A Secure Foundation
People need a reliable base from which to work, participate, care for others, and plan. Security should expand practical freedom rather than prescribe one way of life.
Explore this promiseThe proposed framework
Ten guarantees. Three promises. Many possible paths.
The Next Square Deal names the conditions that make freedom practical, then asks what combination of law, service, markets, labor, community, and public institutions could advance them.
A necessary rights clarification
Unless otherwise labeled, the guarantees described here are proposed public commitments—not claims about rights currently enforceable under the United States Constitution.
Some pages also discuss existing statutes, regulations, services, state constitutional provisions, or international norms. Their labels link to the central rights explainer.
The three promises
A framework for foundations, power, and time
Each guarantee has a primary home, but the promises overlap. Housing affects health; markets affect work; democratic capacity affects every public commitment.
Freedom from Concentrated Power
Freedom requires protection from monopoly, exploitation, fraud, arbitrary surveillance, discrimination, and institutions too powerful to answer to the public.
Explore this promiseStewardship of Our Future
Every generation inherits institutions, infrastructure, resources, and an environment—and owes the next generation a system capable of enduring.
Explore this promiseThe initial edition
The ten guarantees
These are editable editorial positions, not fixed constitutional text. Every page includes status, options, objections, open questions, evidence, and revision history.
Good Work and Fair Pay
Everyone should have a fair opportunity to obtain useful work, earn enough to build a decent life, work under safe conditions, and act collectively with coworkers.
Read the guarantee: Good Work and Fair PayHealth Security
Everyone should be able to obtain timely, effective health care without financial ruin or arbitrary exclusion.
Read the guarantee: Health SecurityA Decent and Affordable Home
Everyone should have a practical path to safe, stable, accessible housing in a healthy community.
Read the guarantee: A Decent and Affordable HomeEducation and Lifelong Opportunity
Everyone should have access to excellent public education, useful training, civic knowledge, and affordable opportunities to continue learning throughout life.
Read the guarantee: Education and Lifelong OpportunityTime and Care for Family
People should have meaningful time and support to care for children, relatives, themselves, and their communities without automatically losing economic security.
Read the guarantee: Time and Care for FamilySecurity Through Life’s Risks
Illness, disability, unemployment, caregiving, disaster, and old age should not automatically lead to destitution.
Read the guarantee: Security Through Life’s RisksFair Markets and Small-Business Freedom
Workers, consumers, entrepreneurs, farmers, creators, and communities should be protected from coercive monopoly power and unfair competition.
Read the guarantee: Fair Markets and Small-Business FreedomConsumer and Digital Rights
People should be protected from fraud, unsafe products, abusive data practices, manipulative interfaces, discriminatory automated systems, and unreasonable digital surveillance.
Read the guarantee: Consumer and Digital RightsA Livable Environment and Shared Infrastructure
Every generation should inherit clean air and water, a stable climate, resilient infrastructure, healthy ecosystems, and accessible public resources.
Read the guarantee: A Livable Environment and Shared InfrastructureEqual Citizenship and Democratic Power
Every person should have an equal voice in public life, meaningful civil protections, and practical opportunities to participate in democratic institutions.
Read the guarantee: Equal Citizenship and Democratic PowerRelationship matrix
Where each guarantee begins—and where it reaches
A primary category gives the framework shape. Secondary relationships prevent public problems from being treated as isolated departments.
GuaranteeSecure FoundationFreedom from PowerShared Future
Good Work Primary relationship Primary Related through policy interactions Related Related through policy interactions Related
Health Security Primary relationship Primary Related through policy interactions Related Related through policy interactions Related
Affordable Home Primary relationship Primary Related through policy interactions Related Related through policy interactions Related
Education Primary relationship Primary Related through policy interactions Related Related through policy interactions Related
Time and Care Primary relationship Primary Related through policy interactions Related Related through policy interactions Related
Life’s Risks Primary relationship Primary Related through policy interactions Related Related through policy interactions Related
Fair Markets Related through policy interactions Related Primary relationship Primary Related through policy interactions Related
Consumer & Digital Related through policy interactions Related Primary relationship Primary Related through policy interactions Related
Environment & Infrastructure Related through policy interactions Related Related through policy interactions Related Primary relationship Primary
Equal Citizenship Related through policy interactions Related Related through policy interactions Related Primary relationship Primary
What a guarantee is
A public commitment to an outcome
A guarantee defines a condition worth organizing institutions around—such as timely access to care or protection from deceptive data practices. It should be specific enough to evaluate, but not so rigid that it makes one program the only acceptable route.
