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Celebrating America's 250th: Reclaiming the Pursuit of Happiness · We Can Do Better

• Fran Quigley: Hello and welcome to We Can Do Better, a podcast about ending poverty in our time. I'm your host, Fran Quigley, I'm a law professor. I go with my students every week to eviction court where we represent some of the millions of people in the United States who are facing the loss of their homes. Many of our clients, like so many others, are also forced to skip filling prescriptions. They often go hungry, despite living in the richest nation in the world. We can do better. So, this podcast lifts up the many people and organizations who are working to make housing, healthcare, and a decent life enforceable human rights for all. But today we're doing something a little bit different from usually welcoming an outside guest today on this episode for the week of the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. We're going to talk about an article that I recently published on the website Common Dreams. The title was Reclaiming the Pursuit of Happiness. Let's celebrate the Declaration's 250th by Ending Poverty. And we'll link the article in the show notes and in the Substack post announcing this episode. So to lead our conversation, we are pulling out from behind the scenes our podcast guru and producer, Jack Quigley. Jack is a journalist, he's a writer, and he's now the chief marketing officer for 14 regional construction and trade magazines. We are very fortunate to have his expertise in help right inside the family. And Jack is very experienced at conducting interviews. So what we're doing today is turning over the reins to him and he can turn the tables and have me answer questions rather than me being the one asking them. Jack, thank you for taking on the role today. Jack Quigley: Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here. Fran Quigley: Okay, well I am I am at your disposal. Jack Quigley: Okay, so I think we should start with y what do you think the pursuit of happiness means both in the context of when they created the declaration and today? Fran Quigley: Yeah, and and when they created the declaration, as I I mentioned in in the article, there's been a good amount of research of exactly what the founders and meant when they wrote the words pursuit of happiness and they promised to to guarantee it in the new country. I I lean really heavily on a a law professor, actually a law school dean at ironically the Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego. Her name's Linda Keller. She's written a lot about this, but other scholars have too. And they go back and look at the actual words of the founders, like Thomas Jefferson talked about the pursuit of happiness. Obviously, he was the main author of the declaration and a very flawed individual. Let's say that about pretty much every founder, ⁓ as a premise, but but talked about that when there is enormous ⁓ poverty, which we obviously have now, the government has the duty to act, the government has a duty to engage in aggressively progressive taxation. ⁓ Alexander Hamilton talked about the actual Constitution, the general welfare clause of the Constitution, which says that Congress shall have the power to lay and collect taxes to provide for the general welfare of the United States. That should mean economic needs. That should mean the government should take action to make sure there's not people who are homeless, that there are people who have ade everybody has adequate food, everyone has adequate health care. And there are 18th century governments who did provide. ⁓ assistance ⁓ directly. So this wasn't just an abstract idea for these founders. The the one who spoke most eloquently about it was Thomas Paine, who talked about that we should have support for families with young children, full employment, a basic income. And the quote that I mentioned in the in the article is that he said, it's not a charity but a right, not a bounty but justice that I'm pleading for. So that's what the pursuit of happiness meant to them. And of course You the second part of your question is what does it mean now? I I think we look around and we see that we have, you know, millions of people who don't have a place to stay, who are sleeping on the streets or sleeping in cars, sleeping under bridges. ⁓ we have million tens of millions of people who don't have access to health care, that are skipping prescription medicines, that are you know going without life saving care and and suffering and even dying as a result. ⁓ people who are hungry. That that's not Jack Quigley: Yeah. Fran Quigley: a recipe for pursuit of happiness. Just logic. ⁓ in the seventeen seventy six and twenty twenty six tells us that we are not guaranteeing the right to pursuit of happiness when we have this incredible widespread rampant poverty in the United States, especially when we can afford to to do it better. Jack Quigley: And I saw when I was researching the declaration a little bit that there were previous iterations that