President Obama raises his hand with a question during a visit to a pre-kindergarten class in Baltimore. On his trip to a manufacturing plant in the city, the president hoped to turn public attention to job creation efforts. (Mandel Ngan, AFP/Getty Images / May 17, 2013)
On May 18, 2013, Christi Parsons writes in the Los Angeles Times:
President Obama said Friday he wanted to put more Americans to work by slashing the amount of time it takes to grant federal approval for big job-creating projects.
The White House believes the economy trumps all other subjects, even the current controversies, for most Americans.
Obama said he recently ordered accelerated permitting for 50 big projects across the country, including work on the Tappan Zee Bridge in New York and the Port of Charleston in South Carolina.
“We’ve been able to, in some cases, cut approval times from seven years down to a year,” Obama said, to loud applause from the crowd at the Baltimore plant. “Today I’m directing agencies across the government to do what it takes to cut timelines for breaking ground on major infrastructure projects in half.”
President Obama’s lack of leadership is evident in the narrow mindedness of his focus on JOBS CREATION only while totally ignoring OWNERSHIP CREATION as the real thrust necessary for the economic health of the nation.
Government supported infrastructure monies payed out for construction work is awarded to private companies who will engage the productive capital assets––machinery of all sorts and other support means––and employ people. The employment will be short-lived as once the construction projects are completed the infrastructure no longer requires the attention of workers who built it. The initial monies spent by the taxpayers mostly benefit the ownership class of the construction companies contracted to do the work, not their employees. Thus, we have the scenario whereby the wealthy ownership class is subsidized by taxpayers in the name of JOBS CREATION, while denying ownership opportunities to ordinary Americans who need income.
The majority of Americans are essentially clueless and ignorant as to their plight and that of their children and grandchildren, whose ONLY source of an income is a job, or worse yet dependency on taxpayer supported government welfare. In effect, the majority of Americans are job serfs who are dependent on jobs, which are increasingly being replaced and devalued by productive capital assets OWNED by less than 10 percent of the population. Worse yet, the financial system is structured so that essentially ALL FUTURE economic growth, as embodied in the formation of NEW wealth-creating productive capital assets, will be owned by the same wealthy minority and their heirs.
The rich are RICH because they OWN the wealth-creating productive capital assets or means of production, which is at the core of our capacity to produce products and services. Until we reverse course and provide equal opportunity for EVERY American to acquire ownership in FUTURE productive capital assets using insured capital credit, wealth and income differences will continue to dramatically widen as tectonic shifts in the technologies of production displace human labor with the non-human means of production––productive capital. Such displacement is exponentially accelerating and NO ONE in a position of “leadership” or academia is addressing this paradigm shift in how the products and services that we consume are produced, and how we can connect individuals with the property rights of ownership in the FUTURE wealth-creating productive capital assets so that they will derive income from a new source that has been, as a practical matter, the exclusive opportunity for those already wealthy.
Until we reform the system, the majority of Americans and future generations will increasingly become financially insecure and the most likely to experience downward mobility in retirement––causing them to become increasingly reliant on government welfare for their subsistence.
The answers and solutions are to be found in the proposed Capital Homestead Act at http://www.cesj.org/homestead/index.htm and http://www.cesj.org/homestead/summary-cha.htm, and the Agenda of The Just Third Way Movement at http://foreconomicjustice.org/?p=5797
http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-na-obama-baltimore-20130518,0,6622667.story
