On February 14, 2013, Robert Reich writes in the Huffington Post:
“Our biggest problems over the next ten years are not deficits,” the president told House Republicans Wednesday, according to those who attended the meeting.
The president needs to deliver the same message to the public, loudly and clearly. The biggest problems we face are unemployment, stagnant wages, slow growth, and widening inequality — not deficits. The major goal must be to get jobs and wages back, not balance the budget.
Paul Ryan’s budget plan — essentially, the House Republican plan — is designed to lure the White House and Democrats, and the American public, into a debate over how to balance the federal budget in ten years, not over whether it’s worth doing.
The government’s finances are not at all like a household’s. In fact, it’s when American families can’t spend enough to keep the economy going, because too many of them are unemployed or underemployed and have run out of money, that government has to step in as spender of last resort — even if that means taking on more debt. If government doesn’t fill the spending gap, an economy can collapse into deeper recession or depression, pushing unemployment far higher. Look at what austerity economics has done to Europe.
In addition, it’s perfectly fine for government to borrow and continue to borrow in order to invest in new roads or other infrastructure, or education, or basic research — when those investments pay off in higher rates of economic growth.The notion that government spending “crowds out” private investment, keeping interest rates higher than otherwise, is obsolete in a global economy where capital [termed as money, not physical capital] sloshes across national borders, seeking the highest returns from anywhere. Societies that invest in the productivity of their people attract global capital and create high-paying jobs. And since most big corporations are no longer dependent on the productivity of any one nation, the responsibility for making such investments increasingly falls to government.
Not that we should disregard the debt altogether, but the best way to deal with it is to do so gradually, through economic growth.
Robert Reich has called for the expansion of the economy through higher growth rates, using debt financing, but continues to avoid addressing outright the issue of CONCENTRATED OWNERSHIP of productive capital wealth assets and the job destroying and devaluing that tectonic shifts in the technologies of production are having and will continue to have on a global scale.
If I were President Obama I would convene a national discussion using the national media and social media, and our educational institutions, to open up a discussion on EVERY CITIZEN AN OWNER opportunity. He needs to educate at this time because academia, the media, and our so-called leaders are not addressing how people make money and the significance of OWNING income-producing physical productive capital assets. He needs to get people to understand that without system reform, as with today, in the FUTURE, we will continue to experience the exponential disassociation of production and consumption, which is the reason that ordinary citizens must gain access to productive capital ownership to improve their economic well-being. This is a crucial understanding because at present for the 99 percent of the nation a JOB is the ONLY source of income to support themselves and their families.
President Obama needs to introduce a government policy focus on OWNERSHIP CREATION, not JOB CREATION, which will result and naturally follow as the economy revs up to double-digit GDP growth and fully applies technological innovation and invention to shift from unnecessary labor toil to human-intelligent machines, super-automation, robotics, and digital computerized operations.
President Obama should call on the Federal Reserve to stop monetizing unproductive debt, and begin creating an asset-backed currency that could enable every child, woman and man to establish a Capital Homestead Account or “CHA” (a super-IRA or asset tax-shelter for citizens) at their local bank to acquire a growing dividend-bearing stock portfolio to supplement their incomes from work and all other sources of income. Steadily over time this will create a robust economy with millions of “customers with money” to purchase the products and services that are needed and wanted.
Reich, in the past has advocated implementing a “Build America’s Future Act. This is a good title for the massive investment in technological economic growth that is necessary to compete globally. But along with this is the necessity for President Obama to raise the consciousness of the America people and introduce a National Right To Capital Ownership Bill that restores the American dream of property ownership as a primary source of personal wealth. Economic growth investment without broadened private ownership of FUTURE productive capital wealth assets will just further CONCENTRATE CAPITAL OWNERSHIP and leave the majority of people insecure and more dependent on taxpayer-supported government welfare, open and concealed and paid for by tax extraction and national debt.
Providing a way of legitimately getting productive capital ownership into the hands of the people who now don’t have it is the solution to America’s economic decline in wealth and income inequality, which will result in double-digit economic growth and cause EVERY American’s income to significantly grow, providing the means to support themselves and their families with an affluent lifestyle, and provide the necessary tax base to gradually pay off American debts. The Just Third Way Master Plan for America’s future is published at http://foreconomicjustice.org/?p=5797.
I would like to see Reich critique this master plan and if he does not agree state why and what he would change.
Support the Capital Homestead Act at http://www.cesj.org/homestead/index.htm and http://www.cesj.org/homestead/summary-cha.htm
