Minnesota's future — the thought process: How to get to a creative, cooperative society

Opinion editor's note: Star Tribune Opinion publishes a mix of national and local commentaries online and in print each day. (To contribute, click here.) This article is a response to Star Tribune Opinion's June 4 call for submissions on the question: "Where does Minnesota go from here?"

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We've been invited by Star Tribune Opinion to weigh in on Minnesota's future, but first, a little reframing:

To stock those laboratories, let's start by demanding from the federal government the effective use of "the people's money." No more debt-ceiling Kabuki; no more pleading federal poverty; no more lying to the American people about where our money comes from. The Congress must cease creating the people's money to favor merchants of death over the public welfare.

Let's start a movement to demand direct annual grants to every state based on population, starting at $1,000 per person as counted in the 2020 census. No strings attached. That would cost a trivial $332 billion each year; Minnesota would get $5.7 billion. Let our elected representatives fight over that, with one rule: that the poorest in society are served first.

Why claim that $332 billion is trivial? Because it's less than the Federal Reserve spent in 2008 alone to cover the gambling debts of one crooked bank — Citigroup. According to journalist Pam Martens writing at her blog, Wall Street On Parade, in 2012, that was "almost one-third of a trillion dollar commitment to a bank that had $2 trillion on its balance sheet, $1.3 trillion off its balance sheet, zero confidence in the marketplace, a serial history of egregious market violations and a stock value of $20.5 billion … at this point, the SEC knew Citigroup was lying about its exposure to subprime debt."

And never mind the ongoing obscenity of our $1.4 trillion annual "defense" spending (including Homeland Security, Veterans Affairs and Energy Department nuclear costs). Excepting veterans' benefits, it is the only acceptable and necessary place to cut federal budgets.

We've been invited by the opinion editors to think: "Tug of war, the literal activity, is a game of momentum and attrition … . One by one, participants are pulled over the center line — or maybe into a mud pit in the middle … . Eventually, one team's resources are exhausted. Then everyone retires to the big tent for a hot dog or an Impossible Burger." [Opinion editor's note: We also suggested metaphorically modifying the game so that the competing teams must also work toward a collaborative goal, or else the only reward will be mushy vegetables.]

But it's not a game; it's life and death.

Let's adopt a graffito from the 1968 student uprisings in Paris as our state's guidepost: "Be reasonable; demand the impossible."

I would also add, "Never settle for overcooked asparagus."

William Beyer is a writer in St. Louis Park.