On December 27, 2012, Steven Hill writes an excellent article in The Atlantic:
As the nation tiptoes closer to the fiscal cliff, a frightening number of leaders on both sides of the political aisle seem ready to push poor, beleaguered Social Security over the edge. Not only would that be a huge mistake for the nation’s future, but these leaders show a dreadful misunderstanding of the new challenges faced by the U.S. retirement system. Particularly in the aftermath of the largest economic collapse since the Great Depression, none of the proposals on the table are grappling with some stark economic realities. How we settle this New Deal legacy will decide fundamental questions about what kind of society America will be for generations to come.
The crux of the problem is that relatively few people have REAL financial security, especially as they approach retirement age or are in retirement. Outside relatively few business corporations that provide end-of-employment pensions and public sector pension benefits, the majority of people must rely on Social Security at retirement, whose amounts vary depending on employment history.
The other challenge facing Americans is that tectonic shifts in the technologies of production are destroying and devaluing jobs as exponentially the non-human factor of production––human-intelligent machines, super-automation, robotics, biobotics, digital computerized operations, etc.––replace labor as an input in the production of products and services. Thus, as technological innovation and invention progresses, less people are needed to produce the products and services that society needs and wants.
As a result, progressively more citizens will find that they will have no means outside of public assistance taxpayer-supported government welfare to provide the necessary income to sustain their lives.
For the better part of the last decade, lingering unemployment has persisted as a result of the shift to efficient non-human means of production and the outsourcing of “slave labor” elsewhere globally as business corporations seek to low production costs and sell to “customers with money.”
The lingering unemployment will persist until we can stimulate and incentivize new productive capital formation financed so that EVERY American can have access to CAPITAL HOMESTEAD loans (without pledging “past” savings or equity) to invest in FUTURE growth assets that will generate income to pay back the loans. While this will result in a short-term demand for labor, long-term the capital plant once built will require less and less labor to sustain. That is why is it is CRITICAL that EVERY American have the equal opportunity to build a viable income-producing capital estate and become stronger, self-sufficient individuals and less dependent on taxpayer-supported government welfare.
Over time, future generation will not even require Social Security because stock ownership dividends will become the primary source of their income throughout their lives.
For this to become reality America needs to pursue an Economic Marshall Plan. This will necessitate a long-term advocacy platform that requires the leadership to educate themselves to the Just Third Way of economic democracy where we create an OWNERSHIP CULTURE whereby EVERY child, woman and man owns a viable income-producing capital estate and sources their income from the dividend earnings of their estate.
Still, after a half-century, we have no leaders with a growth strategy that could restore the economic productiveness of the American economy. The growth strategy I and others have presented is not new, but it has not yet registered in the minds of leaderless politicians and their advisors from the left to the right of the political spectrum and a population of people who have been mis-educated and mis-led by conventional economists from all the conventional schools of economics.
The significant problem has been the systematic denial of participation as capital owners on the part of the majority of consumers. While the wealthy ownership class has essentially rigged the financial system to their benefit, and by that is meant to continually concentrate ownership of productive capital among the richest Americans, the majority of Americans have been and are dependent on JOB CREATION. Yet, no leaders or academia, or the national media addresses this imbalance with the richest Americans entitled to income growth associated with productive capital ownership and the majority facing further job losses and degradation due to technological advancement.
Ordinary Americans of so-called “middle-class position” have used consumer debt financing as a means of bettering their life with an abundance of consumer products and services. The government has used income redistribution via taxation and national debt to prop up the economy with monies spent on supporting a massive military-industrial complex comprised of a small group of owners and millions of “employed” and various social programs to uplift the American majority’s life and prevent their decline into poverty––supported by government dependency.
The ONLY way out of this mess, if we are to not become a complete socialist or communist communal state governed by an elite class, is to embrace growth managed in such a way that EVERY American is empowered to acquire over time a viable income-producing capital estate and pay for their acquisition out of the FUTURE earnings of the investment. Such is the precise means that the richest Americans continually advance their wealth and thus, income.
We need leaders who will put this issue before the national debate stage, and we need the media to put forth the questions whose answers will provide the financial mechanism specifics to reverse the ever dominant OWNERSHIP CONCENTRATION. Such concentration and the economic power that result is taking control of our representative government, with productive capital ownership channeled through plutocratic finance into fewer and fewer hands, as we continue to witness today with government by the wealthy evidenced at all levels.
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.
We must shift subsidies to broadening private, individual ownership in companies developing new energy production solutions and tax “hoggist” incomes paid to CEOs and others who seek to own productive power that they cannot or won’t use for consumption. These super-rich Americans are beggaring their neighbor––the equivalency of mass murder––the impact of concentrated capital ownership.
In order to practically reduce the spending on the extensive “welfare” programs, including the military-industrial complex, put in place to prop-up the economy with money injected from taxation and national debt, we need to shift focus to creating new productive capital wealth and expand the economy to broaden private, individual ownership among ALL Americans.
I hope ALL Americans will support our movement to “Reform The Federal Reserve.” Please sign the SignOn.org organization PETITION at http://signon.org/sign/reform-the-federal-reserve.fb23?source=c.fb&r_by=3904687 They want to support this petition and take it national but we must demonstrate that there is enough support. Supporters of For Economic Justice need to ensure the petition is sent on to President Obama and the United States Congress at https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/reform-federal-reserve/PhY3Jswk. We have fought hard for a progressive change to energize our economy. We have an opportunity to build a 21st century infrastructure with renewable and sustainable energy development and new cities that will be looked upon as technology showcases. The petition deals with reforming the Federal Reserve Banking System such that the national bank lends the money to ordinary citizens to re-build America. This can be accomplished with low-interest loans. In addition to the lending authority of the Federal Reserve, people everywhere are willing to lend money to the United States at rates that are lower than at any point in history. This will free us from indebtedness to China and transform our anemic 2 percent growth rate to 10 percent or better annually and not only result in an OWNERSHIP CULTURE of new capital owners but also JOBS CREATION. The objective needs to be to broaden the private-individual ownership of new FUTURE productive income-producing capital investment simultaneously with economic growth. This will result is a far better balance between production and consumption and put us on a path to prosperity, opportunity, and economic justice for EVERY American.
