On June 5, 2012, Harry Bradford shares a video on the Huffington Post with Nobel Prize-winning Columbia University economist Joseph Stiglitz on his book The Price Of Inequality:
“Left-leaning economist and Columbia professor Joseph Stiglitz told Bloomberg Monday that Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s plan to slash government spending would send the economy into a downward spiral.
“‘The Romney plan is going to slow down the economy, worsen the jobs deficit and significantly increase the likelihood of a recession,’ Stiglitz told Bloomberg.
“He went on to say that President Obama ‘recognizes the need to stimulate the economy’ and sees income inequality as a ‘significant problem,’ while Romney does not.
“‘“No large economy has ever recovered from recession through austerity,’ Stiglitz warned during an interview Bloomberg reporter Betty Liu.”
The economic dark age has been clouding over all economies, including the United States, as ordinary people are systematicllly excluded from participating through private, individual ownership in the future productive capital assets of their countries’ business corporations and companies. These assets are embodied in productive land, structures, machines, superautomation, robotics, digital computerized operations, etc (the non-human factor of production). “Real” job growth can only flourish when an economy grows. Austerity policies essentially strangle an economy’s engine of growth, which results in economic decline. Leaders should always support policies and programs that result in economic growth with the widest possible private, individual ownership participation empowered simultaneously with the economy’s growth, thus strengthening individuals and providing them a productive means to participate and contribute to the society and support the growing economy as consumers.
Neither President Obama or presidential candidate Romney are addressing this core issue.
What is needed is a government stimulus program that as a condition to benefit requires participating business corporations and companies to broaden the ownership of their future productive capital assets among employees and other citizens. As well, tax policy should be designed to encourage broadened ownership of new productive capital assets.
The question that requires an answer is now timely before us. It was first posed by binary economist Louis Kelso in the 1950s but has never been thoroughly discussed on the national stage. Nor has there been the proper education of our citizenry that addresses what economic justice is and what ownership is. Therefore, by ignoring such issues of economic justice and ownership, our leaders are ignoring the concentration of power through ownership of productive capital, with the result of denying the 99 percenters equal opportunity to become capital owners. The question, as posed by Kelso is: “how are all individuals to be adequately productive when a tiny minority (capital workers) produce a major share and the vast majority (labor workers), a minor share of total goods and service,” and thus, “how do we get from a world in which the most productive factor—physical capital—is owned by a handful of people, to a world where the same factor is owned by a majority—and ultimately 100 percent—of the consumers, while respecting all the constitutional rights of present capital owners?”
