Layoff Rate Falls But Hiring Is Not Picking Up (Demo)

This is the reality of efficient business operations. Full employment is not an objective of businesses. Companies strive to keep labor input and other costs at a minimum to optimize efficiency and maximize profits. 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. Unless their is a dramatic growth of “customers with money” to purchase the products and services of businesses, and unless human labor is more efficient than “machines,” there will continue to be less new  hires as businesses employ the most cost-effective measures to maximize their profits.

There is no denying that productive capital is increasingly the source of the world’s economic growth. Therefore it is logical that it should become the source of added property ownership incomes for all. 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.

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.

Don Lee, who writes extensively for the Los Angeles Times on economics, consisently fails to tie unemployment to the issue of CONCENTRATED OWNERSHIP of productive capital. He should be recommending effective programs for expanded ownership of productive capital, and address the problem of education on this subject or at minimum pose the pertanent questions

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.

How will this be accomplished?

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