kinda mentioned property ⁓ instead of pursuit of happiness and Jefferson actually switched out property and state for that phrase. What do you think the significance of that is this context? Fran Quigley: Mm-hmm. Okay. Yeah, Yeah, I think that they certainly for Jefferson, who was, you know, very much a farmer and very much ⁓ and it equated wealth and survival really with owning real estate, with owning property on which a person could farm. ⁓ you know, the property and poverty were were hand in hand at the time. But by by adopting the term pursuit of happiness, which was used other times by other folks around that same area. It was more broad than that, right? It wasn't just like that everybody has the right to own property because that everybody has the right to pursuit of happiness means, you know, whatever that takes. But of course, in 1776, at least in Jefferson's idea and in a lot of agrarian politicians and philosophers of the time, it meant owning property. But we know now, and and I think they even knew then that that's not exactly an equal proposition. But pursuit of happiness is very broad. And it does mean of course that the the the broader freedoms to to speak and worship and and be free of government intrusion, but that's obviously not enough because if you are incredibly poor and struggling, then all of those rights are pretty meaningless. Jack Quigley: Could you talk a little bit about the connection between civil rights like voting and free speech to economic rights like housing and health care? Fran Quigley: Yeah. So United States is is almost unique globally and certainly unusual globally in that we are really focused on civil, so-called civil rights. And that's what's contained explicitly in our Constitution's Bill of Rights. And that is the right to free speech, as you mentioned, the the right to vote, the right to participate in the democracy, the right to be free from government intrusion. But globally, and frankly historically, those have not been this full scope of what Human rights are supposed to be and it's been recognized. As you mentioned, economic rights. So the idea that that there is a right that if a person cannot obtain housing on their own, the government has a duty to step in. ⁓ that if the person cannot obtain healthcare on own, the government has a duty to step in. And that's been recognized again for centuries and centuries as a companion to civil rights, and the idea that it's it's really is completely. useless to have the right to free speech if you can't survive because you can't afford your medicine. ⁓ even ⁓ Dr. King talked about the idea. He was very focused on economic rights in the last decade of his life, but he talked about after all those wonderful anti-segregation actions that they took, he said, well, what good is it to be able to sit at a lunch counter if you can't afford a hamburger? And and Franklin Roosevelt after ⁓ At the towards the end of the second world war, talked ⁓ about second ⁓ a second bill of rights, which encompassed economic rights to housing, health care, et cetera, and living wage. And he talked about the idea necessitus men are not free men, meaning that if you are unable to put food on the table, you are not enjoying all the freedoms. So ⁓ civil rights and economic rights in history and in the global community go hand in hand. In the US, we've kind of separated them. ⁓ a little more than I think that the founders intended us to do, and a little more than makes logical sense. And I think the separation really has been at the the top politician, ⁓ top of capital, ⁓ wealthy investors at such a level, the the most people in the United States and beyond see economic rights or civil rights is going hand in hand because it just it just makes total sense. Jack Quigley: So why do or guess not why, but how do you think that the civil and economic rights have kind of splintered off from each other since the declaration? Fran Quigley: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, there's a pretty important historical era where that split happened in the United States, and that was ⁓ at the end of World War II. And as I mentioned, Franklin Roosevelt in many ways is the father, our United States president, the father of economic rights at the national, at the international level, when he talked about the second Bill of Rights and said that the post-World War II order needed to ensure that everybody was adequately fed, housed, etc. ⁓ But When the United Nations was founded, when the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted with US leadership, Eleanor Roosevelt was an enormously important figure in the Declaration of Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which puts economic and and civil rights in companionship. The United States after that started to separate away the two and said, We are all about civil and political rights, but we're worried that economic rights Are quote unquote communism or socialism. So it was a little bit of a casualty of the Cold War of the United States and the Soviet Union being con ⁓ in