On February 28, 2014, Thom Hartmann writes on his blog:
According to the Economic Policy Institute, we need an economy that works for everyone – not just the top one percent. The EPI recently issued a new report on how those at the top have fared – compared to the rest of us – over the last few decades. What they found proves that the system is rigged. The EPI report states that, “between 1979 and 2007, the top one percent of taxpayers in all states captured an increasing share of the income.” And, in the years since the Great Recession, the “top one percent of incomes in most states once again grew faster than the incomes of the bottom 99 percent.”
The report shows that in all 50 states, income inequality has gotten worse, and the average worker has been shut out of our nation’s prosperity. EPI noted that unionization rates are lower than they’ve been since before 1928, which means that most workers don’t have the power to demand higher wages. In fact, the EPI report states “The federal minimum wage purchases fewer goods and services than it did in 1968.”
There is just no denying it – those at the top are getting richer, and the rest of us aren’t even keeping up. In their conclusion, EPI states, “In the next decade, something must give. Either America must accept that the American Dream of widespread economic mobility is dead, or new policies must emerge that will begin to restore broadly shared prosperity.” Income inequality is finally getting some long-overdue attention from our lawmakers, but we need less talk and more action to make our economy work for the 99 percent.
Thom Hartmann consistently fails to realize that the income gains of the 1 percent, that far out distant the earnings of the labor workers, is due to the fact that they are the wealthy owners of our nation’s wealth-creating, income-producing productive capital assets, held legally by the shareholders (them) of corporations. In other words, they are rich not because of their labor input but because of their ownership interests in the non-human factor of production that is largely and increasingly responsible for how products and services are made and delivered.
Until the Hartmann’s of the world and other media and economic and social justice advocates wake up to this reality and begin to advocate for broadened ownership of private sector capital assets among the 99 percent who are now propertyless or under-capitalized, economic inequality will persist and worsen. What is needed are policies that will un-rig the system and provide equal opportunity for EVERY child, woman and man to acquire ownership stakes in FUTURE wealth-creating, income-producing capital assets with the earnings of capital. So that they do not have to deny themselves consumption or accumulate past savings and pledge personal equities (none of which the 99 percent possess) as security, we need to provide insured, zero-interest capital credit loans to finance the FUTURE productive sector repayable in the FUTURE earnings of the new capital assets to be formed.
OWNERSHIP is the key, yet Hartmann and others ignore this reality, even though they should be intelligent enough to understand that the rich are rich not because of their labor contributions but because of their productive contributions of tools and machines and other physical capital assets that they own.
Hartmann needs to study and support the Agenda of The JUST Third Way at http://foreconomicjustice.org/?p=5797, Monetary Justice at http://capitalhomestead.org/page/monetary-justice, and the Capital Homestead Act at http://www.cesj.org/homestead/index.htm and http://www.cesj.org/homestead/summary-cha.htm. See the full Act at http://cesj.org/homestead/strategies/national/cha-full.pdf.
http://www.thomhartmann.com/blog/2014/02/we-need-economy-works-99-percent
