The Opportunity Economy Toolkit: What You Need to Unleash America's Promise

How to build a system where opportunity, upward mobility, freedom, and dignity are guaranteed

Quick Reference: The 10 Tools

This is your at-a-glance guide to all 10 tools. Each tool is explained in detail in the main essay below—use this reference to quickly find the tool you need or to share specific tools with others.

How to Use These Tools:

• A la carte: Each tool works independently—use Tools 1, 2, 3, 6 individually in conversations to counter specific arguments

• In combination: Use Tools 5, 7, 8 together for comprehensive policy proposals; combine Tools 1-4 for complete system analysis

• Strategically: Start with Tools 1-4 to decode the system, apply Tools 5-8 for reform solutions, then use Tools 9-10 for action

• Modularly: Share individual tools or forward entire sections to address specific situations

Immediate Action: Contact your representative this week using Tool 9 language about implementing these reforms.

Get involved:

• Join: chevan.info/discord - Discuss tools and build the Opportunity Economy

• Track: chevan.info/github - Follow policy progress

Decode the System (Tools 1-4)

1. Economic Language Decoder - See through "fiscal responsibility" and other propaganda

2. Individual Responsibility + Systematic Support - How the best systems enhance personal agency

3. Economic Security = Political Power - Why security enables rather than undermines agency

4. Understanding the Wealth Extraction Machine - How legal frameworks transfer wealth upward

Reform the System (Tools 5-8)

5. Economic Security Programs - Job guarantees and universal basic assets for all

6. Counter "We've Tried This Before" - Why modern capabilities make this different

7. Monetary System Reform - Separate spending from debt operations

8. Market Structure Reform - Restore competition through antitrust

Change the System (Tools 9-10)

9. Deploy Tools Strategically - How to use these tools with representatives and community

10. Build Local Base for National Change - Organize locally to build power for federal victories

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Choose Your Side in America's Eternal Fight

America will always fight between those who want exclusionary systems that concentrate wealth and power, and those who want inclusive systems that create opportunity for everyone. This struggle is eternal, and some Americans actively oppose genuine opportunity because they benefit from current wealth extraction.

The fight against authoritarianism and technofeudalism requires using political power transparently, honestly, and inclusively—the opposite of how concentrated wealth operates. This must be a fight for national power, not withdrawal to local systems. We need strong, well-resourced national systems that can compete with and defeat concentrated corporate power.

This toolkit is for those who believe America should guarantee that anyone willing to work can build a better life, where innovation flourishes because people have security to take risks, and where democracy works because economic security enables real participation.

Core Philosophy: Three Principles

The Opportunity Economy rests on three foundational principles:

1. Competition cures all - Genuine market competition drives innovation, efficiency, and fairness. The cure for concentrated corporate power isn't less competition, but more—markets where everyone can actually compete.

2. Capitalism and democracy are two great tastes that taste great together - These systems work best in combination when markets are genuinely competitive and people have real economic security. Economic freedom and political freedom flourish together.

3. Enable upward mobility for those who want it, dignified life for those who can't or won't - Our system should provide genuine opportunity and incentive for those who aspire to climb higher, while guaranteeing dignity and security for those with different capabilities or life choices.

These principles distinguish the Opportunity Economy from both pure free-market ideology and traditional progressive frameworks by recognizing that true freedom requires both competitive markets and economic security.

Breaking Free from Fifty Years of Economic Mythology

Deliberate conditioning over fifty years delivered Americans into technofeudalism—a system where platform monopolies and financial control rule over economically fragile populations. This conditioning made us accept artificial limits while wealth concentrated among elites who use economic desperation to maintain political control.

But the foundation is cracking. People increasingly see how the budget enables corporate socialism while working people face "fiscal responsibility" constraints. They understand that rugged individualism for the many funds comfortable collectivism for the few.

The key to liberation is economic literacy that enables political creativity. Economics lacks basic scientific validity and often functions as ideology disguised as objective analysis. Once we see this clearly, we can think creatively about what's actually possible rather than accepting artificial constraints presented as natural laws.

