Contractors work on a new home under construction at Taylor Morrison Home Corp.’s La Solara Community in Dublin, Calif. (David Paul Morris, Bloomberg / May 14, 2013)
On June 5, 2013, Ricardo Lopez writes in the Los Angeles Times:
The country’s tepid growth in its gross domestic product isn’t creating enough good jobs to build a strong middle class, according to a UCLA report released Wednesday.
“Growth in GDP has been positive, but not exceptional,” UCLA economists wrote in their quarterly Anderson Forecast. “Jobs are growing, but not rapidly enough to create good jobs for all.”
The report, which analyzed long-term trends of past recoveries, found that the long-anticipated “Great Recovery” has not yet materialized.
Real GDP growth — the value of goods and services produced after adjusting for inflation — is 15.4 percent below the 3 percent growth trend of past recoveries, wrote Edward Leamer, director of the UCLA Anderson Forecast. More robust growth will be necessary to bring this recovery in line with previous ones.
“It’s not a recovery,” he wrote. “It’s not even normal growth. It’s bad.”
That has long-term implications in the face of technological advancements that continue displacing workers, Leamer said. And the country’s education system isn’t adequately developing the workforce of the future, he said.
To solve the decline of the American economy and the present unsustainable debt problem permanently, it is essential to terminate monetization of government debt and increase the tax base by fostering productivity. We can duplicate the quantum leaps in productivity and real income we saw in 19th century America in double digit growth by making ownership of future private sector industrial and commercial productive capital open to everyone and facilitating its acquisition using its pre-tax earnings, without redistributing existing wealth.
A “Capital” or “Industrial” Homestead Act can be financed not by self-defeating and counterproductive redistribution of existing wealth, but by allowing anyone with a qualified and financially feasible productive capital project, whether agricultural, commercial, or industrial, to discount bills at local commercial banks for rediscount at the 12 regional Federal Reserves. Replacing traditional forms of collateral with capital credit insurance and reinsurance, and bank reserves backed with government debt with reserves backed with private sector hard assets, would take away any justification for having an outstanding national debt of any size.
The solutions can be found in the Agenda of The Just Third Way Movement at http://foreconomicjustice.org/?p=5797, Monetary Justice reform at http://capitalhomestead.org/page/monetary-justice and the Capital Homestead Act at http://www.cesj.org/homestead/index.htm and http://www.cesj.org/homestead/summary-cha.htm
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-ucla-forecast-20130605,0,7676874.story
