The Seventeen Solutions: Bold Ideas for Our American Future

More than ever, America needs fresh ideas—and bold solutions. Now, Ralph Nader—perhaps our last great civic idealist—offers seventeen ideas to rescue our country from corruption, complacency, and corporate domination.

America is in crisis. After enduring two decade-long wars and a devastating financial meltdown, We the People have been abandoned by the leaders we elected to serve our interests. Now, in response to our desperate times, pioneering reformer Ralph Nader offers a new program of seventeen ambitious but common-sense solutions to our chronic economic and social problems. Among them:

Reforming the tax system

Making our communities more self-reliant

Reclaiming science and technology for the people

Protecting the family

Getting corporations off welfare

Creating national charters for corporations

Reducing our bloated military budget

Organizing congressional watchdog groups

Enlisting the enlightened super-rich

Nader offers a stark assessment of our shared straits, but his solutions constitute an eye-opening plan to save America—before it's too late.

"Consumer advocate and former presidential candidate Nader shares his progressive, humanitarian ideas for how to improve American lives in an era when corporate profits are skyrocketing, but American workers and their families are poorer than they've been in decades. Taking on corporate crime, tax reform, civil liberties, and alternative energy, among other topics, Nader emphasizes how 'a shift in power from the few to the many' will lead to more fairness, less corruption, and economic stability. He urges Americans to break the stranglehold of gigantic corporations by cracking down on their subsidies, tax loopholes, and corporate crime. In addition, he advocates for a tax on Wall Street speculation and federal charters for U.S. corporations that would empower shareholders, require companies to observe union rights, and abolish 'the legal fiction' that corporations are people. Nader is most effective when he urges Americans to re-engage with civic life, retake control of the public airwaves, and become consumer advocates and congressional watchdogs, and he offers practical advice for doing so. He is less convincing when calling on Congress to impeach the current and former presidents for the unauthorized wars in Libya and Iraq, or when he tries to link the violence in video games to rising youth crime. But overall, Nader's passionate ideas should resonate with all concerned Americans." Publishers Weekly Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Consumer advocate, activist, humanitarian, and former presidential candidate Ralph Nader is arguably the most provocative and important progressive voice in America today—a fearless reformer whom The Atlantic named one of the 100 most influential figures in American history. In these troubling times of intractable fiscal and social distress, Nader offers a new program to help rescue America: The Seventeen Solutions. His powerful, paradigm-shifting proposals address some of the most pressing concerns in our country today—from corporate crime to tax reform to health care and housing—and they should find a receptive audience not only among liberals, progressives, disillusioned Democrats, Rachel Maddow fans, and Occupy Wall Street supporters, but all concerned Americans.

Ralph Nader was recently named by the Atlantic as one of the 100 most influential figures in American history, one of only four living people to be so honored. The son of immigrants from Lebanon, he has launched two major presidential campaigns and founded or organized more than one hundred civic organizations. His groups have made an impact on tax reform, atomic power regulation, the tobacco industry, clean air and water, food safety, access to health care, civil rights, congressional ethics, and much more.