The systematic wealth extraction working people experience isn't natural—it's the direct result of specific laws that create artificial constraints while allowing unlimited corporate welfare. This means we have the tools to win. We can end technofeudal control and build the Opportunity Economy by changing the legal framework that currently serves concentrated wealth at working people's expense.

The Opportunity Economy asks what legal reforms deploy our real resources effectively. We can build the leading economic system that enables American values: plurality, diversity, freedom, and opportunity. This system must be designed and fought for because many Americans oppose it. For those who want it, it is absolutely possible.

Decode the System: Build Your Analytical Foundation

Before you can reform the system, you need to understand how it actually works versus how it's presented. These four tools give you the analytical foundation to see through economic mythology and understand the legal machinery that creates systematic wealth extraction.

Tool 1: The Economic Language Decoder

Economic language has been weaponized to constrain imagination about what's possible. Most economic discussions use coded language designed to make us accept artificial limitations while corporate welfare appears unlimited.

Decode the common mythology:

• "We can't afford it" = "We choose not to prioritize it"

• "Fiscal responsibility" = "Responsibility to wealthy donors, not working people"

• "Structural unemployment" = "Unemployment that serves corporate interests"

• "Market efficiency" = "Efficient at extracting wealth, not serving people"

• "Natural market forces" = "Rules we wrote to benefit concentrated wealth"

The truth they hide: In our monetary system, the constraint isn't money—it's imagination. We have unlimited fiscal capacity to invest in whatever serves our productive potential. The question is whether we organize that capacity for shared prosperity or let it serve concentrated wealth extraction.

Once you decode economic mythology, a world of possibilities opens up. Tool 2 shows how to counter the most damaging false choice used to prevent systematic support.

Tool 2: Individual Responsibility and Systematic Support Work Together

The wealth extraction system's most effective weapon is the false choice between individual responsibility and systematic support. The truth is that the best systems enhance individual responsibility by removing systematic barriers to genuine agency.

The GI Bill created America's middle class boom by giving veterans systematic support for education, housing, and business formation. These programs succeeded because they rewarded individual effort with genuine opportunity while removing systematic barriers to advancement.

The Opportunity Economy operates identically: it doesn't eliminate consequences—it removes systematic barriers so when people work hard and take responsibility, they have genuine opportunities to succeed. Job guarantees give workers power to reject exploitative employers. Universal basic assets provide security that enables entrepreneurial risks and education without facing homelessness.

This approach recognizes a fundamental reality: capitalism is a system where most entrepreneurial risks fail regardless of effort or character. This makes systematic support essential for enabling innovation, not preventing it. Denmark has higher business formation rates than the U.S. precisely because their safety net allows people to take entrepreneurial risks without risking homelessness.

Use this tool to show how systematic support creates more genuine individual opportunity and agency, not less. The goal is enabling responsibility from security rather than desperation. Tool 3 reveals why this security actually creates political power.

Tool 3: Economic Security Creates Political Power

Here's the insight that changes everything: economic fragility makes people politically exploitable, while economic security creates genuine political power and enables real personal agency. The current system maintains artificial scarcity because desperate people accept bad deals and can't resist exploitation.

When people struggle to meet basic needs, they can't:

• Take time off work to vote or attend civic meetings

• Risk jobs by organizing or speaking out against unfair treatment

• Turn down exploitative employment because they need any income

• Invest in education or skills that improve bargaining position

• Support candidates who might anger employers

• Take entrepreneurial risks that could lead to better opportunities

When everyone has economic security:

• Workers can reject bad jobs and demand fair treatment

• People can participate fully in democratic governance without fear of retaliation

• People can invest in education, training, and business opportunities

• Communities can organize for their interests without corporate intimidation

• Entrepreneurs can take risks and innovate without facing catastrophic failure

• Citizens become free to vote their values rather than their fears

This is why the wealthy fight economic security programs—not because they're expensive, but because they shift political power from concentrated wealth to working people. Economic security transforms the entire political system by making democratic participation possible for everyone, not just those with existing wealth.

Economic security enables rather than undermines personal agency by providing the foundation for genuine choice and responsibility. Tool 4 explains why this artificial scarcity exists by revealing the legal machinery that creates systematic wealth extraction.

