The Great Extraction: Why None of Us Are Getting Ahead and What to Do About It.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the bottom 40% of American households take home only 11% of the national income, driving 21% of all national consumer spending— and spending nearly double our share of the national wealth— while relying on compounding debt to bridge the gap.

DirectingIf we could direct our cash flow toward an independentour own community, we could turn our income, federal benefits, and local spending into a wealth-building cycle, capitalizing and capitalize a village that builds wealth and supports itself, without the broken infrastructure and system that hinders financial growth. 

We can build, own, and run a village on a virtuous cycle—Villages That Build Themselves (VTBT). 

Why Villages That Build Themselves Work

A VTBT works because the people whothat want to live in the villagethere can organize it, fund it, and build it themselves. They’ll create, creating jobs, businesses, and a functioning economy that benefits everyone in the village.

Additionally, it builds wealth, and resilience, and aids the United States economy by way of lower taxes, and shared infrastructure, and resources, just to name a few. Residents ofPeople in the village wouldwill still have individual property rights, and spend U.S. currency, and buildbuilding wealth by directing spending towards the village and its residents rather than multinational corporations. Ideally, 80% of village spending will be local, including by way of housing, clothing, and food processing.

The aim is not to be totally cut off from the global economy but to optimize products and services among the village, allowing the VTBT to act as a resilient node in the global supply chain while building the wealth in the village. The VTBT economy is based on locally owned, free market capitalism. While the village systems reinforce each other, they can be modified, scaled, included or excluded to meet real- world needs.

Where to Build a Village

In Atlanta, the bottom 20% of households earn $12,000 per year, while the average cost for vacant residential land in the city can cost $500,00 per acre. Between salary, benefits, and funds spent on education, this percentage of households direct about $100 million every year into the economy. A VTBT, designed to have around 5,000 residents, can direct those funds into the village, while creating a more efficient, less expensive infrastructure. This allows, allowing residents to live on less and build more wealth. A VTBT builds its local economy and environment so that a $12,000 salary buys more health, time, and safety than a $100,000 salary does in the suburbs of the wider economy.

First Steps to Creating Villages That Builds Themselves

The village starts building itself with a charter school, and. The crucial part of the school is it must source all necessary employees and supplies from within the village, including staff, furniture, and other necessitiesteachers and other staff hire people within the village, it must buy from within the village as much as possible, and it must ultimately locate within the village. These are the jobs the village needs to grow, and the purchasing power the village needs to start businesses. Not only does this create more local jobs, it allows the students in the school to visit, learn, and get apprenticeships in local production companies.

 This is a level of project- based learning that exceeds traditionalanything a traditionally siloed school educationcould provide. Combined with a traditional school curriculum, this would not just be about teaching facts or test-taking but about learning problem-solving, creativity, and the ability to transfer book knowledge to real-world situations.

TheA VTBT is centered centers figuratively and literally around a charter schoolCharter School, a Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC), and a Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI). They are the pillars of the village, andfirst parts of the village physically and economically. The good news is they likelyprobably already exist in your current community and have an interest in helping you. The VTBTWe can work with existing organizations to start building itsour resources, but.  U ultimately, we will want these organizations willto be owned by and located in the village and located in the village to make sure all of the goals align. If that’s not possible,we can’t find partners to work with we can start the village residents will need to create and build these organizations, and perhaps,  from scratch.  Until we are ready to build the physical spaces of the village, we can rent external space in the interim. 

Building theThe charter school is first because it provides the jobs to the residents, necessarythe machinery, and the contracts to grow the village economy, capturing.  It is the first $14 millionM of village spending that the village captures. It is also first because it provides and providing the social nucleus of the village. The school should serves the entire village, providing community centers for the elderly, a civic hub for theaters and performance, and access to makerspaces for the general population. This not only helps the community but the students by prioritizing . Cultures that prioritize school and learning that produce the highest performing -students in the world. Placing the school at the center of the village creates that.

