On March 10, 2013, Bob Adelmann writes in The New American:
Though the administration has deceptively fanned the flames of fear regarding the sequester cuts, it must also be kept in mind that the job numbers now in the news do not tell the whole story.
First of all, reports early in the new year are usually fairly robust. In January and February 2012 the BLS reported nearly 600,000 new jobs, but then the economy stalled, with growth in GDP essentially flat-lining in the last quarter of the year.
According to the household survey, where the BLS asks how many are working in a household, 170,000 new jobs were added in February of this year — despite the addition of an astounding 446,000 part-time jobs. What this means is that some 276,000 full-time jobs were lost in February. A Gallup survey released the day before the Labor Department’s report noted:
“Although fewer people are unemployed now than a year ago, they are not migrating to full-time jobs for an employer. In fact, fewer Americans are working full-time for an employer than were doing so a year ago, and more Americans are working part time.”
This may be an effect of the ObamaCare rule that employees working 30 hours a week or more must be covered with health insurance, and as a result of that more and more employers are cutting hours and hiring more part-time people. And as hours are cut, more and more people are seeking a second job to make up the difference. That would be another of those “unintended consequences” of government interference in the marketplace.
An editorial in the New York Times successfully saw past the rosy surface numbers reported on Friday as well. It looked around at where job growth might come from. Housing? Some growth there, from a percentage basis. But when one is at the bottom, everything looks up from there. Car sales? Not so much. Rising wages? Not much help there either.
The Times also noted that the labor force is shrinking, so that whatever numbers the BLS reports aren’t real:
“Most of the decline [in unemployment] reflects a shrinking labor force rather than new hiring. In fact, if hiring were more robust, the unemployment rate would hold steady or even rise as the estimated four million Americans who are not working or looking for work rejoined the ranks of job seekers, where they would be counted in the official unemployment rate.”
Furthermore, those who have been out of work for six months or more actually increased last month. If the economy were healthy, surely that number would be declining.
Even if one could believe that the unemployment report from Friday was accurate, it still falls below the estimated 250,000 jobs needed every month just to absorb new job seekers. It would take many more than that to bring the unemployment rate down significantly, and that just isn’t on the horizon.
Until the debate about how to grow the economy changes significantly in Washington from “how do we grow jobs?” to “how do we expand the private ownership of FUTURE income-producing productive capital asset investment in the economy?,” the unemployment rate will remain high, extending the impact of the Great Recession far into the future.
Bob Adelmann, a graduate of Cornell University and a former investment advisor, fails to tie unemployment to the issue of CONCENTRATED OWNERSHIP of productive capital. Adelmann and other academia, as well as our leaders, should be recommending effective programs for expanded ownership of productive capital, and address the problem of education on this subject.
Today’s techniques of finance are designed to make the rich richer. None are designed to make the poor richer. That’s why the poor are poor. The reason they are poor is because they do not have viable capital ownership. Thus, we need to focus on revising today’s techniques of finance to broaden capital ownership.
Productivity gains allow companies to increase sales without adding workers. This is because companies will continue to seek the most efficient means to produce the products and services they offer, and invest in the non-human factor of production. My mentor, binary economist Louis Kelso, is quoted as saying, “Conventional wisdom says there is only one way to earn a living, and that’s to work. Conventional wisdom effectively treats capital (land, structures, machines, and the like) as though it were a kind of holy water that, sprinkled on or about labor, makes it more productive. Thus, if you have a thousand people working in a factory and you increase the design and power of the machinery so that one hundred men can now do what a thousand did before, conventional wisdom says, ‘Voila! The productivity of the labor has gone up 900 percent!’ I say ‘hogwash.’ All you’ve done is wipe out 90 percent of the jobs, and even the remaining ten percent are probably sitting around pushing buttons. What the economy needs is a way of legitimately getting capital ownership into the hands of the people who now don’t have it.”
In a competitive race to produce efficiently, in addition to a focus on productive capital investment, employers are either shortening the workweek or asking employees to take unpaid leave in unprecedented numbers. The only work that has increased is part-time work, and that is because it allows employers to reduce costs through a diminished benefit package or none at all.
The problem is that technological unemployment will become the norm globally and companies will not be able to find “customers with money” to purchase their products and services. Obviously, because for the vast majority of people a JOB is their ONLY means of an income source. The financial system is rigged to benefit those who already own and to perpetuate further CONCENTRATED OWNERSHIP of productive capital productivity gains. We need to reform the system to free economic growth from the slavery of “past” savings.
The solution is to reform the financial system to incentivize companies to finance their growth through the issuance and sale of new stock, with full voting and full profit dividend payout provisions, so that EVERY American can acquire the stock using insured pure capital credit and pay for their acquisition out of the “future” earnings of the investment.
Essentially, the pressing need is for everyone in a position of influence to raise the consciousness of the America people by making the nation’s NUMBER ONE focus the introduction of a National Right To Capital Ownership Bill that restores the American dream of property ownership as a primary source of personal wealth.
This is the solution to America’s economic decline in wealth and income inequality, which will result in double-digit economic growth and simultaneously broaden private, individual ownership so that EVERY American’s income significantly grows, providing the means to support themselves and their families with an affluent lifestyle. The Just Third Way Master Plan for America’s future is published at http://foreconomicjustice.org/?p=5797.
Support the Capital Homestead Act at http://www.cesj.org/homestead/index.htm and http://www.cesj.org/homestead/summary-cha.htm