contrast. But and then since then, I think it's been just ⁓ a little bit of a vestige of really wealthy interest pushing for now many decades to say that we don't want guarantees of housing, health care. living wage income, et cetera. And unfortunately, that pushes come from really wealthy corporate interests who want our people to be desperate. And we saw a little bit of that after the COVID pandemic when we had a lot of really terrific social programs, including the child tax credit expansions, ⁓ food stamp expansion, Medicaid expansion, stimulus money. And what happened was That a lot of corporate leaders and billionaires looked up, and there weren't people desperate enough to work that third shift at Hardy's, right? Our clients in eviction court were able to get by and pay their rent. We didn't have very many people getting evicted during that time because of the support that we were providing, which is frankly, I think, in line with what the founders wanted us to be doing. But when we took all those away again, by we mean the federal government took all those away again, then people were desperate enough to go take that $11. ⁓ job and leave their kids unfortunately unattended and just very desperate to to take any kind of work. So if you're a low wage employer, you like the status quo, you don't want guarantees of housing and healthcare. And unfortunately those low wage employers are enormously politically impactful because they put a lot of campaign money and lobbying money to to make things the way they are now Jack Quigley: So how can we stop that? What what what is at our disposal to kind of on the policy side prevent that from happening and implement these programs that we need? Fran Quigley: Yeah, I I think that what we've seen in the programs, and I mentioned the COVID era programs where we had a big expansion in response to the COVID pandemic of social programs, of of income support, of housing protections and and rent assistance. And what we saw is child poverty dropped in half. And so we know how to do this. We we know that we can expand these programs and we know we can make them better, but then they were not renewed even during the Biden administration. And then, of course, the one big beautiful bill act last summer, as we've seen in a previous episode of We Can Do Better. We had a ⁓ Catelyn Jocko of the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities talk about the SNAP benefits being cut. And unfortunately, that's true for Medicaid benefits as well, cut last summer. And and what's happened in the last few years is is a microcosm of what's happened for several decades now. So we expand social programs, we institute food stamps, ⁓ we expand housing assistance, we do a little healthcare expansion, maybe, and then another administration, another Congress comes and they cut it back. So in the short term, the answer is we know these programs work. We should expand them back again. But I'm calling for in the article and in other articles that I've written and actually a book project I'm working on is that we need to stop this dance. Is it toxic dance? It's we see our clients dealing with that. Is it the One year they're getting assistance, and next year, because of political winds, they're not. So if the United States followed the lead of the international community and ratified what's called the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the acronym is the ISCR. And that goes back to Franklin Roosevelt's call for a second Bill of Rights, which the rest of the world has heated and has signed onto this treaty, the ISCER Treaty, which does guarantee housing. Which does guarantee health care, which does guarantee a living age, and makes it a legally enforceable right, then we would stop this toxic dance of one step forward, two steps back, depending on who gets elected. I mean, hopefully that we'll have a different president and a different Congress soon enough, and that we'll see an expansion. But when folks who care about poor people are back in political power, which inshallah happens, right? It happens soon, ⁓ then That's what we need to do is make some permanent changes and and not just make temporary changes that'll get taken away the next time ⁓ a Trump type figure gets elected, because unfortunately that that is likely to happen again. So ⁓ so if we ratify the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, our clients who are getting evicted would have a legal right to housing. Right now, three out of every four people who are eligible for housing assistance don't get it because we don't fund it anymore. ⁓ they'd have a legal right to health care assistance. They'd have a legal right to food assistance if they need it. Again, most people aren't going to. Most people are going to provide their own housing and healthcare, et cetera. But but for those who can't, we'd have a safety net that's actually meaningful and real. In eviction court, you know, we run into folks all the time who, you know, we can work on the procedural issues and make sure the lease has been followed