It can include enforceable pieces without pretending the whole commitment is already law. A guarantee also creates an obligation to report gaps, measure results, and revise tools that fail.
What implementation means
Different tools can serve the same goal
Legislation, regulation, public services, social insurance, tax policy, competition, labor institutions, procurement, private and nonprofit action, and community institutions distribute authority differently.
The project therefore asks: who acts, who pays, who qualifies, who enforces, how errors are appealed, what supply is required, and how outcomes are measured?
Open the policy toolboxCost and capacity
A promise without an operating model is not enough
A credible framework must place fiscal cost beside existing private costs, transition risk, institutional capacity, supply, administration, and the distribution of gains and burdens.
Money
State the revenue, premiums, fees, prices, tax expenditures, borrowing, or reallocation a mechanism requires. Do not call a benefit free because its cost moves.
Capacity
Coverage and eligibility do not produce homes, clinicians, teachers, inspectors, grid equipment, or competent caseworkers by themselves.
Administration
Simple rules on paper can create hard forms, delays, mistaken denials, fraud exposure, or discretionary barriers in practice.
Markets
Public action changes prices, investment, entry, consolidation, work arrangements, and supply. Those responses can help or undermine a goal.
Trust
Durable institutions need understandable rules, due process, privacy, oversight, and evidence that errors are corrected.
Time
Transition costs and long-run obligations differ. A fast change can protect people sooner while creating operational risk; a slow change can preserve harmful gaps.
Shared responsibility
Not every guarantee belongs to one level of government
Authority, scale, knowledge, portability, rights, and accountability point to different institutional roles.
Federal
National floors, interstate markets, social insurance, civil rights, fiscal capacity, and portability.
State
Constitutional duties, licensing, insurance, elections, labor and consumer rules, utilities, education, and experimentation.
Local
Land use, infrastructure, public services, procurement, transit, public health, and close knowledge of place.
Labor
Collective bargaining, worker voice, benefits, safety, training, and democratic power at work.
Community
Mutual aid, cooperatives, local accountability, trusted delivery, and institutions rooted in lived experience.
Private and nonprofit
Production, innovation, care, finance, service delivery, expertise, and plural approaches within fair public rules.
Make it yours
Which guarantees would you put first?
Select and order up to five priorities locally, without sending a political-interest profile to this project.
Frequently asked questions
The questions a framework should answer
Are these guarantees constitutional rights?
No. Unless a page identifies an existing legal protection, the guarantees are proposed public commitments, not claims about rights currently enforceable under the United States Constitution.
Does every guarantee require a federal program?
No. Depending on the problem, responsibility may be shared among federal, state, local, tribal, and territorial governments, labor institutions, community organizations, markets, and nonprofit providers.
How would these proposals be funded?
There is no single funding answer. Each option must identify its full public and private costs, revenue source, distributional effects, administrative needs, transition plan, and long-term obligations.
What role remains for markets and private organizations?
A substantial one. The framework asks whether markets are open, competitive, accountable, and capable of serving the public goal; it does not assume that public provision is always best or that private provision is always fair.
How does the project handle disagreement?
It separates shared goals from contested mechanisms, presents serious objections in their strongest reasonable form, labels evidence by type and role, and records open questions instead of forcing premature certainty.
How will the framework be revised?
Pages display review dates and revision notes. Material factual corrections, changes in legal status, stronger contrary evidence, and clearer implementation analysis should produce visible updates rather than silent rewrites.
Is this project affiliated with a candidate or political party?
The published working project does not present a candidate or party affiliation. It is structured as a civic-policy publication, not a campaign, party committee, donation funnel, or election-targeting operation.
What does proposed public guarantee mean?
It means a civic commitment that can guide legislation, budgets, regulation, services, and institutional design. It does not mean the commitment is already constitutional, statutory, funded, or enforceable.
Why present more than one policy pathway?
Public goals rarely determine one institutional design. Comparing provision, insurance, regulation, competition, tax policy, labor institutions, and community action makes costs and tradeoffs easier to see.