Tool 4: Understanding the Wealth Extraction Machine

The technofeudal transformation didn't happen by accident. It's the result of legal frameworks designed to systematically transfer wealth upward while making working people believe scarcity is natural and inevitable. Understanding this machinery is essential to dismantling it.

Laws written for the gold standard era force artificial limits on public investment while allowing unlimited corporate welfare. Most people don't realize that businesses get immediate tax deductions for equipment purchases while working people get nothing for job training or education. A corporation can deduct a private jet's full cost in year one, but a worker paying for technical certification gets no equivalent benefit.

The legal machinery of wealth extraction includes:

• Second Liberty Bond Act of 1917: Created artificial debt constraints that enable political theater around helping working people

• Public Debt Acts of 1939 and 1941: Force "borrowing" procedures that make public investment appear costly while corporate subsidies appear unlimited

• Depreciation rules: Allow asset owners to extract value from communities while working people pay the real costs

• Federal Reserve Act of 1913: Operates under assumptions that prevent coordination between fiscal and monetary policy for public benefit

These legal advantages compound over generations, creating the wealth concentration that enables political capture while working people fall further behind despite working harder. This is the legal foundation that makes technofeudal control possible.

But here's the crucial insight: because this system is built through laws, it can be dismantled through changing laws. Tools 5-8 provide the specific reforms needed to dismantle this machinery and build the Opportunity Economy framework.

Reform the System: Policy Solutions for the Opportunity Economy

Understanding how the wealth extraction machine works legally reveals exactly what needs to change. These four tools provide the comprehensive policy framework for dismantling that machinery and building economic security that creates shared prosperity.

Tool 5: Economic Security Programs

Economic security is the foundation of political power, genuine market competition, and personal agency. This labor policy framework creates conditions for genuine economic freedom.

Universal Job Guarantee Involuntary unemployment makes working people desperate enough to accept exploitative deals—the foundation of technofeudal control. But unemployment isn't natural or necessary—it's artificially maintained to keep wages low and workers compliant.

Legal Action: Establish a legal right to employment with the federal government as employer of last resort for anyone willing to work. This eliminates involuntary unemployment and gives workers permanent bargaining power against exploitative employers.

What This Guarantees: Every American can pursue their highest potential without fear of destitution. Workers become genuinely free to choose their best opportunities rather than accepting whatever they can get.

Universal Basic Assets This isn't about passive receipt of government services—it's about access to fundamental economic building blocks that enable opportunity and mobility. Universal Basic Assets means everyone has access to the economic foundations needed for genuine freedom: healthcare access (health asset), education access (human capital asset), housing assistance (housing stability asset), and democratized access to capital (financial assets).

Legal Action: Create legal entitlements to healthcare, education, childcare, housing assistance, and democratized capital access as universal basic assets—the fundamental economic building blocks everyone needs for opportunity.

What This Guarantees: Economic security gives working people the power to reject bad jobs, organize for better conditions, start businesses, pursue education, care for family members, and participate meaningfully in democratic governance. When people have assets, they have power.

These programs apply the insights from Tools 1-4: they remove the artificial constraints that create false choices between responsibility and support, understanding that security creates rather than undermines political power by dismantling the legal machinery that extracts wealth. But critics will inevitably attack these programs, which Tool 6 helps you counter.

Tool 6: Counter the "We've Tried This Before" Argument

After proposing economic security programs, critics will claim "we've tried government programs since the 1950s and they failed." Counter this myth with historical accuracy and show why modern capabilities make this fundamentally different.

The Historical Reality: Most federal spending growth went to defense and security, not social support. Meanwhile, systematic corporate advantages expanded dramatically—tax code changes favoring asset owners, trade policies enabling offshoring, and financial deregulation that privatized gains while socializing losses. We've had corporate socialism for decades while working people operate under artificial constraints.

