We feel instinctively that societies with huge income gaps are somehow going wrong. Richard Wilkinson charts the hard data on economic inequality, and shows what gets worse when rich and poor are too far apart: real effects on health, lifespan, even such basic values as trust.
In “The Spirit Level,” Richard Wilkinson charts data that proves societies that are more equal are healthier, happier societies.
Richard Wilkinson talk at the TED Conference is another wake-up call to radically rechart our course or the collapse is going to be very frightening and very chaotic.
The unjust “system” is at the root cause of the American decline. We have been operating with one-factor (labor worker) thinking instead of realizing and acknowledging that over the past century there has been an ever-accelerating shift to productive capital––which reflects tectonic shifts in the technologies of production––financed through the “system” to further concentrate its ownership among the 1 percent minority.
When the American Industrial Revolution began and subsequent technological advance amplified the productive power of non-human capital, plutocratic finance channeled its ownership into fewer and fewer hands, as we continue to witness today with government by the wealthy evidenced at all levels.
While the rich get richer through continuous incremental acquisition of production capital ownership, the working class and middle class further sink to near poverty or poverty levels, shackled to the idea that the only way to earn a living is through a JOB. Yet, technological advances continue to eliminate or displace jobs and there is simply not the opportunity available to those dependent on job security alone. 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.
Because productive capital is increasingly the source of the world’s economic growth it should become the source of added property ownership incomes for all. Binary eonomist Louis Kelso postulated that if both labor and capital are interdependent factors of production, and if capital’s proportionate contributions are increasing relative to that of labor, then equality of opportunity and economic justice demands that the right to property (and access to the means of acquiring and possessing property) must in justice be extended to all. Yet, sadly, the American people and its leaders still pretend to believe that labor is becoming more productive.
We must embrace technology and the means to create superautomated factories, robotics, and computerized operations of the future, financed using capital credit to broaden ownership and empower every citizen to become a capital worker, in addition to their labor worker input. If we fail to recognize this obvious correction, then deficits will continue to grow, the majority of American will be increasingly less secure, and the level of near poverty and poverty will increase, as well as the continual breakdown and deterioration of our public works. Sadly, the American Dream of opportunity will be lost.
See “Democratic Capitalism And Binary Economics: Solutions For A Troubled Nation And Economy” at:
