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The Hidden Prosperity Of The Poor (Demo)

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On January 30, 2013, Thomas B. Edsall writes in The New York Times:

A concept promulgated by the right — the notion of the hidden prosperity of the poor — underpins the conservative take on the ongoing debate over rising inequality.

The political right uses this concept to undermine the argument made by liberals that the increasingly unequal distribution of income poses a danger to the social fabric as well as to the American economy.

The conservative counterargument – that life for the poor and the middle class is better than it seems – goes like this: Even with stagnant or modestly growing incomes, the poor and middle class benefit from the fact that a stable or declining share of income is now required for basic necessities, leaving more money for discretionary spending. According to this theory, consumption inequality – the disparity between the amount of money spent on goods and services by the rich, the middle class and the poor — remains relatively unchanged, even while income inequality worsens.

The reality is that most Americans are not earning enough income to properly support themselves and their families. The country is experiencing a widening divide between an elite income class with well-paid salaries and dividend and capital gain income from stock ownership and low-pay wage earners and those dependent on taxpayer-supported government welfare funded by extracting taxes and incurring national debt. This situation will continue to worsen. Americans need to WAKE UP and realize that the FUTURE is one of technological unemployment. 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. And as a result, most American incomes will decline, which will result in a downturn in the economy as there will be fewer and fewer “customers with money” to purchase the products and services society needs and wants. The result: no or significantly reduced opportunity for income.
In the past decade and previous to that Americans were increasingly relying on CONSUMER DEBT to finance homes, cars, vacations, education, and their material affluence. This is the worst debt because it does not generate its own income stream to pay for its self unlike applying the logic of corporate finance, which is self-financing and asset-backed credit for productive uses to grow the economy. People invest in capital ownership on the basis that the investment will pay for itself. Ordinary Americans are shut out of this opportunity because our financial institutions require a form of loan security and relay on “past” savings and equity, which ordinary Americans, and by that I mean the majority, do not have. What is needed are proposals to free economic growth from the slavery of “past” savings.The new reality of technological unemployment is not going to go away. This reality is the result of technological innovation and invention, tectonic shifts in the technologies of production, and an obsolete union movement stuck in job creation and “more pay for less work” instead of bargaining for employee ownership and increased incomes resulting from dividends earned as stock owners in corporate America.
There is a solution, which will result in double-digit economic growth. The Just Third Way Master Plan for America’s future is published at http://foreconomicjustice.org/?p=5797.
The solution to broadening private, individual ownership of America’s future capital wealth requires that the Federal Reserve stop monetizing unproductive debt, including bailouts of banks “too big to fail” and Wall Street derivatives speculators, and begin creating an asset-backed currency that could enable every man, woman and child to establish a Capital Homestead Account or “CHA” (a super-IRA or asset tax-shelter for citizens) at their local bank to acquire a growing dividend-bearing stock portfolio to supplement their incomes from work and all other sources of income. As well national debt needs to be focused on growing the private sector of the economy simultaneously with facilitating private, individual ownership of FUTURE productive capital formation. Policies need to insert American citizens into the low or no-interest investment money loop to enable non- and undercapitalized Americans, including the working class and poor, to build wealth and become “customers with money.” The proposed Capital Homestead Act would produce this result.
The fundamental economic solution is to create income for EVERY American by simultaneously broadening private, individual ownership of FUTURE productive capital economic growth and fully paying the profit dividends to the new American owners of the income-producing capital assets of our corporations.Support the Capital Homestead Act at http://www.cesj.org/homestead/index.htm and http://www.cesj.org/homestead/summary-cha.htm

Comments (1)

Socialism hasn’t been discredited; Stalinism has. Socialism was the backbone of New Towns in the colonial period, and made possible their survival through 7 wars with the French and Indians, as well as their foreign trade in timber, spars, fish and furs. The colonial household in New England was essentially a commune, in which every member was expected to pull his or her weight in proportion to his or her abilities, much like the arrangement described in Acts 2: 44-45. Capitalism appeared in the form of local mills, toll bridges and shipyards, not in the form of corporations, which were anathema to colonial settlers.

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