On June 7, 2012, Henry Blodget wrote on BusinessInsider.com that:
“America just isn’t working right now.
“It’s not just Americans who aren’t working. It’s America itself, a country whose economy once worked for almost everyone, not just the rich.
“In the old America, if you worked hard, you had a good chance of moving up.
“In the old America, the fruits of people’s labors accrued to the whole country, not just the top.
“In the old America, there was a strong middle class, and their immense collective purchasing power drove the economy for decades.
“No longer.
“Over the past couple of decades, the disparity between “the 1%” and everyone else has hit a level not seen since the 1920s. And there is a widespread and growing sense that life here is not fair or right.
“If America cannot figure out a way to fix these problems, the country will likely become increasingly polarized and de-stabilized. And if that happens, the recent “Occupy” protests will likely be only the beginning.
It’s about opportunity, whether it be education opportunities, a job opportunity, or an opportunity to participate in the ownership of the fruits of our technology innovation and invention. At present the system restricts the empowerment of ordinary Americans who with no savings or who are non- or undercapitalized to acquire ownership in future productive capital assets of our “business corporations.” But if we change direction and systematically build earning power into consumers through ownership in future wealth creation, we have the opportunity to reverse the depression perpetrated by systematically limiting the 99 percent to labor wages alone and through technology eliminating their jobs. We need to reform the system and radically overhaul the Federal tax system and monetary policies and institute proposals to get money power to the 99 percent of American citizens who now only rely on their labor worker earnings.
The financial system is rigged to benefit those who already own productive capital assets. Opportunity needs to be fairly and justly applied. It will always be up to the individual to act on the opportunity. But at present, the system simply does not permit the ordinary American from participating in the future productive capital asset creation generated by technological innovation and invention. Until we reform the system to do so, our economy will be hobbled, and the pursuit of prosperity, opportunity, and economic justice for the majority of Americans will be unachievable.
Capital credit is restricted to the purchase of assets that are expected to pay for themselves out of the revenue generated from the capital investment, and therefore these assets are expected to earn a continuing flow of profit for whoever owns the assets. Consumer credit, on the other hand, does not generate its own repayment, and in order for the user to repay they must rely on other resources––for most Americans that means their labor worker earnings and personal savings. Conventionally, most people do not have the right to acquire productive capital with the self-financing earnings of capital; they are left to acquire, as best as they can, with their earnings as labor workers. This is fundamentally hard to do and limiting. Thus, the most important economic right Americans need and should demand is the effective right to acquire capital with the earnings of capital. Note, though, millions of Americans own diluted stock value through the “stock market exchanges,” purchased with their earnings as labor workers, their stock holdings are relatively miniscule, as are their dividend payments compared to the top 10 percent of capital owners.
Capital acquisition takes place on the logic of self-financing and asset-backed credit for productive uses. People invest in capital ownership on the basis that the investment will pay for itself and on the basis of the best advice one can get, that the asset in operation will pay for itself within a reasonable period of time––5 to 7 or, in a worst case scenario, 10 years (given the current depressive state of the economy). And after it pays for itself within a reasonable capital cost recovery period, it is expected to go on producing income indefinitely with proper maintenance and with restoration in the technical sense through research and development.
By making some modifications to our current laws and adopting certain policies we will be able to extend real opportunity to ALL Americans, not just a few at the top, and put us ALL on a path to prosperity, opportunity, and economic justice.
What we as a nation need to do is to fundamentally assess the future and raise the question as to how to connect people up with the “how” and “means” of the production of product and services, which exponentially will end up requiring significantly less labor workers. Granted, a relative few will succeed against the odds but the vast majority will not who are dependent on a job for income. America will prosper far greater when ALL Americans can participate in this new Third Industrial Revolution of machine technology, with those who take personal responsibility and making better choices reaping even more rewards, and when everyone plays by the same rules. Presently, the system excludes or cripples opportunity but we can reform it to make it work better so that ALL Americans can earn their ownership participation in this new Third Industrial Revolution. Most every person, in their own experience, knows motivated and responsible people who have done everything right but are struggling to get by. Should we cast them as “losers” and say to those people: “Tough luck, you’re on your own?” That would not be right or just, yet that is an increasingly prevailing sentiment in conservative America.
With the exponential growth of machine technology destroying or degrading good-paying jobs, people will become desperate and that is the foundation of resentment, social disorder, anarchy and revolution.
We need to optimize the financial system and free it from the accumulated savings and money power nature of its structure, which has stifled the growth of America’s productive capacity through the Federal Reserve monetary policy by monetizing public-sector growth and mounting Federal deficits and “Wall Street” bailouts; by favoring speculation over investment; by shortchanging the capital credit needs of entrepreneurs, inventors, farmers, and workers; by increasing the dependency of people with usurious consumer credit; and by perpetuating unjust capital credit and ownership barriers between rich Americans and those without savings. This all adds up to an exclusionary system of monopoly capitalism.
I believe that we can do better and leave a better world for our children, and give them opportunities we never had. The end result will be that citizens would become empowered as owners to meet their own consumption needs and government would become more dependent on economically independent citizens, thus reversing current trends where all citizens will eventually become dependent for their economic well-being on our only legitimate monopoly –– the State –– and whatever elite controls the coercive powers of government.
http://www.businessinsider.com/dear-america-you-should-be-mad-as-hell-about-this-charts-2012-6
