On December 23, 2013, Dean Baker writes on The Huffington Post:
In his speech on inequality earlier this month, President Obama proclaimed that the government could not be a bystander in the effort to reduce inequality, which he described as the defining moral issue of our time. This left millions convinced that Obama would do nothing to lessen inequality.
The problem is that President Obama wants the public to believe that inequality is something that just happened. It turns out that the forces of technology, globalization, and whatever else simply made some people very rich and left others working for low wages or out of work altogether. The president and other like-minded people feel a moral compulsion to reverse the resulting inequality. This story is 180 degrees at odds with the reality. Inequality did not just happen, it was deliberately engineered through a whole range of policies intended to redistribute income upward.
But the key point is that inequality didn’t just happen; it was the result of government policy. That is why people who actually want to see inequality reduced, and for poor and middle class to share in the benefits from growth, are not likely to be very happy about President Obama’s speech on the topic. His comment about the government being a bystander ignores the real source of the problem. Therefore it is not likely that he will come up with much by way of real solutions.
Dean Baker does an excellent job of addressing government policy as a perpetrator of economic inequality, but as with President Obama does not put forth solutions.
I addressed this subject in my op-ed published by Nation Of Change and The Huffington Post entitled “President Obama Puts Spotlight On Economic Inequality” at http://www.nationofchange.org/president-obama-puts-spotlight-economic-inequality-1387811548 and at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gary-reber/president-obama-economic-inequality_b_4491098.html, respectively. And I provided solutions that respect and honor private property principles and do not take anything from those who already OWN America, except for their economic unjust position of privilege and monopoly OWNERSHIP of the FUTURE.
Those politicians, conventional economists and media spokespersons who believe that “full employment” secured under whatever means (redistributive make-work or subsidized taxpayer extracted or incurred national debt) are not acting to promote the general good of the country.
As my colleague at the Center for Economic and Social Justice (CESJ.org) Jerome J. Peloquin states: “No laissez faire business model will ever permit full employment when labor is the avowed enemy of profit! Labor Costs are the anathema of management everywhere. It is the cheap seats, the first place cost cutters go is to labor! In fact killing labor costs is the primary task of management. A $1.00 reduction in operating costs is equal to $20 or more in sales! So, let’s get off of the full employment fairy tale.”
My argument and that of my colleagues is for FULL OWNERSHIP (http://capitalhomestead.org/). Peloquin’s take is very thought provoking: “Riddle me this? Does is not make sense that the owners of a company should be those who have the greatest interest in its success? Leveraging value through a public crap game (Las Vegas on the Hudson) otherwise known as ‘Wall Street.’ is a rigged game controlled by the large portfolio managers and investment banks. It is the cookie jar of the landed gentry.
“As the job market contracts due to computer automation and robotics, there will be more and more people chasing fewer and fewer jobs (The Hunger Games) We have all been brain washed into believing we must toil for our bread! It is a hustle … we all have to make a living but it does not have to be a job that makes the living for us. What should we be seeking? NOT JOBs .. BUT OWNERSHIP of the means of production. Not Socialism, Not Communism, but true market capitalism, where every man woman and child (not the State) is a shareholder in the tremendous asset that is America.”
There you have it, a simple concept that has yet to be tried on a universal basis. Future government policy MUST be based on the maximum extent that BROADENED INDIVIDUAL OWNERSHIP and FULL-EARNINGS DIVIDEND payout results, to create a market-based source of income for every man, woman and child derived from a diversified portfolio of stock ownership in wealth-creating, income-producing capital assets.
Our national economic policy needs to eliminate all barriers to enabling productive capital acquisition to take place through commercially insured capital credit. By doing so the result would be a quiet revolution in which economic plutocracy will transform to economic democracy.
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.
For specific policy solutions see the Agenda of The Just Third Way Movement at http://foreconomicjustice.org/?p=5797 and support the Capital Homestead Act at http://www.cesj.org/homestead/index.htm and http://www.cesj.org/homestead/summary-cha.htm.
