At a congressional summit Wednesday about the Citizens United decision, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) said the U.S. Congress was only concerned about the “wealthy and powerful” because of the influence of campaign contributions.
“This country faces enormous problems, the middle-class is declining, poverty is increasing, we’re worried about global warming, we’re worried about health care, we’re worried about education,” he said, “and the American people are looking to Washington and saying, ‘What’s going on? We have enormous problems, and you’re not addressing those problems.’”
“One of the reasons that Congress is not addressing those problems is the power of big money in terms of campaign contributions and in terms of lobbying,” Sanders continued. “Working people are trying to keep their heads above water, and here on Capitol Hill all kinds of money is flooding into this institution so that Congress spends day and night worrying about the wealthy and powerful, and forgetting about the middle-class and working families.”
I really admire Senator Bernie Sanders as an advocate for the interests of working people and the middle class. Unfortunately, he, as all the other elected representatives who can influence the national dialogue and rechart the American economy through legislation, is a one-factor thinker.
He thinks in terms of one-factor economics, ignoring the prominence of the other non-human factor of production (productive capital), which is exponentially displacing labor workers in the production of products and services.
What we really need in this 2012 presidential election year is a national discussion on the topic of the importance of capital ownership and how we can expand the base of private capital ownership simultaneously with the creation of new capital formation, with the aim of building long-term financial security for all Americans through accumulating a viable capital estate.
We need a recognition in America that we should deliberately begin to broaden the capital ownership base in a way that is consistent with the laws of property and the Constitutional safeguards of the rights of men and women to own property and be productive.
What needs to be adjusted is the opportunity to produce, not the redistribution of income after it is produced.
But that will continue to be an almost impossible realization as long as big money influences our elected representatives. Thus, it will take people power to oust the bandits and elect representatives that will promote the true economic justice interests of working people and the middle class by instituting policies and programs that simultaneously broaden private, individual ownership of new product capital investment as the economy grows. This is the true path to prosperity, opportunity, and economic justice for ALL citizens.
The government should acknowledge its obligation to make productive capital ownership economically purchasable by capitalless Americans using capital credit, and, as Kelso states, “substantially assume financial responsibility for the economy through establishing and supervising the implementation of an economic, labor and business policy of democratized economic power.” Historically, capital has been the primary engine of industrialization. But as used, as binary economist Louis Kelso has argued, has, as well, “been the chief cause of the institutional deformities that have created and maintained two incompatible classes: the overcapitalized and the undercapitalized.”
