Natalie Foster
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Economic Guarantees in the age of AI. @EconomicSecProj cofounder and @AspenFutureWork Senior Fellow. Author “The Guarantee”
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Congratulations Senator-elect @peggyflanagan - Minnesota (and the nation) are lucky to have you.
Kansas was born in a fight over freedom. In 1854, Congress said the settlers of the Kansas Territory would decide for themselves whether it would be slave or free. People poured in from New England and the Midwest to make sure it would be free, and founded towns like Lawrence (where I got married!). There was violence, raids, rigged elections, and burned towns for years. They called it Bleeding Kansas. The free-staters held on, organized, and in January 1861 Kansas entered the Union as a free state. Preachers led a lot of this charge - and ordinary families decided where the moral line was, and then they stood on it.
A generation later, Kansas did it again. Farmers were being crushed by railroad rates, mortgage debt, and banks that set the terms. So they organized. They formed the People’s Party, and in 1890 they swept Kansas. They sent William Peffer to Washington as the first Populist in the United States Senate.
Their platform called for a graduated income tax, breaking up corporate monopolies, and an economy that answered to the people who did the work. Prairie populism.
I’ve spent the last decade arguing that this country owes people a floor to stand on, a guarantee. Kansas prairie farmers were making that argument 130 years ago.
The Kansas I grew up in forgot all of this. Books asked "What's the matter with Kansas?" But Kansas keeps surprising people. In 2022, Kansans rejected a ban on abortion by about 60 to 40, and they did it in the language of freedom. That’s the free-state tradition, still alive.
Senator-elect Adam Hamilton, a Methodist minister, now has the opportunity to pick up this tradition of the Free State and lead Kansas -- and America -- to live up to its promise.
A generation later, Kansas did it again. Farmers were being crushed by railroad rates, mortgage debt, and banks that set the terms. So they organized. They formed the People’s Party, and in 1890 they swept Kansas. They sent William Peffer to Washington as the first Populist in the United States Senate.
Their platform called for a graduated income tax, breaking up corporate monopolies, and an economy that answered to the people who did the work. Prairie populism.
I’ve spent the last decade arguing that this country owes people a floor to stand on, a guarantee. Kansas prairie farmers were making that argument 130 years ago.
The Kansas I grew up in forgot all of this. Books asked "What's the matter with Kansas?" But Kansas keeps surprising people. In 2022, Kansans rejected a ban on abortion by about 60 to 40, and they did it in the language of freedom. That’s the free-state tradition, still alive.
Senator-elect Adam Hamilton, a Methodist minister, now has the opportunity to pick up this tradition of the Free State and lead Kansas -- and America -- to live up to its promise.