Welcome to my personal web site!

I’m Joe Firestone, a Ph.D. in political science, and author of 11 books, 7 in politics and economics, and 4 in Knowledge Management, as well as a writer, researcher, blogger, speaker and trainer. I write and talk about enhancing democracy so it will work again. I also write about enhancing equality, and economic and social justice, through responsible fiscal policy directed toward public purpose: including guaranteeing full employment, creating true universal health insurance with no co-pays and no deductibles strengthening the social safety net, reducing inequality, creating a Green New Deal, and closing other public purpose gap.

I created this website to sharpen national and international conversations about fixing aspects of our broken democracies, especially in the United States. The failed political, economic and financial institutions of the US and other democracies, and the destructive policies emerging from the way these institutions interact with one another, can no longer be allowed to endanger the well being of the people and their public purposes.

In 6 recent books, I analyze the problems and crises of the United States and set forth solutions to them. Certain solutions are obvious and technically easy to implement. Others will require time and widespread voter mobilization before they can fix our failing institutions.

To facilitate both types of solutions, I think we need a bottom-up, self-organizing, consensus building process among the American and other peoples, that will enable them to decide among themselves, and for themselves, about what they want to do to fix our democracies and failed institutions and how they want to proceed to do those things. To contribute to this process, I want to share ideas about how I think we can move forward quickly to protect our lives, livelihoods and futures — before anything else goes wrong!

Clicking here, or on the books button above, will take you to a list of my recent books. I look forward to conversing with you on this website and in person to share our stories and ideas about what can be done — immediately and incrementally — about the problems, crises, and solutions they address.

In addition, I hope you will be interested in reading and commenting on the blog posts published on this website. Please feel free to contact me — and let me know of events where I can share my thinking and debate my proposals — especially with people who might not share them entirely; or at all!

And finally, many of my ideas and the books I’ve written are very important for the current election campaign, so if you’re interested in how Hillary Clinton or Donald might lead and what they might try to do if they become President, then please check out the trending speaking topics, click on the contact button and give me a shout!