On September 23, 2013, Brad Plumer writes on Ezra Klein’s Wonkblog in The Washington Post:
There’s a fairly basic question at the core of the current food-stamp debate in Congress. Why has the program grown so rapidly over the past few years — to the point where 47 million Americans, one-sixth of the country, now receive food stamps?
Defenders of the program typically argue that enrollment rose because we had a horrific recession and unemployment hit the stratosphere. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is supposed to kick in to help families hit by economic distress. The program has kept 4.7 million people out of poverty.
Americans in financial need, need INCOME and the future of income is through the OWNERSHIP of wealth-creating, income-generating productive capital assets, not through a JOB. By significantly expanding private sector individual ownership of such assets there can be a total elimination of the necessity for food stamps.
The point is, we need to implement policies that provide EQUALITY of opportunity so that EVERY American can be productive through his or her contribution of OWNED wealth-creating, income-generating productive capital assets, which is exponentially replacing the need for labor workers. The system needs to be reformed by policies that provide opportunities for ordinary Americans, without savings or high incomes, to acquire shares of ownership in FUTURE productive capital assets and pay for their acquisition with the earnings of the investments. Broadening ownership is the ONLY way to ensure prosperity for EVERY American while protecting the private property rights of those who own. It is the ONLY way to counter the job destroying and worth devaluation of labor due to tectonic shifts in the technologies of production.
Corporations should be incentivized to pay out 100 percent of earnings and instead of using retained earnings and debt financing, neither of which creates any new owners, issue and sell new stock whose purchase would be accomplished using insured capital credit loans issued by local banks to ordinary Americans, with the loans paid back from the earnings of the investments.
As far as using tax policy to “redistribute” income generated by those who already own, as a substitute for inheritance and gift taxes, a transfer tax would be imposed on the recipients whose holdings exceeded $1 million, thus encouraging the super-rich to spread out their monopoly-sized estates to all members of their family, friends, servants and workers who helped create their fortunes, teachers, health workers, police, other public servants, military veterans, artists, the poor and the disabled.
