On December 2, 2014, Jason Easley writes on Politicus USA:
On the Senate floor today, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) unveiled a twelve point economic plan that if enacted would break the backs of the Koch fueled oligarchs.
Sen. Sanders said, “Are we prepared to take on the enormous economic and political power of the billionaire class or do we continue to slide into economic and political oligarchy?…Today, millions of Americans are working longer hours for lower wages. In inflation-adjusted dollars, the median male worker earned $783 less last year than he made 41 years ago. The median female worker made $1,337 less last year than she earned in 2007. Since 1999, household income for the median middle-class family is less than it was a quarter century ago. We once led the world in terms of the percentage of our people who graduated college, but we are now in 12th place. Our infrastructure, once the envy of the world, is collapsing. Real unemployment today is not 5.8 percent, it is 11.5 percent if we include those who have given up looking for work or who are working part time when they want to work full time. Youth unemployment is 18.6 percent and African-American youth unemployment is 32.6 percent.”
Sanders detailed a 12-point economic program to,
– Invest in our crumbling infrastructure with a major program to create jobs by rebuilding roads, bridges, water systems, waste water plants, airports, railroads and schools.
– Transform energy systems away from fossil fuels to create jobs while beginning to reverse global warming and make the planet habitable for future generations.
– Develop new economic models to support workers in the United States instead of giving tax breaks to corporations which ship jobs to low-wage countries overseas.
– Make it easier for workers to join unions and bargain for higher wages and benefits.
– Raise the federal minimum wage from $7.25 an hour so no one who works 40 hours a week will live in poverty.
– Provide equal pay for women workers who now make 78 percent of what male counterparts make.
– Reform trade policies that have shuttered more than 60,000 factories and cost more than 4.9 million decent-paying manufacturing jobs.
– Make college affordable and provide affordable child care to restore America’s competitive edge compared to other nations.
– Break up big banks. The six largest banks now have assets equivalent to 61 percent of our gross domestic product, over $9.8 trillion. They underwrite more than half the mortgages in the country and issue more than two-thirds of all credit cards.
– Join the rest of the industrialized world with a Medicare-for-all health care system that provides better care at less cost.
– Expand Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and nutrition programs.
– Reform the tax code based on wage earners’ ability to pay and eliminate loopholes that let profitable corporations stash profits overseas and pay no U.S. federal income taxes.
There is a little something in the Sanders agenda for oligarchs of all stripes to hate. Wall Street hates the idea of breaking up the big banks. The conservative billionaires and millionaires use avoiding paying their fair share of taxes as the motivation for their political activities. A Medicare for all system would put the for-profit insurance companies out of business while challenging the Big Pharma’s practice of overpricing their drugs in the United States. The thought of a large green energy sector terrifies Big Oil. Republicans oppose equal pay, raising the minimum wage, and any public project that might create jobs.
What Sen. Sanders laid out is an agenda that Democrats and the left should aspire to. Some the points in the Sanders plan are more immediately obtainable than others. Things like tax and trade policy reforms along with infrastructure investment are realistic possibilities. While issues like equal pay, and making it easier to join a union would require a Democratic president and Congress to get done.
Bernie Sanders provided the left with a rallying cry in 2016. This isn’t an economic plan full of promises that will happen. Instead, Sen. Sanders is suggesting the direction that he believes the country ought to be moving towards.
Democrats have accomplished a great deal during the Obama years, but if they can come together in victory in 2016, the Sanders agenda could provide a roadmap for the future.
Fundamentally, Bernie Sanders effectively is saying that the system is broken, and is rigged to economically benefit the wealthy ownership class (although Sanders never refers to the word OWNERSHIP). Concentrated wealth-creating, income-producing capital ownership is at the heart of the problem of economic inequality.
