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Introduction
In 2009 over 25 percent of our residents lived in households below the federal poverty level (source is Data.com). That is essentially saying that at least 25% of our citys households were and are destitute. Not just poor, but destitute. This situation has worsened. The median household size was a little less than three. That means that 25% of the households in the city in 2009 had an income of $18,310 or lower (source: US Dept. of Health and Human Services). However this does not mean that only 25 percent of the households in the city were poor. That number is far higher, much higher than 50%. The median household size in our city is 2.3. The median household income is $31,611 (in 2012 from the US Census Bureau). Statistically that means that half of the households in our city make $31,611 or less. We, among other things, are, therefore, a city of the poor. Sadly, which is of no consolation, we are not atypical in that regard. What Im offering are suggestions on how we can change that. If our community has a suggestion box, then these ideas are what Im putting in it. Firstly, let me stress that these ideas are not suggested as something we do instead of, but in addition to the usual, standard economic development efforts of the kind we have been doing all along. What we have been doing all is along is what I call the standard model. This plan I suggest here, which I call the EPIC Plan, which means Economic Progress for Indiana Citizens, is decidedly a non-standard model. Im calling it the new era model, or the new era development model, which for short is the NED Model. This model not only makes use of the ten methods listed at the end of this section, but also follows what I call the Disney World model of w-planning with respect to getting into the graphics design and architectural specifics of projects. This approach adheres to the often quoted notion that what we can better visualize we can better realize. Hope needs more than generalized ideas, it needs projects with images and implementation details. Our community, like so many others, has put its hopes, its heart and soul, into what I call the standard model. This community has been the beneficiary of long files of splendid heroes who over the years and at present have given diligently, nobly, and generously of their time, resources and passions to the task of serving our community. Their dreams are my dreams. Many have passed on, but while here they gave of themselves in body, spirit and purpose through their good works and a great deal of their money. They were virtually angels to our community and its people. They can be proud of their successes and we can be proud of them. We can be inspired by their efforts and learn from their experiences what worked and what additional work still needs doing.

2 Many are still here doing the work of angels. Without them we would be in far worse condition than we are now. In part, I offer these suggestions out of the greatest respect for those angels and to honor and further their aspirations for our community. We should continue making those kinds of standard model efforts. However if time is proof of anything it is that the standard model of economic development, which is the model we have adhered to in the past and at present, while important and helpful and the creator and maintainer of the great base of our economy, it is not going to be sufficient to take us all the way where we want and we need to be in the betterment of the people of our community. We need to look at the structural factors in our economy that obstruct our economic progress for our citizens. We must devise methods for our community to be the exception to those structural factors in some workable ways. I say we must only in the context of meaning if we are to succeed. Basically, we must focus on building more of our local economy on a structure whose underpinnings do not depend on a majority of our population being the working poor. In this regard, I do not know of any instance of a higher income individual or successful firm whose higher income does not directly or indirectly depend on and owe its very existence to the work of the working poor somewhere, some place, at some point along the line. Take that factor out, at least at our present level of technology, take out the working poor, and some of the links in the chain of the processes that result in higher income households would fail or be missing. The processes are dependent, typically, also in the opposite direction. All successes are dependent on a long chain of what others have done or will do as a society, as groups, and as individuals. Our whole economy, as disturbing as that reality is, has always and continues to be underpinned by a majority population of working poor. The great majority of our nation and our city is, by far, the poor. It is discomforting to hear and to keep in mind, but deny that or let that fact slip from our consciousness and we deny ourselves an essential part of the truth that is needed to solve the problem. What this means is that while there is an opportunity for about any individual to raise his or her income above that of the level of the working poor, that set of opportunitiesso far in the general market we are now subject tois not sufficient to accommodate more than a minority of the population. This means that while we can say of our system, at least a this point in development, that anyone can become wealthy, we cannot say of it, so far, that most can become wealthy or even most become non-poor. This will remain true, from all indications, for several more generations. Three requirements must be met to change this. One is productivity along with complementary intense demand must grow sufficiently to push production to a much higher per capita level, two, the market or some intervention in the market that that increase in productivity

3 and production brings about must evolve to disperse that wealth broadly across an overwhelming majority of the population, and, three, scarcity relative to demand of domestic and global personnel must dramatically increase. Note: Although, at some futuristic point in the technological evolution of our economy, point three may fade away as a large factor in dispersing wealth. However I will not go into that matter in this document. Instead, Im writing about it, among other things, in a manuscript titled Gapitalism.