and adequate notices have been given. But what Almost everybody we see needs is they need more assistance with their housing, which is always connected to whether they need more assistance with healthcare and food because it's a zero sum game. And we don't have a legally enforceable right to those things now. And if we signed, if the United States ratified the ISPR, which we should do, and that would be a great way to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the declaration, then that legally enforceable right would would finally be in place. Jack Quigley: So am I understanding right the the Isker was born from Roosevelt? He created it. Fran Quigley: ⁓ it happened after Roosevelt the Franklin Roosevelt passed away, but he's the first one to at that era to articulate that we need ⁓ what he called a second Bill of Rights, an economic Bill of Rights, which frankly almost completely translates to the ISCR. So the ISCER came into effect after the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which again echoes what Roosevelt Franklin Roosevelt called for. He was dead by then. So Eleanor Roosevelt was the one from the US side leading that. And you can trace economic rights back a lot further than than Roosevelt because religious traditions have called for that. Various governments have had equally enforceable rights to housing and healthcare, et cetera, for for a long time. But Roosevelt in the modern era is really the first one and the most maybe the most powerful voice to articulate that we should have a right to housing, healthcare, ⁓ living wage, job, et cetera. So Yeah, it the ISCR is ironically a very American document, very US document. And we are the only nation, the only really industrialized nation that hasn't ratified it. And we're also, not coincidentally, an incredibly wealthy nation compared to these others. And we do such a horrible job of ensuring housing and healthcare. So ratifying the ISCR would not have an instantaneous effect of everybody being housed and have food and and healthcare, but it would it'd be a really important step in that direction and and a step that could be built on. Jack Quigley: Do have any examples of countries that have implemented the iSCR and maybe like specific programs that they have in place to ensure housing and healthcare and and incomes for their residents? Fran Quigley: Okay. Yeah. I had the opportunity when researching my my previous book, ⁓ Lessons from Eviction For my most recent book. ⁓ had the opportunity with with your mother ⁓ to go to Vienna and to interview folks there in a place that has essentially housing as a human right fully enforceable. And when I've talked with folks there, when I've talked to other folks in Northern Europe and Western Europe in particular. about what we're seeing in eviction court, they're they're literally uncomprehending because like, well, why don't those people just get housing? Why, you know, why doesn't they they don't why don't they get government housing? It's like, no, there's not enough government housing. Three out of every four families eligible for it don't get it. So you could essentially point to almost every other nation and say they do, especially a wealthy nation, they do better than us on housing. They do better than us, a lot better than us on healthcare. And providing essentially the equivalent to Medicare for All, which is still unfortunately just ⁓ a theory here in the United States. And but you can you so you can look to Canada for this robust universal healthcare system, and you can look to UK or France or Austria or Germany or Norway or what have you and find places that they're all they've all signed on to the Ice Ferm. It wasn't immediate as soon as they find sign onto the iceberg that they do better, but they ⁓ are committed to ⁓ providing to the basic needs for their citizens and their residents in a way that the United States isn't. I mean, we unfortunately we see it, we see it on our streets, we can see it in our communities, we see it in the emergency rooms, we see it in eviction court. We just have millions and millions of people we are leaving behind, and other nations don't do it. So it's it's unfortunately. very difficult to to find any other nation that's anywhere near us ⁓ that's wealthy in in Europe or North America in particular that that is allowing the kind of suffering that we're allowing. Jack Quigley: It's ⁓ it's interesting. Fran Quigley: Yeah, really. ⁓ Jack Quigley: say that or or ask where the money comes from to fund these programs and I mean like you said we're the wealthiest country in the world. Where would that money come from? How would we pay Fran Quigley: Mm-hmm. Well, listeners of the We Can Do Better podcast ⁓ will partly know that answer and will know even more of it because as our producer could tell us, we had a terrific conversation a couple of weeks ago ⁓ with Stephen Semmler, who is an arms industry researcher, and he outlined for one place where the money comes from, we we have ⁓ we're on the track to have a one point five trillion dollar