Why This Time Is Different:

• Modern Monetary Understanding: 1960s programs operated under gold standard constraints and limited understanding of fiat monetary systems. We now understand how government spending actually works and can design programs accordingly

• Advanced Information Systems: We have data analytics, digital platforms, and information systems that enable more efficient and effective program delivery

• Decades of Learning: We have 60+ years of experience with what works and what doesn't, including successful models from other countries

• Different Economic Context: We're building 21st century economic security systems designed for a modern fiat currency economy, not repeating 1960s-style programs

Evidence Shows Systematic Support Works When Properly Designed:

• Germany combines strong worker protections with world-class manufacturing competitiveness

• The GI Bill created unprecedented prosperity through systematic support for education, housing, and business formation

The "Golden Age" Survivorship Bias: Part of the "we've tried this before" narrative reflects survivorship bias—the system worked for the people it worked for, but excluded many others. Being more inclusive and diverse makes the economy and country stronger by ensuring all ideas compete for their place in the marketplace of ideas, values, and production. When systematic barriers prevent people from participating fully, we lose their innovations, skills, and contributions. True competition requires everyone having genuine opportunity to compete.

Use this tool to reframe the debate: we're not asking to repeat 1960s programs that operated under gold standard constraints with primitive information systems. We're building modern economic security systems that leverage our current understanding of monetary systems, advanced technology, and decades of policy learning.

Understanding why modern economic security programs are different requires recognizing how our monetary system has fundamentally changed since the gold standard era, which Tool 7 addresses.

Tool 7: Monetary System Reform

Since 1971, when we stopped backing dollars with gold, the U.S. government creates money when it spends and destroys money when it collects taxes. This means the government doesn't need to "find" money the way families or businesses do—it can create money for any purpose that doesn't exceed our real productive capacity.

Yet we still operate under laws written when dollars were backed by gold and the government actually had to borrow scarce resources. These outdated monetary policy frameworks create artificial limits on helping working people while placing no limits on corporate subsidies.

Reform 1: Separate Government Spending from Debt Operations Currently, deficit spending automatically triggers debt issuance, but these can be separate operations that are actively managed rather than mechanically linked.

Legal Action: Repeal the Second Liberty Bond Act of 1917, Public Debt Acts of 1939 and 1941, and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023. Restructure Treasury operations so that government spending and debt issuance become separate, actively managed functions. Conduct a comprehensive review of all hard money era financial laws for similar artificial constraints. Crucially, this review must include a broad coalition of experts beyond the neoclassical and mainstream economists who created these constraints—including legal scholars, historians, public policy experts, and economists who understand how fiat monetary systems actually operate.

What This Guarantees: Congress must debate actual priorities rather than hiding behind fake financial limits. Government spending serves public purpose while debt issuance serves monetary policy goals. A systematic review by diverse experts ensures we eliminate all gold standard era constraints.

Reform 2: Democratize Money Creation to Serve Public Purpose Private banks profit from creating money while working people pay interest on mortgages and loans. The Federal Reserve operates under assumptions that prevent effective coordination of monetary policy for public benefit.

Legal Action: Update the Federal Reserve Act to enable coordination between fiscal and monetary policy for full employment and economic security. Establish public banking options to democratize access to credit.

What This Guarantees: Money creation serves public purpose rather than private profit, enabling the systematic investment needed for shared prosperity.

Monetary system reform enables Tool 5's economic security programs by removing artificial financial constraints, but it must be combined with Tool 8's market structure reform to prevent concentrated corporate power from capturing the benefits.

Tool 8: Market Structure Reform

True market competition requires preventing monopolistic concentration and ending the systematic legal advantages that transfer wealth upward. This antitrust and tax reform framework restores genuine market competition to ensure fairness and opportunity.

Restore Genuine Market Competition Monopolistic concentration across industries eliminates the competition that drives innovation and fair pricing. When few companies control entire markets, they manipulate prices, suppress wages, extract wealth from communities, and prevent new competitors. Competition is the cure for concentrated corporate power.

Legal Action: Strengthen and enforce antitrust laws to prevent monopolistic concentration and restore genuine market competition across all sectors of the economy.

What This Guarantees: Markets that serve consumers and workers rather than extracting wealth for concentrated corporate power. Competition drives innovation, fair pricing, and opportunities for entrepreneurs and small businesses to thrive.

