Thank you for a most encouraging exposition. It can be done!
The final step would be a more rational — and more just — economic system. I know this is getting to be more than you bargained for, but you seem to be an intelligent, engaged person. I understand that hearing of a new idea from its author like this somehow diminishes its credibility, undermines any authority it might have, but I can’t do anything about that. For the record, I do have an M.A. in economics.
In the late 1600’s England got from Netherlands, along with its new sovereign, the revolutionary (at the time) central banking system, which is now ubiquitous. Three hundred+ years later, we are past due for a further central-bank revolution.
My idea is to change the way money is supplied for the economy. That would be accomplished via an “allotted income.” It would not be paid to everyone, but it would be available for an unlimited number of people. It would be created as needed, cost-free. The total of that income would form the supply of money (as currency) for the economy. With a change in the laws to allow the central bank to directly fund government, it could also do that, at the current per capita rate of total government spending, forever.
That (relatively) simple change to the monetary system would have profound results. It would make the existing economy stable and self-regulating (with built-in safeguards against inflation), providing the means to eliminate unemployment (at no cost to anyone), poverty (without having to redistribute anything), taxes (of all kinds), and public debt (at all levels of government) while increasing sustainability (even without additional regulations, because total output would be determined by demographics — and only that), with no limit on income or property/wealth, no changes in economic behavior required, and not so much as one piece of the existing institutional structure torn down. Any nation with a central bank — i.e., any nation (or group of nations)— could adopt this change.
If your curiosity exceeds your skepticism, see “A Call for a Further Central Bank Revolution” here on medium.com. This idea needs advocates.