On January 4, 2013, Floyd Norris writes in The New York Times that for jobs, the past four years have been a wash.
The December jobs figures out today indicate that there were 725,000 more jobs in the private sector than at the end of 2008 — and 697,000 fewer government jobs. That works into a private-sector gain of 0.6 percent, and a government sector decline of 3.1 percent.
In total, the number of people with jobs is up by 28,000, or 0.02 percent.
Our leaders, academia and the national media continue put the focus on JOB CREATION rather than OWNERSHIP CREATION, which is the impetus that facilities economic growth. If EVERY American is to improve their economic well-being then what is needed are viable sources of income for EVERY American to become a “customer with money” to purchase the products and services the economy is capable of producing. Reich is a one-factor thinker, as are other conventional Keynesian economists and socialists in that they believe the solution is “full employment” rather than “full production.” They ignore what’s going on in the scientific world and the business world and the industrial technological world, and continues to believe that full employment will solve our income distribution problems.
The reality is that the non-human factor of production––productive capital such as human-intelligent machines, super-automation, robotics, biobotics, digital computerized operations, etc––plays the role of doing ever more of the work, which produces income. Full employment is not an objective of businesses. Companies strive to keep labor input and other costs at a minimum. 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 well a global economy where “slave labor” is plentiful.
The resulting impact of our current approaches has been plutocratic government and concentration of capital ownership, which denies every citizen his or her pursuit of economic happiness (property). Market-sourced income (through concentrated capital ownership) has concentrated in individuals and families who will not recycle it back through the market as payment for consumer products and services. They already have most of what they want and need so they invest their excess in new productive power, making them richer and richer through greater capital ownership. This is the source of the distributional bottleneck that makes the private property, market economy ever more dysfunctional. The symptoms of dysfunction are capital ownership concentration and inadequate consumer demand, the effects of which translate into poverty and economic insecurity for the 99 percent majority of people who depend entirely on wages from their labor or welfare and cannot survive more than a week or two without a paycheck. The production side of the economy is under-nourished and hobbled as a result.
It is the exponential disassociation of production and consumption that is the problem in the United States economy, and the reason that ordinary citizens must gain access to productive capital ownership to improve their economic well-being.
At this stage of our anemic economic growth (2.5 percent) and the exponential march of tectonic shifts in the technologies of production that continue to destroy and devalue jobs, we need massive government investment via loan guarantees to stimulate economic growth and simultaneously broaden private, individual ownership in FUTURE income-producing assets with the result of creating “customers with money” and far less dependence on taxpayer-supported government welfare, open and concealed. With a focus on OWNERSHIP CREATION there will always be REAL jobs that society needs to be performed that won’t be replaced by machines. But the reality is that there just will no longer be private and government sector jobs in the numbers Reich believes are necessary to sustain job and wage growth.
As the economy revs up to utilize unused and new productive capacity, broadened dividend incomes will result and economic growth will explode as EVERY American builds during their lifetime a viable income-producing capital estate to support their livelihood and enable them to become financially self-sufficient and far less dependent on taxpayer-payer supported government welfare, open and concealed. This will will enable us to effectively eliminate unnecessary unproductive deficits and pay off the national debt.
Until President Obama, advisors in academia and the national media addresse the central issue of CONCENTRATED OWNERSHIP this quandary will continue with the result being no real ECONOMIC GROWTH in which EVERY American benefits as a FUTURE owner of the income-producing productive capital assets made possible by furthering technological innovation and invention, thus empowering them as “customers with money” who can then support the purchase of the products and services that the economy is capable of delivering. The issue comes down to Own or Be Owned!––whether the United States will become a country where EVERY American benefits as owners in its productive capacity or a minority of the wealthiest Americans dominate an otherwise slaved people––employed at low wages or on welfare and dependent on taxpayer-supported charity.
Support the Capital Homestead Act athttp://www.cesj.org/homestead/index.htm andhttp://www.cesj.org/homestead/summary-cha.htm
Also please see my article “The Absent Conversation: Who Should Own America?” published by The Huffington Post athttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/gary-reber/who-should-own-america_b_2040592.html
Sign the Petition at http://signon.org/sign/reform-the-federal-reserve.fb23?source=c.fb&r_by=3904687
Sign the WhiteHouse.gov petition athttps://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/reform-federal-reserve/PhY3Jswk
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/04/four-years-later-28000-more-jobs/?smid=tw-share