End Systematic Wealth Extraction Through Tax Reform Depreciation rules systematically transfer wealth upward while working people face constraints on basic services. Recent examples like 100% bonus depreciation for corporate jets show how corporations and wealthy individuals get immediate tax advantages while working people face "fiscal responsibility" constraints on healthcare, education, and housing assistance. This creates the generational wealth concentration that enables political capture and prevents genuine market competition.

Legal Action: Reform depreciation schedules and tax rules to prevent systematic wealth extraction, ensuring that any corporate tax benefits come with proportionally greater benefits for working people.

What This Guarantees: A legal framework that serves shared prosperity rather than wealth concentration, breaking the cycle of economic capture that enables technofeudal control while creating genuine market fairness.

This completes the comprehensive policy framework: economic security programs (Tool 5) provide the foundation for political power and genuine choice, supported by modern monetary understanding (Tool 7) that removes artificial constraints and market structure reform (Tool 8) that prevents concentrated wealth from capturing the benefits. Tools 9-10 show you how to deploy this complete framework strategically to make these reforms reality.

Change the System: Strategic Action for the Opportunity Economy

With a complete understanding of how the system works and a comprehensive reform framework, these final tools show you how to deploy everything strategically to build the movement that makes the Opportunity Economy possible.

Tool 9: Deploy These Tools Strategically

Your role in building the Opportunity Economy starts with deploying these tools strategically in every conversation and interaction.

In Daily Conversations:

• Use Tool 1's decoder when you hear "fiscal responsibility"—ask "responsibility to whom?"

• Apply Tool 2 when people claim economic security undermines responsibility—show how systematic support actually enhances individual agency

• Deploy Tool 3 to help people understand that economic security creates rather than undermines political power and personal agency

• Use Tool 4 to explain how specific legal frameworks systematically transfer wealth upward—help people understand their struggles aren't personal failures but the result of designed wealth extraction

• Present Tool 5's programs as empowerment that gives people the foundation they need to exercise genuine agency and build wealth

• Counter attacks with Tool 6's historical accuracy about why modern economic security programs are fundamentally different from 1960s-era programs

• Explain Tool 7's monetary reforms that remove artificial constraints and Tool 8's market competition restoration

With Your Representatives: Contact them with this specific language: "I support implementing the Opportunity Economy reforms that work for working people. Why can we afford unlimited corporate welfare but claim we can't afford job guarantees and universal basic assets? I demand monetary system reform, economic security programs, and market structure reform that guarantee opportunity, mobility, freedom, and dignity for all Americans."

Make them explain their priorities using the tools you now have to see through their responses. Do this this week—don't wait.

In Candidate Evaluation: Support representatives who understand that artificial constraints serve concentrated wealth and commit to legal reforms that create shared prosperity. Support candidates who reject corporate PAC money and commit to working people's priorities. Use your tools to evaluate whether candidates really understand these issues or are just using progressive-sounding language to disguise the same old corporate-serving policies.

Tool 10 shows how this strategic deployment builds the organized local power needed for sustained national campaigns.

Tool 10: Build Local Base for National Change

Build local Opportunity Economy alternatives that demonstrate what's possible when artificial constraints are removed, but remember these efforts build the base for national change rather than replacing the need for federal power.

Support initiatives like community banks, worker cooperatives, and public broadband that prove democratic alternatives work. These local examples become powerful tools for showing people what the Opportunity Economy looks like in practice while building the organized base needed to win at the federal level.

Organize for Economic Security: Join union organizing efforts, support job guarantee pilot programs, advocate for universal basic assets at local and state levels, and build the movement for economic security that makes technofeudal exploitation impossible. Use the tools in this toolkit to help others understand why economic security creates political power and why building that security is essential for democratic participation.

Connect Your Local Work to the Complete Toolkit: Use Tools 1-4 to help people understand how their local struggles connect to national wealth extraction machinery. Use Tools 5-8 to show how local victories can be scaled to national policy. Use Tool 9's strategic deployment to build local political power that supports representatives who will implement these reforms nationally.

Your local organizing efforts become exponentially more effective when you can connect immediate struggles to the complete analytical framework (Tools 1-4) and comprehensive policy solutions (Tools 5-8). This transforms local organizing from defensive reaction to offensive strategy for building the Opportunity Economy.