military budget in the United States, which is more than the next nine countries in the in the Well, could buy if I've got that number right. And one and a half trillion dollars. And so what Steven ⁓ talked about is that he engaged in an exercise to say how else could we spend that $1.5 trillion? And with that money, we could provide housing for all. With that money, we could actually reissue s ⁓ stimulus checks. With that money, we could make sure Medicare for all was a reality. So if we just stopped spending the money on bombing people. Jack Quigley: One and a half once. Fran Quigley: Or preparing to bomb people and enriching ⁓ multinational arms ⁓ corporations, then the money's there as well. Now, and listeners will know that in a week or two after this episode airs, we're gonna have an interview with Ray Matoff. I'm excited about that. We are excited about that because Ray is a law professor, a tax law professor at Boston College, University School of Law, or Boston College School of Law. And Ray wrote a book recently, published a book called The Second Estate, How the Tax Code has Created an American Aristocracy. And she is among many people who have pointed out that to be rich in the United States essentially means you don't have to pay taxes. ⁓ we have allowed the tax code to be manipulated by wealthy interests to the point where people who are enormously wealthy, literally billions and billions of dollars of gains, and they don't pay taxes at all, or they pay very little taxes. And they definitely pay a far, far, far smaller percentage than working people. So that money is sitting there. It just needs to be taxed appropriately, the way it has been in in prior generations. During the Eisenhower Eisenhower era, ⁓ the top marginal tax rate, income tax rate was 91%, and now it's 37%. So Bernie Sanders has proposed, I think, making it 70%. And when people ch challenged him on, he said, look, I'm not much of a socialist compared to Eisenhower, because the Eisenhower era, we really did make the wealthy people pay their fair share, and that's been changed. So if we just stop using our tax dollars for for violence, ⁓ especially overseas, and if we stop using our tax dollars or are letting the wealthy get by with buying extra yachts instead of paying their fair share of taxes, ⁓ the money is clearly there. Jack Quigley: So where do we go? What do we how do we how do we fix this? What do we do? What's the timeline? Fran Quigley: Yeah, I think the timeline clearly is going to take ⁓ political will. That's the easy answer when you say you want to have a change. And we do not have a president ready to do that now, let's say in 2026, clearly. We don't have a Congress ready to do that now in 2026. So those need to change. ⁓ we we do need to have ⁓ folks elected and in power who give a damn about the fact that people are lined up in eviction court and record numbers and are on the streets and are hungry and going without health care. But when that happens, that does circle back to the ISE. Or when that happens, ⁓ the article argues, and other pieces I've written argue, and others believe this as well, certainly, that we need to make permanent changes. We need to make a change that can't just be taken away. Because I think clearly, if, for instance, Democrats control Congress and in the White House again, that we will see expansions in access to health care, food, hopefully housing, etc. And that's great. But if we wanna make that last, ⁓ we're gonna have to make it permanent. And if we make it permanent, we can do that by signing by ratifying the ISPR and making it a legal obligation for the United States to do what other countries already do. Jack Quigley: Why do you think previous attempts have focused more on sort of short term boosts instead of a a more permanent solution to to this? Fran Quigley: ⁓ that's a great question. I I'm not sure. I I know. I do think the ISCR has been, and even the idea of constitutional rights to housing, healthcare, et cetera, they have been demonized over the course of a few different generations by wealthy people, by wealthy corporate interests, as saying, ⁓ this is communism. ⁓ this is you're repeating what Soviet Russia did, et cetera. Now, a couple of things have changed. One is that there's that that the your generation is much more open to something called socialism or democratic socialism than than my generation has been. You certainly were born after all that Cold War rhetoric. So maybe you were more open to that. But I also think we've we've got the challenge of making the case that we can afford this, that it is consistent with American values. There's there's a lot of talk like, ⁓ this isn't American. That's not the way we do things because we're about pull yourself up by the bootstraps, capitalism, the Darwinian strongest survive. But that's not again, it's not it doesn't equate to and it doesn't line up with what the founders talked about when they talked about the pursuit of happiness. And it doesn't line up with the fact that the most untouchable program, the government