Village Healthcare System

The healthcare system in the village will require skilled professionals, training, and certification for , including doctors, lawyers, engineers and others. Over the firsta ten yearsdecade, it is reasonable that people within the village can get the education, training, and certifications needed to fill those roles, but in the early stages, finding professionals willing to accept a higher quality of life for reduced earning power is paramount.

Healthcare is enormously expensive in the United StatesUS. For many of the working poor, healthcareit is funded or subsidized by the government. A VTBT needs to both to capture those funds and drive down the overall cost of healthcare. To do thatboth, the villagea VTBT needs to provide 80% to 90% of the healthcare needs locally through a combination of an FQHC, a 15-bed hospital, a nursing home, a pharmacy, and a dentist. By integrating these components into the village, anytime a resident uses healthcare, the funds remain within the villagestay internal.

Village Banking System

A Community Development Financial Institution, or CDFI, allowswill allow the village to capitalize on the captured wealth from the local school and healthcare system, granting. This will allow a VTBT to access CDFI grants and other federal funds to provide loans against the village’s cash flow shown by the people that work at the school and the clinic. This is the capitalization that capital will be used to build the housing, infrastructure, and local buildings for the school, clinic, and other businesses in the village.  A locally owned CDFI ensuresis required to make sure that the economy of the village is protected from the profit motives and market shocks from the external world. A banker in the village understands what it takes to make surethat their goal is to make sure that businesses succeed versus turning a larger profit.

The CDFI workswill work with a Village Holding Company, which is that would be responsible for maintaining and growing the wealth generated by the village economy. This wealth permitsallows the village to invest in businesses in the exterior economy and provides a backstop in case of a large-scale disaster, like crop failures or equipment failures within the village. Additionally,It also is the system that allows village residents can buildpeople in the village to build individual wealth with this economic model, and they can also invest in the village they’ve built via stock shares, which. Residents have shares in the village that they built. This allows individuals to own and grow wealth that they can take with them if they choose to leave.

Building a Sustainable Village Economy and Wealth

Another benefit of the VTBT is that it containsWithin the village, we would have a variety of businesses, just like in the wider economy. Some of these businesses would be run by the village, such as. These would be the utility servicesutilities, bankingthe bank, the building trust, and the charter school. Some of these may alsowould be co-ops that would be run by their workers and supported by the village.; these would be businesses like the This would include wood shops, the metal shops, the bakeries, and the butcher shops, and more. That may also includeSome of these would be privately owned businesses, started by residents of the village, all of whom  that people wanted to start. All of these would have access to capital from the village bank. 

The VTBT is less expensive to build, making. This reduction in cost is the base of what will make this village it more affordable while, producing but a strong local economy with  compounding tangible compounds the benefits. As more people in the village residents start businesses, the local economy will grow.,  Mmore products will be produced, locally using cheaper  and rent, and local labor, andand reducing the  cost of living costs will deflatein the village. Therefore, village revenue remains local, andThis would let money that comes into the village stay in the village to generate generating long-term wealth and financial stability for the village and its residents. to the village.

A VTBT will be dDesigned around making $12,000 a year a comfortable living wage, the VTBT. This will allow people also creates a feasible living for those relying on Social Security benefits. In turnto live in the village comfortably, this allows extended families with retired family members cangrandparents to move easily transition into village life,in easily. This will maintain maintaining the permeable boundary they haveit has  with the outside world. This allows anyone that has an external job to live in the VTBT comfortably.

Conclusion

By stripping away the worst parts of our lives, the commutes, the loneliness, and the high rents, we find we can reduce the base workweek could be as low asto 25 hours a week. Village residents will have  Anybody working within the village gets an automatic  automatically reclaim fifteen15 hours pera week of freedom back in their lives to be parents, to be spouses, to be friends, hobbyists, and whatever they needto work on their hobbies, to be entrepreneurs, and to live a more fulfilling lifebecome the best person they can be.

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