On March 6, 2015, Left Wing Nation (anonymous) writes on Addicting Info:
Despite the brutal winter pounding the country took in February, job growth has remained strong:
Total nonfarm payroll employment increased by 295,000 in February, and the unemployment rate edged down to 5.5 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Job gains occurred in food services and drinking places, professional and business services, construction, health care, and in transportation and warehousing. Employment in mining was down over the month.
Curse you, Obama! Your plan to destroy the American economy is so devious it looks like economic growth! In case you’ve lost count, this makes 60 straight months of private sector job growth, setting a new American record (again).
On top of this excellent news, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the addition of 295,000 jobs exceeds the average of 266,000 jobs added a month over the last 12 months. Another indication that a recovery that was supposed to falter and collapse is remaining strong and steady. At this pace, we are replacing the jobs lost in Bush’s Great Recession and still creating enough new ones to absorb our growing population. Just barely but it’s still happening.
But the most important piece of information is this:
In February, average hourly earnings for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls
rose by 3 cents to $24.78. Over the year, average hourly earnings have risen by 2.0
percent.3 cents may not sound like much and you’d be right, it’s not. But the fact that wages are increasing at all is significant. One of the most troublesome aspects of the recovery is that wages have remained stagnant while corporate profits went through the roof. This is why people have been complaining that it feels like we’re still in a recession and the economy is not recovering. It’s recovered quite nicely but only for the rich.
This, by the way, is the specific reason Republicans have blocked every effort to create jobs. The more unemployed people there are, the less money corporations can get away with paying desperate people. At the same time, Republicans can harness people’s discontent to attack Obama for something Republicans caused and exacerbated. It’s viciously cynical and cruel but that’s the GOP in a nut shell.
But with wages growing, even at a glacial pace, there are signs that employment is reaching that dreaded (by the rich) tipping point in which corporations will have to actually compete for talent and wages will grow much more rapidly. The best news of all is that since we’re going into an election season with the Republican Party controlling both chambers of Congress, they wouldn’t darerisk “accidentally” sabotaging the recovery with a shutdown or some other ridiculous stunt. Then again, Tea Party Republicans are more concerned with hating Obama than anything else so a shutdown is still a possibility.
America is still hurting, but progress is still being made despite Republican obstruction, and every new jobs report proves it.
Such reports outline income inequality data which underscores the wealth ownership inequality in America, as the incomes earned by the 10 to 0.01 percent of the population are derived from personally-owned shares of corporate stock and other capital assets. But many people believe that because productivity and GDP has kept going up since 1979 (but workers have been left behind) that the bottom 90 percent of the population should be getting, as an aggregate, over $1 trillion more or about $11,000 more for the average family, if America had the same income distribution now that it had in 1979.
While ALL of the “income” growth for the last 30 plus years went to those at the top, virtually every commentary has avoided explaining the root generation from which the income is earned by the top 10 percent of the population.
The fact is that the income of the richest segment of the population is derived from increases in the economic value of the capital assets they OWN, which was and is created through non-human contributions, not labor whose productiveness is largely unchanged (our human abilities are limited by physical strength and brain power––and relatively constant).
While the latest Labor Department jobs report states that job creation is helping to stem unemployment and underemployment (295,000 jobs in February and an unemployment rate down to 5.5 percent) most jobs are low paying, wages remain stagnant and workers continue to lack the necessary purchasing power to lift the economy.
The reality is that unless we make government work for not only the middle-class but also the working poor and all Americans who are unemployed or underemployed and who are dependent or will be dependent (if the system is not reformed) for their economic well-being on the State and whatever elite controls the coercive powers of government, this scenario will persist far into the future.
The problem is that the people looked up to as leaders limit the solutions to abate income and wealth ownership inequality to government-enforced minimum wages and jobs creation to bolster the earnings of ordinary citizens. But THIS IS NOT THE SOLUTION!
Nor do politicians or academics in the conventional school of economic thinking appear to understand that the reason the minority at the top continue to get richer and richer is because they benefit, through property rights ownership, from productivity gains due to technological change, which makes physical capital (structures, tools, machines and robots and computerization, etc.) ever more productive, and enriches the earnings of those at the top who OWN most of the productive capital assets of our nation.
Congressional politicians should understand this because they are millionaires in the majority, which means they have invested in productive capital assets that they OWN. So there is no excuse for Senators or Congressmen/women not to understand the earning power and wealth creation that comes from OWNING capital assets.
Yet, the ONLY solutions put forth are related to either keeping people stuck in wage slavery and dependency, and redistribution of income, by way of taxing those who are wealthy because they OWN wealth-creating, income-producing capital assets.
But what if ALL politicians and academics embrace the idea of broadening capital ownership simultaneously with the growth of the economy, by empowering people to invent even more sophisticated and efficient “tools” to reduce toil, enable otherwise impossible production, create new highly automated industries, and significantly change the way in which products and services are produced from labor intensive to capital intensive––the core function of technological invention and innovation. With greater earnings from capital investment, people will be better “customers with money” and able to support and pay for products resulting from “greener” technologies that today people cannot afford. Such policies are perfectly in tune with the natural incentive of business corporations to broaden ownership so that the market for their products will increase. Such policies will liberate and dramatically boost the economy.
What if they acknowledge that the role of physical productive capital is to do ever more of the work, which produces wealth and thus income to those who own productive capital assets?
What if they recognize that productive capital is increasingly the source of the world’s economic growth (what Reich, et all, refers to as “productivity”) and, therefore, should become the source of added property ownership incomes for all?
What if they lift ownership-concentrating Federal Reserve System credit barriers and other institutional barriers that have historically separated owners from non-owners and link tax and monetary reforms to the goal of expanded capital ownership? This can be done under the existing legal powers of each of the 12 Federal Reserve regional banks using insured, interest-free capital credit, and would not add to the already unsustainable debt of the Federal Government or raise taxes on ordinary taxpayers.
What if they adopt a more just and simple tax system, lift all existing legal and institutional barriers to private property stakes as a fundamental human right and provide access to and the means of acquiring and possessing “Property” as was intended by our founding fathers?
For those who think the idea of broadening personal ownership of future productive capital will not take hold politically, think about this. Those at the top or “haves” represent a tiny fraction of our nation’s population. Advocating universal personal capital ownership ideas will split them between those who see the point and understand that expanded capital ownership would benefit everyone and result in a robust growth economy, without taking anything away from them during their lives, and those who want to keep ownership in an exclusive club. The latter cannot publicly attack the institution of private property without threatening the legal foundation that gives them their monopoly over the money system and the ownership system.
These ideas for reforming the system are REAL solutions that will abate income and wealth ownership inequality and put us on the path to inclusive prosperity, inclusive opportunity, and inclusive economic justice.
If the politicians and academics do not agree with this solutions’ approach. I would like to know WHY NOT, because this strategy preserves personal rights in property and broadens access for EVERY child, woman, and man to acquire ownership stakes in our nation’s future capital growth and prosperity. Or is it for the reason that such leaders, no matter at what ends of the political spectrum, are ONLY interested in bettering the finances of the majority just enough to keep the them dependent on their elite class members who control the coercive powers of government and want the people to be dependent rather than economically independent, which would eliminate their power?
