Peter Buffet: America Has Been (Demo)

Dear Mr. Buffet,

Peter,

I like your artistic direction expressed through your music, and passion for justice and for advancing the fulfillment of the human race.

I totally agree with your statement in your New York Times op-ed: “But this just keeps the existing structure of inequality in place. The rich sleep better at night, while others get just enough to keep the pot from boiling over. Nearly every time someone feels better by doing good, on the other side of the world (or street), someone else is further locked into a system that will not allow the true flourishing of his or her nature or the opportunity to live a joyful and fulfilled life.”

Until we, as a nation, understand that it is the lack of ownership of the means of production that is the problem among the majority of Americans, we will constantly see an eroding of wages, the destruction of jobs, and increasing demand on the part of the people that the State do more and more. As for the vast majority of Americans, their only source of income are wages, government welfare support or charity.  As tectonic shifts in the technologies of production exponentially advance on a global scale, the result will be increasingly less good-paying job opportunities, job destruction, and the decreasing worth of labor as a means of production. In other words, the non-human factor of production––physical productive capital––will increasingly be employed with less and less human labor necessary to produce the products and services needed and wanted by society.

What is need is a policy program that facilitates stimulating economic growth simultaneously with creating new owners of the productive capital assets created. Conventionally, most people do not have the right to acquire productive capital with the self-financing earnings of capital; they are left to acquire, as best as they can, with their earnings as labor workers. This is fundamentally hard to do and limiting. Thus, the most important economic right Americans need and should demand is the effective right to acquire capital with the earnings of capital.

What historically empowered America’s original capitalists was conventional savings-based finance and the pledging or mortgaging of assets, with access to further ownership of new productive capital available only to those who were already well capitalized. As has been the case, credit to purchase capital is made available by financial institutions ONLY to people who already own capital and other forms of equity, such as the equity in their home that can be pledged as loan security––those who meet the universal requirement for collateral. Lenders will only extend credit to people who already have assets. Thus, the rich are made ever richer, while the poor (people without a viable capital estate) remain poor and dependent on their labor to produce income. Thus, the system is restrictive and capital ownership is clinically denied to those who need it.

The solutions, which include specific financial mechanisms to enable financing economic growth with “future savings” (earnings) is the platform of the Just Third Way and the proposed Capital Homestead Act (a technology/industrial blueprint which takes its lead from the Homestead Act of 1862). This new paradigm will economically empower all individuals and families through direct and effective ownership of the means of production as a significant source of income, and put our nation on a path to universal prosperity, opportunity, and economic justice.

I urge you to discuss this new paradigm with Norman Kurland, President of the Center for Economic and Social Justice. Norman was a colleague of mine in the late 1960s (and today) when I founded an advocacy firm, Agenda 2000 Incorporated with Louis Kelso, the farther of what is called binary economics––the theoretical basis for this new paradigm. Norman’s email address is thirdway@cesj.org.

For background there are numerous published books, articles and reference sources at www.cesj.org to support this new paradigm. Also,  see my article “The Absent Conversation: Who Should Own America?” published by The Huffington Post at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gary-reber/who-should-own-america_b_2040592.html and by OpEd News at http://www.opednews.com/articles/THE-Absent-Conversation–by-Gary-Reber-130429-498.html

Also see “The Path To Eradicating Poverty In America” at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gary-reber/the-path-to-eradicating-p_b_3017072.htmland “The Path To Sustainable Economic Growth” at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gary-reber/sustainable-economic-growth_b_3141721.html. And also “Second Income Plan” at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gary-reber/second-income-plan_b_3625319.html

Also see the article entitled “The Solution To America’s Economic Decline” at http://www.nationofchange.org/solution-america-s-economic-decline-1367588690 and “Education Is Critical To Our Future Societal Development” at http://www.nationofchange.org/education-critical-our-future-societal-development-1373556479. And also “Achieving The Green Economy” at http://www.nationofchange.org/achieving-green-economy-1373980790. Also see it complete with the footnotes at http://foreconomicjustice.org/?p=9082.

Also see “Financing Economic Growth With ‘FUTURE SAVINGS’: Solutions To Protect America From Economic Decline” at NationOfChange.org (http://www.nationofchange.org/financing-future-economic-growth-future-savings-solutions-protect-america-economic-decline-137450624)

I also write a blog on this subject at www.forecnomicjustice.org and post as an advocate on Facebook at www.facebook.com/editorgary and www.facebook.com/pages/For-Economic-Justice/347893098576250?ref=hl

As well, I recommend that you contact Mark Goldes of the AESOP Institute (www.asopinstitute.org) at mgoldes@chavaenergy.com regarding achieving the green economy.

I too am available for further discussion. My email is gary@foreconomicjustice.org.