While Sanders performs a great service by defining the extent of economic inequality, he does not offer any solutions. Nor has there really been any offered by those stuck in the one-factor world of thinking that the ONLY way to earn income is through a JOB. This is why with every proposal, whether by Republican or Democrat or other political party policies makers, the component that justifies the economic policy is JOB CREATION. Yet there is NEVER a discussion which addresses who will benefit from the ownership of the economic scheme. What we need are policies and rules that will unite America, reform the system, and empower EVERY citizen to benefit economically from owning expanding shares in the corporations that are growing the economy.
Sanders points underscore just how inadequate our corporate and tax policies are, and how our priorities are wrong. The rich are getting richer through constant capital ownership accumulation aided by government policies and rules that extend huge tax breaks for corporations with no stipulation for broadening ownership of America’s corporations. Driven by the Republican Party, whose mantra is to protect corporate ownership concentration and profitability of those who presently OWN America––the wealthly capital ownership class, further reducing the corporate tax rate WITHOUT eliminating all tax loopholes and subsidies and the stipulation that all corporate profits by fully paid out as dividend earnings to the owners of the corporations will result in more unjust corporate ownership concentration and enrichment of the wealthy ownership class at the expense of the vast majority of working Americans stuck in the rut of wage slavery.
Of course, the call for lowing corporate tax rates is ALL in the name of JOB CREATION, and Republicans blame outsourcing and the loss of jobs on what they believe is a high nominal tax rate that American corporations pay. But if the Republicans and the Democrats and other political party policy makers really want to end investment abroad and job outsourcing, then why not completely eliminate the corporate income tax in exchange for paying out fully the dividend earnings to the owners of the corporation and replacing retained earning and corporate debt financing of economic growth (neither of which creates new capital owners) with the issuance and sale of new corporate stock that represents the to-be-formed physical capital assets that would grow the economy? This would refocus investment in American corporations who want to grow the economy in our homeland, result in the creation of new capital owners who would make up a broad corporate ownership base, effectively empower the new owners to own the “machines” that are destroying jobs and devaluing the worth of labor, and effectively stimulate REAL (not make-work) employment opportunities as we build a FUTURE economy that can support general affluence for EVERY child, woman, and man.
How can we simultaneously grow the economy and create new capital owners?
We will need to reform our broken system in which economic growth is hindered by the slavery of “past” savings. The denial of consumption or “past” savings has been the primary means necessary to financing economic growth. We need to adopt new policies to provide the necessary system reforms to abate the further concentration of wealth-creating, income-producing capital ownership and ensure that continual broadened capital ownership and corresponding wealth building occurs and benefits EVERY citizen as the economy expands.
The most significant system reform needed is to equally empower EVERY citizen, without the requirement of “past” savings or capital asset equities, to acquire personal ownership shares in FUTURE wealth-creating, income-producing capital asset growth. This can be accomplished using insured (facilitated with private capital credit insurance or a government reinsurance agency––ala the Federal Housing Administration concept), interest-free capital credit loans issued by local banks repayable out of the FUTURE fully paid out dividend earnings generated by profitable investments in the corporations growing the economy. This objective can be achieved with the passage of the proposed Capital Homestead Act.
Here what I recommend Senator Bernie Sanders incorporate into his 12-point economic plan:
A more comprehensive set of solutions can be found in the platform of the Unite America Party, a platform is offered for adoption, by any political party.
Support the Capital Homestead Act at http://www.cesj.org/…/capital-homestead-act-a-plan-for…/ and http://www.cesj.org/…/capital-homestead-act-summary/.
Support the Unite America Party Platform, published by The Huffington Post at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gary-reber/platform-of-the-unite-ame_b_5474077.html as well as Nation Of Change at http://www.nationofchange.org/platform-unite-america-party-1402409962 and OpEd News at http://www.opednews.com/articles/Platform-of-the-Unite-Amer-by-Gary-Reber-Party-Leadership_Party-Platforms-DNC_Party-Platforms-GOP-RNC_Party-Politics-Democratic-140630-60.html.
