On February 10, 2013, Scott Wilson writes in The Washington Post:
President Obama will concentrate his State of the Union speech Tuesday on the economy, shifting the emphasis away from the broad social agenda of his second inaugural address to refocus attention on a set of problems that vexed his first term.
He will propose ways to make college more affordable to more people. And, the officials said, he will argue for the need to spend public money — on research, on roads, on education — to prepare Americans for a world where a warming climate, a nomadic labor force and new technology are shutting doors and opening new ones across the national economy.
“Our single biggest remaining challenge is to get our economy in a place where the middle class is feeling less squeezed, where incomes sustain families,” said a senior administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the address based on drafts, marked up with highlighters, that were circulating among senior staff members late last week.
Unfortunately, while government spending is necessary to grow the American economy, the notion that more spending on “research, on roads, on education” will prepare Americans to compete in a world of nomadic labor and tectonic shifts in the technologies of production is wrongly directed. While education is absolutely necessary, the reality is that relatively few will benefit economically as a direct result of achieving a higher university degree.
What our people are confronted with is a rapidly changing world in which accelerated technological change makes tools, machines, structures, and processes ever more productive while leaving human productiveness largely unchanged (our human abilities are limited by physical strength and brain power––and relatively constant). The result is that primary distribution through the free market economy, whose distributive principle is “to each according to his production,” delivers progressively more market-sourced income to capital owners and progressively less to workers who make their contribution through labor. The present and future reality is that private sector job creation in numbers that match the pool of people willing and able to work, even those well educated, is constantly being eroded by physical productive capital’s ever increasing role.
Progressive liberals have consistently argued that the government isn’t spending enough money, and the lack of government spending is contributing to the weak economy and poor job growth.
What is not addressed is that government spending is dependent upon tax extraction and debt. There is no question that government spending is necessary but as a stipulation to that spending must be the requirement that the private sector broaden private, individual ownership in the existing and future companies that will receive the taxpayer-supported monies and contracts. This is what has historically been absent from the conversation and instead welfare, both open and concealed, has benefited private sector companies in the name of JOB CREATION. What is fundamentally needed is to build an OWNERSHIP CULTURE in which EVERY American has the opportunity to acquire on credit a viable income-producing capital estate and pay for their Super IRA account out of the earnings of the productive capital investments in the economy.
This is a simple concept. It is the fundamental principle of business logic that investments pay for themselves as their earnings are pledged first to pay off expansion loans and once paid for continue to generate earnings for their owners. Of course, there will be business failures and that is why it will be necessary to attach commercial capital credit insurance, backed by government re-insurance (if necessary), to the loan transactions facilitated by banks.
We should make every effort to ensure that the FUTURE economic growth of the American economy is financed such that we are constantly creating new owners and strengthening the capital estates of our under-capatilized citizens. This is the solution to the onslaught of tectonic shifts in the technologies of production, which is destroying or devaluing jobs, that will enable us to free economic growth from the slavery of “past” savings.
A National Right To Capital Ownership Bill that restores the American dream should be advocated by the progressive movement, which addresses the reality of Americans facing job opportunity deterioration and devaluation due to tectonic shifts in the technologies of production.
There is a solution, 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.
This is a practical approach that would combine the efficiency of a free market-based economy with justice and freedom for all. Like so many people who correctly see the dangers of government redistribution strategies, today’s business leaders and virtually all academic economists remain blind to the artificial barriers that exist in our financial and tax systems, and in our corporate, welfare and labor laws that systematically block all citizens from enjoying truly equal opportunities to become capital owners without violating property rights of existing owners.
This is an approach that provides direction at a time when the United States and the world has no direction, no end, no goal. Socialism has been very much discredited, whereas the great majority of people do not believe in capitalism because they see it reward greed to the benefit of a tiny minority––the wealthy ownership class. This approach sets forth a heading to achieve prosperity, opportunity, and economic justice. It embraces technological progress as it significantly reduces the need for human toil work and empowers ordinary people to become capital owners using pure credit. Its goal is to create an OWNERSHIP CULTURE whereby EVERY American is strengthened economically and socially.
Support the Capital Homestead Act at http://www.cesj.org/homestead/index.htm and http://www.cesj.org/homestead/summary-cha.htm