even eyeglasses. “Dynamic pricing”, seen most blatantly in concert and FIFI World Cup ticketing, is monopolistic pricing in real time.
One major study found that business markups rose from about 10% in 1970 to over 20% by 2020, reflecting the growing power of monopolistic firms. That markup is being taken directly out of people’s pockets and transferred to the shareholders. Monopolies crowd out locally owned businesses, suppress competition, restrict innovation, and funnel wealth to the elites.
During periods of inflation, monopolistic firms use the fog of inflation to increase profits. During Covid, “greedflation” extracted some $143 billion from Canadian households and small businesses, accounting for roughly half of Canada’s inflation. In Britain, corporate profits in 2021 were 73% higher than in 2019, costing each household £5,500 (US $7,400) a year, compared to 2018.
To restore affordability, governments need to follow the European Union’s example: enforce monopoly break-ups, block anti-competitive mergers, ban vertical market control by dominant firms, treat natural monopolies as public utilities, and regulate essential markets so that rent-extraction becomes structurally impossible.
22. Fair Trade Tariffs
The current round of Trump tariffs will almost certainly increase the cost of living. We should use tariffs to protect workers and the planet, not to play politics and inflate prices for consumers. We could use them to enforce mutually negotiated trade agreements that protect workers rights and protect nature against pollution and harm, setting rules that raise standards globally, while avoiding harm to ordinary people. Removing the tarriffs might reduce the cost of of new building by $17,500 and the cost of shopping by 1,700 a year.
23. Responsible Banking
Credit card interest can make life unaffordable. If you carry a typical balance of $5,000 at 20% interest, which is the normal rate in the US, Canada, and UK, that’s $1,000 a year. In Europe, credit card interest is 5-8%. For people living week-to-week in America junk fees can add $1,000 a year. In Canada, low-cost accounts are mandated at $4 a month and NSF fees are capped at $10. In Europe, regulations limit the annual cost to around 100 Euros ($117).
Every state or region also needs to establish a public bank, similar to the Bank of North Dakota, or Germany’s KfW public bank, which uses its ability to create money to invest in affordable housing, solar energy, and small businesses.
24. Real World Inflation Policies
This is a complex thing to cover in one paragraph, but raising interest rates to tackle inflation is a cruel cudgel that hurts the most vulnerable. There are many different causes of inflation, and other responses that governments and central banks should consider. Raising interest rates will not address a spike in the price of oil, or the impact of climate disasters on food prices. Or corporate profiteering. Windfall profits taxes are appropriate when a monopolistic company uses the fog of inflation to increase prices. In Canada, average profits ran at 5% to 10% between 1960 and 2000. In 2022 they were jacked up to 20%, while corporations enjoyed their lowest-ever taxes. In Canada, the Parliamentary Budget Office estimated that a 15% tax on excess profits earned by big firms in 2020 would raise $7.9 billion. Returned equally to Canada’s 16 million households, it would provide around $500 per household. Targeted at the 60% lowest earning households, it would be worth $800. Canadians for Tax Fairness recommendation for a 33% windfall profits tax on profits in 2021–2023 would have raised over $50 billion, or $3,000 per household.
25. Central Banking for All
The bottom line here is that a central bank has the power to create money, but for use only in an emergency, such as Covid, or the 2008 financial collapse. Central bankers must be cautious that doing so will not cause inflation, which will not happen if an economy has unemployed workers and untapped resources. In 2008, central banks created money to bail out the bankers – but they could equally have used it to bail out the ten million families in America who lost their homes. So here’s the important message: central banks could also create money to tackle the affordable housing crisis and the climate crisis. They could also underwrite loans to address these crises, reducing interest to 2% or 3%.
In Conclusion: How can affordability be achieved?
Firstly, by reaching out to people, so that they understand the possibilities. Secondly, by organizing, to win elections, win progressive majorities, and form the government. And thirdly, by raising taxes.
In 2026, the combined fortunes of the 500 richest people on the planet reached $12 trillion – that’s $1,500 for everyone on Earth. In 2025 alone they added $2.2 trillion to their wealth, enough to lift 3.8 billion people out of poverty. In Britain, just fifty families hold more wealth than 50% of the entire population. Taken as a whole, the 400 richest Americans pay a lower rate of tax than the bottom 50% of income earners.
When Britain needed to defeat Hitler in 1940 the Treasury did not say, “Sorry, we can’t afford the tanks.” They did whatever it took. When America joined the war in 1942 they increased government expenditures to 79% of GDP. Today, facing a climate crisis just as dire, plus a biodiversity crisis, a housing crisis, a poverty and debt crisis, and a crisis of hatred, resentment and mistrust, we need similarly to do whatever it takes.
We have to make those who are super wealthy pay more taxes. Historically, elites have always resisted paying taxes, but historically people have also organized to elect governments that govern for the many, not the few.
For America, Americans for Tax Fairness has identified 40 reforms that would reduce inequality and pay for a new social contract. Elizabeth Warren’s proposed wealth tax of 2% on assets above $50 million, 3.5% above $1 billion, affecting just 75,000 households, would yield an estimated $375 billion a year.
For Britain, the Taxing Wealth Report identifies tax changes that could raise £90 billion a year, affecting just the top 10% of earners. Do higher taxes cause millionaires to board their yachts and leave? The data says no, that for every 10% increase in taxation, only 1% of British millionaires leave the country. 99% remain. They prefer to stay in the land they love, where their friends live.
For Canada, the Parliamentary Budget Office has estimated that a 3% tax on people with a net wealth over $10 million and 5% over $20 million would yield $16.5 billion a year. Others estimate that a 1% tax on net wealth above $10 million, 2% above $50 million, and 3% above $100 million would raise $40 billion a year.
I started with Robert Reich, so let’s end with him. Inequality.org, in which he plays a leading role, states it very clearly:
Tax the Rich, Save the World. It’s That Simple.
Guy Dauncey lives on Vancouver Island, in Canada. He is co-founder of the West Coast Climate Action Network, the BC Sustainable Energy Association, the Victoria Car Share Cooperative, and the charity Prevent Cancer Now. He is the author or co-author of eleven books, including Cancer: 101 Solutions to a Preventable Epidemic; The Climate Challenge: 101 Solutions to Global Warming; and Journey to the Future – A Better World is Possible, a novel set in the year 2032. His next book, The Economic of Kindness: The End of Capitalism, the Birth of a New Ecological Civilization, will be published in 2026. His personal website is www.thepracticalutopian.ca