Even if the Obama campaign’s anti-Bain offensive is nothing more than a bid to ensure a win for its candidate, in the long run, the campaign is doing America a service.
Adele M. Stan’s op-ed in AlterNet.org on May 22, 2012 asserts:
“Ever since the Obama campaign launched a full-frontal assault on GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney for his record as a leveraged-buyout kingpin at Bain Capital, all manner of consternation and hand-wringing have ensued — some of it from Democrats.”
The five reasons the campaign is doing America a service are:
“1. It breaks the long-observed campaign rule of kowtowing to Big Business and Big Finance.”
“2. It has exposed the major structural problem of American democracy, smoking out big business’ allies in the Democratic Party.”
“3. It shines a light on the false equivalency claim that ‘both sides are equally evil.'”
“4. It calls into question the definition of “free enterprise” as an American value.”
“5. It makes the case, perhaps inadvertently, for public financing of campaigns.”
Structurally, Obama’s campaign is driven by one-factor economic thinking––meaning the labor worker is the source of ALL productivity. The reality is that there are two contributory factors to the production and delivery of products and services––human (labor workers) and non-human (productive capital representing machines, superautomation, robotics, digital computerized operations, etc held in ownership by American business corporations and companies).
Structurally, the financial mechanisms in place require “past savings” for investment and as a result limit upward wealth accumulation to a minority and result in the concentration of ownership of productive capital in the top 1 percent of the population. Structurally, we can re-chart the present policies and programs that cause this unjust condition and put ourselves on a path to prosperity, opportunity, and economic justice by adopting policies and programs that consistently broaden the private, individual ownership of new productive capital asset formation as the economy grows. Such would empower ALL Americans to acquire new productive capital assets in our business corporations and pay for their acquisition out of the future earnings (future savings) of the investments. Such an approach would embrace technological innovation and invention, which as its core function is to improve efficiency of production and distribution of products and services and save labor in the process by shifting to non-human employment.
As the new economy begins to rev up with financial mechanism supported growth, “real” job creation will result and new opportunities for workers with old skills and new skills will occur and result in an effectively “full employment” economy, without the “welfare-effecutated” programs or as Krugman advocates “government programs designed to boost spending.” Real natural demand will be the result, which will further drive technological innovation and invention.
The key is to actuate policies that will dramatically impact the market economy and strengthen the middle class in a positive way, while expanding the base of private capital ownership and thus strengthening the way consumers make the money to purchase the products and services made possible by the new capital formation. The result will be to expand production and bring more wealth to the economy, which will provide not only growth in expanded ownership of productive capital but also in expanded employment opportunities as the economy revs up to meet expanded consumer demand. Furthermore, the more broadly real capital is acquired by individuals throughout our society with the earnings of capital, the more we will profitably employ unused capacity and promote economic growth. With greater earnings from capital worker investment, people will be able to support and pay for products resulting from “greener” technologies that today people cannot afford. Such policies are perfectly in tune with the natural incentive of business corporations to broaden ownership so that the market for their products will increase. Such policies will liberate the economy.
Once broadened ownership of productive capital becomes the norm, the other points raised by Adele Stan can be solved as greater prosperity, opportunity, and economic justice takes hold.
