Companies strive to keep labor input and other costs at a minimum in order to maximize profits for the owners. Thus, private sector job creation in numbers that match the pool of people willing and able to work is constantly being eroded by physical productive capital's ever-increasing role. The reason the rich are getting richer is not due to their labor work but due to their expanding OWNERSHIP of wealth-creating, income-producing capital.
Given the indisputable reality that productive capital is increasingly the source of the world's economic growth capital should become the source of added property OWNERSHIP incomes for all. It is logical and reasonable to postulate that if both labor and capital are independent factors of production, and if capital's proportionate contributions are increasing relative to that of labor, then equality of opportunity and economic justice demands that the right to property (and access to the means of acquiring and possessing property) must in justice be extended to all. Yet, sadly, the American people and its leaders still pretend to believe that labor is becoming more productive and continue to promote job creation while ignoring the issue of OWNERSHIP and how to broaden OWNERSHIP so that EVERY child, woman and man is empowered to become a capital OWNER.
Unfortunately, ever since the 1946 passage of the Full Employment Act, economists and politicians formulating national economic policy have beguiled us into believing that economic power is democratically distributed if we have full employment -- thus the political focus on job creation and redistribution of wealth rather than on full production and broader capital OWNERSHIP accumulation. This is manifested in the belief that labor work is the ONLY way to participate in production and earn income. Long ago that was once true because labor provided 95 percent of the input into the production of products and services. But today that is not true. Capital provides not less than 90 to 95 percent of the input. Full employment as the means to distribute income is not achievable. When the "tools" of capital OWNERS replace labor workers (non-capital OWNERS) as the principal suppliers of products and services, labor employment alone becomes inadequate. Thus, we are left with government policies that redistribute income in one form or another.
The capitalism practiced today is what, for a long time, I have termed "Hoggism," propelled by greed and the sheer love of power over others. "Hoggism" institutionalizes greed (creating concentrated capital OWNERSHIP, monopolies, and special privileges). "Hoggism" is about the ability of greedy rich people to manipulate the lives of people who struggle with declining labor worker earnings and job opportunities, and then accumulate the bulk of the money through monopolized productive capital OWNERSHIP. Our scientists, engineers, and executive managers who are not OWNERS themselves, except for those in the highest employed positions, are encouraged to work to destroy employment by making the capital "worker" OWNER more productive. How much employment can be destroyed, by substituting machines for people, is a measure of their success -- always focused on producing at the lowest cost. Only the people who already OWN productive capital are the beneficiaries of their work, as they systematically concentrate more and more capital OWNERSHIP in their stationary 1 percent ranks. Yet the 1 percent are not the people who do the overwhelming consuming. The result is the consumer populous is not able to get the money to buy the products and services produced as a result of substituting machines for people. And yet you can't have mass production without mass human consumption. It is the exponential disassociation of production and consumption that is the problem in the United States economy, and the reason that ordinary citizens must gain access to productive capital OWNERSHIP to improve their economic well being.
The solutions, through the reform of the system, will END Hoggism. Louis O. Kelso, the father of binary economics, postulated: "When consumer earning power is systematically acquired in the course of the normal operations of the economy by people who need and want more consumer goods and services, the production of goods and services should rise to unprecedented levels; the quality and craftsmanship of goods and services, freed of the corner-cutting imposed by the chronic shortage of consumer purchasing power, should return to their former high levels; competition should be brisk; and the purchasing power of money should remain stable year after year."
It is imperative that leaders seeking new solutions seize the opportunity presented by the 2016 presidential election to implement effective programs for expanded OWNERSHIP of productive capital, and address the problem of education on this subject.
At one point in 1976, the discussion led to The Joint Economic Committee of Congress endorsing the two-factor policy to broaden capital OWNERSHIP as an economic goal for America. The 1976 Joint Economic Report stated: "To provide a realistic opportunity for more U.S. citizens to become OWNERS of capital, and to provide an expanded source of equity financing for corporations, it should be made national policy to pursue the goal of broadened capital ownership. Congress also should request from the Administration a quadrennial report on the OWNERSHIP of wealth in this country, which would assist in evaluating how successfully the base of wealth was being broadened over time." Unfortunately the Congress has never paid any attention to this policy, and the goal has subsequently been unacknowledged and unheeded by our plutocratic political leaders.
The stark reality is that we are in a depression reflected in rising under reported unemployment and underemployment and instability that we will never escape from until we change our economic policy. According to the Economic Policy Institute, a family of four needs an income of at least $60,000 dollars a year to reach an "adequate but modest living standard." But, 50 percent of all Americans make less than half that amount. In essence, they are flat broke. This scenario will worsen as globalization further develops and as technology shifts production from humans to non-humans.
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