On March 8, 2013, Pat Garofalo writes on Think Progress:
The Great Recession destroyed trillions of dollars in wealth and economic output. Amd in what looks like a measure of good news, most of the household wealth that was vaporized is back. However, it’s almost all going to the rich.
While the stock market has roared back to record highs, home equity is only recovering slowly, and worker wages have been stuck in neutral, barely moving. The richest 1 percent of Americans have captured 121 percent of the income gains since the recession, meaning that everyone else is worse off in terms of income than they were before the crash.
Corporations have also captured a disproportionate share of the recovery. Since 2008, corporate profits have actually risen 20 times faster than worker incomes. According to a study from economists at Northeastern University, “corporate profits captured 88% of the growth in real national income while aggregate wages and salaries accounted for only slightly more than 1%.” So while it’s a good thing that wealth is slowly being rebuilt, it’s not yet helping the vast majority of the country.
While conventional economists generally acknowledge that productivity [due to “machines” replacing workers] keeps rising, allowing companies to do more with fewer workers, they continue to fail to tie this to the issue of CONCENTRATED OWNERSHIP of productive capital dividend and capital gain income and the word “OWNERSHIP.” 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.
Unfortunately for the non- and under-capitalized American masses, they do not have sufficient savings to risk on Wall Street gambles. And because economic growth is enslaved to “past” savings, economic growth that financially benefits the masses as private owners of FUTURE dividend-income producing and capital gain valued productive capital assets does not work. What is needed are proposals to free economic growth from the slavery of “past” savings and finance FUTURE economic growth in ways in which ordinary Americans, without savings, can acquire viable capital portfolios of preferred stock in corporations and pay for their acquisition out of the earnings (“future” savings) of the investment -produced dividend income stream.
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
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2013/03/08/1691631/household-wealth-rich/?mobile=nc