program we have is social security. Social security social security is absolutely an ISCR term. We are already compliant with the ISCER in terms of Social Security. And it's known as the third rail of US politics because if you're running for election and you say you're going to get rid of Social Security, you touch it and you die. So we have Social Security, we have education, ⁓ which 50 different, you know, all 50 states have in our state constitutions the right to primary K through 12 education. And that is absolutely again an economic right that's contained in the iceberg. So we're partly there already. And those are enormously popular ⁓ with the United States people. And and also the ones that we don't do well now. If you if poll people, the polling has shown really consistently that people think housing is a human right, people think healthcare is a human right, but we have wealthy interests that have been pushing against that. So it's ⁓ you know, it's a that's a nice theme for the 250th, the be the people. I guess that's the constitution, not the declaration, but the ⁓ that we the people need to to actually wrestle control of that of that process back. And ⁓ even though the CEO of McDonald's wants people to be desperate enough to work for eleven, twelve dollars an hour ⁓ and the late shift, ⁓ we as a majority of the people want folks to be able to have living wages and healthcare and housing. Jack Quigley: Well, there's more of us than there are of them. Fran Quigley: Absolutely. Unfortunately, there's and a lot of us who are ⁓ either struggling to get by or or know others that are. So ⁓ the numbers are with us and hopefully the political climate will change. But when it happens, that's the that's the argument. Let's make it permanent, let's make it compliant with what those flawed individuals but flawed, but also with with some elements of genius individuals drafted 250 years ago. Jack Quigley: Alright, well, everyone should read my father's article on commandreams dot com titled Reclaiming the Pursuit of Happiness, Let's Celebrate the Declarations two hundred and fiftieth by ending poverty. Fran Quigley: Yeah. Well, thank you for the plug. ⁓ unfortunately it doesn't contribute to the family coffers because it's a free website and they don't pay me. But ⁓ but yeah, and we'll put the ⁓ the link in the show notes and in the sub stack ⁓ piece. And and fortunately or unfortunately you you you folks can choose. ⁓ we'll probably talk about this again because it's something I've been working on and and working on a book about. And and I'd love to see anti-poverty organizations push it. as a priority. ⁓ Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, AOC has proposed it in prior sessions of Congress, saying that the Senate should ratify the iceberg. So hopefully ⁓ when the political winds shift, it'll be more of a conversation. Jack Quigley: That actually brings up a question that I was thinking about. Besides AOC, are there other politicians that have promoted the iSCR or talked about it at all? Fran Quigley: Yeah. I think Not recently. And that's ⁓ something that that hopefully articles like this and conversations like this will help. I think that a lot of politicians would be in favor of this, but this has been off the table for a half century. So President Jimmy Carter signed the ICR for the United States in 1977, but to become law, it has to be ratified by the Senate. And so they had some hearings in the years after 1977, and it did not get ratified, and then has been, I think, one. One person who wrote about it said it's in a in a dusty filing bin in the US Senate ever since then. So we're trying to pull it out of the dusty ⁓ bin. And I do think you'd see a lot of other folks. Again, we're seeing just this week some some real ⁓ exciting electoral wins by democratic socialists. This is completely in line with what ⁓ Democratic Socialist agenda is, what the DSA has argued for, et cetera. And so hopefully. When we talk about we need more housing, healthcare, living wage, et cetera, we can talk about the ISCR being the instrument that makes sure that's ⁓ that's real, it's permanent, and it's enforceable. Jack Quigley: Excited, I'm hopeful. Fran Quigley: Good. That's that's the that's the goal. It doesn't ⁓ that's the whole idea of we can do better title, right? Is that ⁓ we don't just despair. There's plenty to be depressed about, but let's not despair about it, right? Okay, should I take over of the take back control of the podcast to close out? So, Dek, thank you for stepping in to host today. Thank you for making the podcast happen. ⁓ I've let the listeners know my producer has made it very clear I cannot thank him by name every single episode. He doesn't want that, but implicitly please know that he has the thanks every time. And to our listeners, thank you all for listening to. And some of you watching on YouTube, we can do better. Happy Fourth of July, happy 250th anniversary of committing ourselves to the pursuit of happiness. And we will see you next week. Until then, remember we can do better.