On September 19, 2012, columnist Michael Hilzi writes in the Los Angeles Times that most people who “pay no income tax” are working or have worked in the past including seniors living on Social Security and Medicare benefits they paid for during their working lives.
i do agree with Romney on the overall direction America must take, which is the same direction that President Obama advocates: “The right course for America is to create growth, create wealth…a government that sees its role as protecting freedom and opportunity.”
But neither Romney nor Obama provide any specific policies that empower EVERY American to participate and benefit in the creation of wealth and material prosperity. The poor are poor because they lack the earning power to provide for their material prosperity. The rich are rich because they provide for their material prosperity by accumulating a viable income-producing productive capital estate––ownership of the non-human assets used by business corporations in the production of products and services. Their primary source of wealth is sourced from stock ownership and the private property entitlement to the earnings produced by their capital contributions. The poor and the middle class, on the other hand, are limited in their access to productive capital ownership and must rely on income derived from wages and salaries.
The role of government is to advance the health and prosperity of the economy. Unfortunately, because of a lack of leadership, the government continues to discharge its responsibility for the health and prosperity of the economy through coerced trickle-down; in other words, through redistribution achieved by the rigging of labor prices, by taxation and borrowing to support redistribution and job “creation,” or subsidization by inflation and by all kinds of welfare, open and concealed.
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.
Romney, as a successful capitalist claims to have the business experience to move America forward, yet he has not provided specific policy to create a journey to an ownership culture for EVERY AMERICAN to participate in––but has upheld the secrecy that has empowered the success of “the makers” class.
The fact is that Romney is being supported by a majority of the richest Americans, who are capitalist owners, and those who earn above the medium wage and salary level. Unfortunately, far too many of the richest Americans believe that they are rich because of their personal virtues and whatever they get they earned as “job creators.” They have so far in our history not set forth on the national stage and shared the specifics of the financial mechanisms they use to accumulate wealth.
Don’t get me wrong, I think that capitalist owners, who are providing exponentially the input through their “productive capital tools” (ownership of non-human productive land, structures, human-intelligent machines, superautomation, robotics, digital computerized operations, etc.) are the people responsible for the production of our products and services. In reality, our educated scientists, engineers, and executive managers who are not owners themselves, except for those in the highest employed positions, are encouraged to work to destroy employment by making the capital owner more productive. How much employment can be destroyed by substituting machines for people is a measure of their success––always focused on producing at the lowest cost. Only the people who already own productive capital are the beneficiaries of their work, as they systematically concentrate more and more capital ownership in their stationary minority (1 percent) ranks. Yet the 1 percent are not the people who do the overwhelming consuming. The result is the consumer populous is 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.
As a result of the tectonic shifts in the technologies of production, JOB CREATION is essentially a dead-end proposition for not only the 47 percent of Americans that Romney referred to but millions more who are increasingly threatened with “machine” efficiencies, as well as global slave-wage labor, replacing their jobs.
Yet the Republican “ownership class” NEVER shares and pinpoints the financial mechanisms used to accumulate wealth through the ownership of income-producing productive capital.
What never is discussed is how does the “maker class” actually earn their incomes. We need to force a discussion on the issue of CONCENTRATED OWNERSHIP and what to do about it at the national media level. We are absent a national discussion of where consumers earn the money to buy products and services and the nature of capital ownership, and instead argue about policies to redistribute income or not to redistribute income. If Americans do not demand that the contenders for the office of the presidency of the United States, the Senate, and the Congress address these issues, we will have wasted the opportunity to steer the American economy in a direction that will broaden affluence. We have adequate resources, adequate knowhow, and adequate manpower to produce general affluence, but we need as a society to properly and efficiently manage these resources while protecting and enhancing the environment so that our productive capital capability is sustainable and renewable. Such issues are the proper concern of government because of the human damage inflicted on our social fabric as well as to economic growth in which every citizen is fairly included in the American dream.
Hopefully, the representatives from the national media, who will be moderating and submitting questions to Romney and Obama during the upcoming national televised debates, will force such a debate that discusses policies to broaden productive capital economic growth while simultaneously freeing Americans from further dependency on taxpayer-supported government welfare, open and concealed. This can be accomplished by freeing economic growth from the slavery of “past” savings and instead empowering EVERY American to acquire over time a viable income-producing capital estate simultaneously while re-building America’s productive sector. The earnings from this future economic growth would be used to pay back the insured investment loans made by banks to facilitate this empowerment––the financing techniques used by the richest Americans to further their wealth accumulation.
Please see my article “Democratic Capitalism And Binary Economics: Solutions For A Troubled Nation and Economy” at http://foreconomicjustice.com/11/economic-justice/ or follow me on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/pages/For-Economic-Justice/347893098576250 and http://www.facebook.com/editorgary
Also follow the Center for Economic and Social Justice at www.cesj.org and http://capitalhomestead.org/ Join the OWN Team at http://capitalhomestead.org/group/the-on-team
Also see The Kelso Institute at http://www.kelsoinstitute.org/
Join the OWN Team to advocate OWNERSHIP CREATION at http://capitalhomestead.org/group/the-own-team The only commitment is to participate in the Weekly Action Point, which is usually just a Facebook post. Other activities are strictly voluntary!
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hiltzik-20120919,0,2408537.column
