Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive officer and founder of Facebook Inc., speaks at Facebook’s F8 developers conference in San Francisco on Sept. 22, 2011. From the Erie Canal to the Internet by way of the transcontinental railroads and the Interstate Highway System, the American state has played a strategic role in the deployment of the transformational technologies that have created a succession of “new economies.” (David Paul Morris / Bloomberg)
On December 27, 2012, William H. Janeway writes in the Los Angeles Times from railroads to highways to the Internet, it takes government to help drive innovation and economic growth.
Can government play a positive role in economic development?
To understand who built what in the construction of the American economy from its pre-industrial origins, a look at one of the drivers of U.S. innovation — venture capital — is instructive.
A significant observation to take from this excellent article is that taxpayer monies via taxation and the pledge of national debt provides the financial means for the government to serve as the principal financier of technical research and the principal customer for the products that result. The government is the advance entity that enables investment in fundamental science and in technological invention in its nascent stages. This is the precursory stage for the next generation of entrepreneurs and venture capitalist to have their opportunity to innovate and invent.
At every stage, the innovation economy depends on sources of funding decoupled from concern for economic return. As economists have long recognized, such funding will not be delivered by competitive markets. Only an active state in pursuit of politically legitimate missions — national development, national security, conquering disease — can play the required role.
While a wealthy minority has benefited as owners in FUTURE capital asset formation, the significant problem has been the systematic denial of participation as capital owners on the part of the majority of consumers. While the wealthy ownership class has essentially rigged the financial system to their benefit, and by that is meant to continually concentrate ownership of productive capital among the richest Americans, the majority of Americans have been and are dependent on JOB CREATION. Yet, no leaders or academia, or the national media addresses this imbalance with the richest Americans entitled to income growth associated with productive capital ownership and the majority facing further job losses and degradation due to technological advancement.
With that as the premise, we need an Economic Marshall Plan, which will necessitate a long-term advocacy platform that requires our leadership, academia and the national media to educate themselves to the Just Third Way of economic democracy where we create an OWNERSHIP CULTURE whereby EVERY child, woman and man owns a viable income-producing capital estate and sources their income from the dividend earnings of their estate.
We need leaders who will put this issue before the national debate stage, and we need the media to put forth the questions whose answers will provide the financial mechanism specifics to reverse the ever dominant OWNERSHIP CONCENTRATION. Such concentration and the economic power that result is taking control of our representative government, with productive capital ownership channeled through plutocratic finance into fewer and fewer hands, as we continue to witness today with government by the wealthy evidenced at all levels.
We are absent a national discussion of where consumers earn the money to buy products and services and the nature of capital ownership, and instead argue about policies to redistribute income or not to redistribute income. If Americans do not demand that the contenders for the office of the presidency of the United States, the Senate, and the Congress address these issues, we will have wasted the opportunity to steer the American economy in a direction that will broaden affluence. We have adequate resources, adequate knowhow, and adequate manpower to produce general affluence, but we need as a society to properly and efficiently manage these resources while protecting and enhancing the environment so that our productive capital capability is sustainable and renewable. Such issues are the proper concern of government because of the human damage inflicted on our social fabric as well as to economic growth in which every citizen is fairly included in the American dream.
I hope ALL Americans will support our movement to “Reform The Federal Reserve.” Please sign the SignOn.org organization PETITION at http://signon.org/sign/reform-the-federal-reserve.fb23?source=c.fb&r_by=3904687 They want to support this petition and take it national but we must demonstrate that there is enough support. Supporters of For Economic Justice need to ensure the petition is sent on to President Obama and the United States Congress at https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/reform-federal-reserve/PhY3Jswk. We have fought hard for a progressive change to energize our economy. We have an opportunity to build a 21st century infrastructure with renewable and sustainable energy development and new cities that will be looked upon as technology showcases. The petition deals with reforming the Federal Reserve Banking System such that the national bank lends the money to ordinary citizens to re-build America. This can be accomplished with low-interest loans. In addition to the lending authority of the Federal Reserve, people everywhere are willing to lend money to the United States at rates that are lower than at any point in history. This will free us from indebtedness to China and transform our anemic 2 percent growth rate to 10 percent or better annually and not only result in an OWNERSHIP CULTURE of new capital owners but also JOBS CREATION. The objective needs to be to broaden the private-individual ownership of new FUTURE productive income-producing capital investment simultaneously with economic growth. This will result is a far better balance between production and consumption and put us on a path to prosperity, opportunity, and economic justice for EVERY American.
Support the Capital Homestead Act at http://www.cesj.org/homestead/index.htm and http://www.cesj.org/homestead/summary-cha.htm
