Plenty Of "Jobs" Bills, But Not Many Jobs (Demo)

By Gary Reber Uncategorized June 22, 2012

On June 22, 2012, Lisa Mascaro writes in the Los Angeles Times that the parties in Congress showcase rival proposals, but they seem to agree on little that could quickly increase employment.

“With the economy and jobs remaining voters’ top priority, almost every bill in Congress is now declared a “jobs” bill.

“The problem is, there is little … this divided Congress can agree on that would help reduce the nation’s stubbornly high unemployment rate.

“Gone are any hopes for Depression-style jobs programs in this period of anxiety over the federal debt. Even extending unemployment benefits, which had been a routine recession-era move to put money in the hands of the jobless and spur the economy, has become a tough political task.

“Even if Republicans and Democrats could set their partisan gibes aside long enough to pass legislation, most of the bills on the table would not substantially change the immediate jobs outlook.

“Polls have shown neither party has a clear advantage when it comes to the question of who can best handle the economy and create jobs. That ambivalence is driving the parties to great lengths to convince voters they are working to improve the economy.

“The reality, however, is that Congress is mostly passing bills in one chamber that will be ignored in the other. But the marketing of so-called jobs bills has been robust.”

What is consistently missed by our so-called leadership in both parties is the realization that the economists and analysts advising them should recognize that there are two factors of production: people (labor workers who contribute manual, intellectual, creative and entrepreneurial work) and capital (land; structures; infrastructure; tools; machines; computer processing; certain intangibles that have the characteristics of property, such as patents and trade or firm names; and the like owned by capital workers). Fundamentally, economic value is created through human and non-human contributions.

Once this simple concept is understood, then the following should be evident: The role of physical productive capital is to do ever more of the work, which produces income. Full employment is not an objective of businesses. Companies strive to keep labor input and other costs at a minimum. 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. Over the past century there has been an ever-accelerating shift to productive capital––which reflects tectonic shifts in the technologies of production.

One can then realize that our scientists, engineers, and executive managers who are not owners themselves of the productive capital they create, except for those in the highest employed positions, are encouraged to work to destroy employment by making the capital worker owner more productive. How much employment can be destroyed by substituting machines for people is a measure of their success––always focused on producing at the lowest cost. Only the people who already own productive capital are the beneficiaries of their work, as they systematically concentrate more and more capital ownership in their stationary 1 percent ranks. Yet the 1 percent are not the people who do the overwhelming consuming. The result is the consumer populous is not able to get the money to buy the products and services produced as a result of substituting machines for people. And yet you can’t have mass production without mass human consumption. 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.

Thus, while we do in fact need skilled educated labor workers for the continued development of the Third Industrial Revolution embodied in machines, superautomation, robotics, digital computerized operations, etc., we must reform the economic system to connect ALL citizens, via private, individual ownership, to the future productive capital assets resulting from technological innovation and invention. We must face the fact that a majority of the people will not be needed to produce the bulk of the products and services. By broadening private, individual ownership of future productive capital creation among ALL Americans, long-term and permanent “conventional” employment would not be an issue, as peoples would earn income through their capital ownership to support the demand and purchase of products and services produced by largely non-human means of production. Those employed would have two sources of income.

While our leaders could, through simple reforms, put us on the path to prosperity, opportunity, and economic justice, the expected results will not occur immediately but progressively over time as we build our future just economy.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-congress-jobs-20120622,0,3043529.story

Plenty Of "Jobs" Bills, But Not Many Jobs (Demo)

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