The most powerful tool you have is helping others understand that they're not alone in this struggle and that the problems they face aren't individual failures but systematic design features that can be changed. When people understand that economic insecurity is artificially created to make them politically exploitable, they become ready to fight for economic security that creates genuine political power—first locally, then nationally.

Why These Tools Build the System America's Values Demand

The Opportunity Economy framework asks not whether we can afford to build a better society, but what legal reforms are needed to deploy our real resources and human capacity effectively. These tools create the conditions that guarantee opportunity, mobility, freedom, and dignity through practical implementation.

Universal economic security through job guarantees and universal basic assets provides the foundation that enables everyone to pursue opportunities rather than just survive. This unleashes human potential on a scale never before seen. When people aren't desperate, they can think long-term, take creative risks, and build for the future.

Genuine market competition emerges when breaking up monopolies and democratizing finance creates conditions for authentic entrepreneurship and innovation. Imagine thousands of new businesses competing with Amazon and Google on level playing fields. Small businesses can thrive when platform giants can't use predatory pricing to eliminate competitors. This creates an explosion of innovation and opportunity.

Democratic economic control means public investment in infrastructure, research, and development creates shared prosperity rather than concentrated wealth. Communities gain control over their economic development rather than being subject to corporate extraction. Local banks serve local prosperity. Infrastructure investment creates good jobs while building foundation for long-term growth.

Productive capacity maximization through full employment and infrastructure investment uses America's complete productive capacity rather than wasting resources to maintain artificial scarcity. This creates abundance that serves everyone rather than scarcity that serves elites.

These tools serve American strength across all political perspectives. For fiscal conservatives, these changes eliminate wasteful political theater while ensuring government resources create productive capacity rather than corporate welfare. For progressives, economic security for all Americans and genuine market competition create the foundation for social justice and democratic participation. For defense hawks, America cannot maintain global leadership with crumbling infrastructure and economically fragile population. For economic moderates, these policies create genuine market competition and innovation while providing the stability that enables long-term planning and investment.

The Opportunity Economy proves that when markets are genuinely competitive and people have real economic security, both economic freedom and political freedom flourish. When workers aren't desperate, they can negotiate fairly. When entrepreneurs aren't afraid of catastrophic failure, they can innovate boldly. When communities have economic security, they can participate meaningfully in democracy. This creates the conditions where both economic freedom and political freedom flourish together.

Your Complete Toolkit for Unleashing America's Promise

The legal changes required are straightforward: most of these reforms require simple legislative majorities, not constitutional amendments. They're updates to existing laws rather than entirely new frameworks. The timeline can be rapid: countries that remove artificial constraints can achieve rapid transformation. America achieved unprecedented prosperity when we used similar approaches during World War II mobilization and the post-war boom. The precedent exists: the New Deal created Social Security, unemployment insurance, massive infrastructure investment, and financial regulation that generated broad-based prosperity. We can complete that project with our current monetary capabilities.

You now have the complete toolkit for building the Opportunity Economy and unleashing America's promise. You understand how to decode economic language that constrains imagination (Tools 1-4). You know the comprehensive policy framework needed for reform (Tools 5-8). You have the strategic tools for making change happen (Tools 9-10). Most importantly, you understand how all these tools work together: analytical foundation enables comprehensive reform which enables strategic action.

The legal framework that creates systematic wealth extraction for working people while enabling technofeudal control can be changed through democratic action. We have the numbers, the evidence, and now you have the tools to build the Opportunity Economy. The artificial constraints can be removed. The system that guarantees opportunity, mobility, freedom, and dignity is achievable. The moment is now.

America will always be in political conflict between those who want exclusionary systems that concentrate wealth and power, and those who want inclusive systems that create opportunity, mobility, freedom, and dignity for everyone. The tools in this toolkit are for those who want the latter. Use them to build the system America's values demand—where everyone willing to work can build a better life, where innovation flourishes because people have genuine security, where democracy works because economic security enables real political participation.

The future is in our hands—and now you have the tools to build it.