On September 13, 2013, Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! writes on NationOfChange.org:
Five years ago this weekend, the Wall Street giant Lehman Brothers collapsed triggering the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. Today, the divide between the 1 percent and the 99 percent is as great as ever. According to one recent study, the top 1 percent has captured about 95 percent of the income gains since the recession ended. “Since the recovery, almost all of the gains have gone to the very, very top. People who are in the top 1 percent are doing even better than they did before the Great Recession, better than they have done since 1928,” says former Labor Secretary Robert Reich. “Most Americans are on a downward escalator. Median wage in the United States, adjusted for inflation, keeps on dropping.” Reich is the focus of the new film, Inequality for All.
Robert Reich speaks of inequality of opportunity in America. And he is absolutely correct in is assessment. But his solution is a “redistribution” solution rather than FUTURE “distribution” solution. Never does he suggest that we implement policies that broaden private sector individual ownership of FUTURE productive capital growth to provide income security for EVERY American.
Infographics on the distribution of wealth in America, highlighting both the inequality and the difference between our perception of inequality and the actual numbers. The reality is often not what we think it is.
The reason the rich are rich is that in large measure their income is derived through dividends, capital gains, interest and rent, through their ownership of wealth-creating, income-generating productive capital assets. The 99 percent class of Americans are essentially propertyless as related to ownership of productive capital assets and are solely dependent on wages and salaries from jobs. The growing rich-poor gap is being propelled by tectonic shifts in the technologies of production that are destroying jobs and devaluing the worth of labor and by globalization, which shifts employment to other countries where labor is less costly as well as regulations and controls.
The role of physical productive capital is to do ever more of the work, which produces income. Full employment is not an objective of businesses. Companies strive to keep labor input and other costs at a minimum. Private sector job creation in numbers that match the pool of people willing and able to work is constantly being eroded by physical productive capital’s ever increasing role.
The result is the consumer populous is increasingly not able to get the money to buy the products and services produced as a result of substituting machines for people. And yet you can’t have mass production without mass human consumption. It is the exponential disassociation of production and consumption that is the problem in the United States economy, and the reason that ordinary citizens must gain access to productive capital ownership to improve their economic well-being.
For solutions see “Financing Economic Growth With ‘FUTURE SAVINGS’: Solutions To Protect America From Economic Decline” at NationOfChange.org http://www.nationofchange.org/financing-future-economic-growth-future-savings-solutions-protect-america-economic-decline-137450624 and “The Income Solution To Slow Private Sector Job Growth” at http://www.nationofchange.org/income-solution-slow-private-sector-job-growth-1378041490.
