MISSION AND GOVERNANCE TEMPLATE                                                                     

The Carey Center exists:

• to build a network that develops educational materials on democratic governance and democratic capitalism.

• to explore the conflicting forms of capitalism.

• to increase appreciation for the growth potential of democratic capitalism.

The mission of the Carey Center is to educate students, citizens, and our leaders in the fundamentals upon which the American republic was constructed – democracy and capitalism. Leaders learn that any social structure can be managed best by freeing and educating people, and by fostering environments in which individual ambition harmonizes with social cooperation.

The Carey Center educates students, citizens, and our leaders in the integrated application of the template of democratic governance: commitment to integrity, prerequisite to an environment of trust; maximum freedom, disciplined by this environment, minimum structure, to simplify administration and manage risk, and competence, to balance task, training, and resources.

The Carey Center educates students, citizens and our leaders about democratic capitalism, the most efficient commercial system, premised on the template of democratic governance. The Center cultivates appreciation for democratic capitalism.

The Carey Center networks with schools and universities, not-for-profit organizations, and businesses, in the United States and other countries, to initiate, test, and synthesize new ideas on a synergistic coupling of democracy and capitalism. Broader application of these principles is encouraged to enhance economic growth, to give new meaning to civic responsibilities, and to promote an optimistic social ethic.

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The mission statement above was written when the Carey Center was organized in 1995. Since then, world events have added urgency to the understanding and application of democratic capitalism.

The choice is still between the free-market capitalism that improves all lives and the corrupted form that destroys lives. However, this choice is now being dramatized by the reversal of the Asian economies in 1997, and the economic failure of  Russia in 1998. In the United States the corruptions of ultra-capitalism were dramatically exposed by the bankruptcy of Enron in December 2001. All these events were brought about by the wrong form of capitalism and by the failure of the United States to provide moral and economic leadership.

This failure will continue unless the political process is rededicated to the general welfare, by changing U.S. fiscal and monetary policies to encourage the spread of democratic capitalism. Specifically, taxes, that have been steadily shifted from capital to labor, should be reversed, with tax-incentives for dividends and capital gains for wage-earners in profit-sharing and stock-purchase plans.

Privileges for finance capitalism should be eliminated. Specifically, leveraged speculation should be controlled by taxes and margin requirements; market disciplines should be re-introduced by eliminating insurance, subsidies, and bail-outs; the lending of money to foreign countries should be disciplined by new protocols; and the mature economies, led by the United States, should provide international currency-stabilizing mechanisms.

In education, the ideal of social progress through democratic capitalism should be offered to students of the liberal arts, business, and law. A full spectrum of academic discipline should be applied to identify the end and the means. Students should be able to examine the ideal to compare it with the anti-ideal currently presented in much of academia.

Leaders of organized religion should recognize that the common purpose necessary for any society’s maintenance and growth is the superior economic system that is both moral and economically effective. Religion can have great influence on the political and educational process, if it ecumenically supports the only system that can revitalize the principles of democracy and the capitalism that provides for the general welfare, while uniting people in a nation and among nations.

Carey Center for Democratic Capitalism
34 Browns Dock Rd
Locust, NJ 07760