Identifying Issue Number One

　
If a pollster called and asked what you consider the most important political issue in the country today, how would you respond? Would you say it’s the economy? The war on terrorism? What about health care?

No matter which issue you choose, your answer would probably be correct. Not merely because it’s your opinion, which is what the pollster expects to hear, but because each of these areas and many more represent extremely difficult problems which must be solved if we are to have a well-functioning society. The problem is, these are merely symptoms. What we really need to do is focus on those steps that would lead us to truly effective solutions to the entire range of our economic and social problems.

 

Now, what would you say if the pollster asked you which problems are so important they must be addressed first? Which are the issues that, if we could turn them around in a short time, would begin to have positive effects on most of the rest of our social and economic calamities?

 

I’d say there are two areas: education and employment. Notice, I didn’t say unemployment. I’m talking positive here. Unemployment is the problem; employment is the solution.

 

In fact, I would venture to say that these issues are so vital that if we could address both areas simultaneously, everything else would fall into place. Not without a whole lot of effort on the part of every citizen, of course, but just imagine:

 

• What if every single person were educated to the limits of his or her abilities and interests?
• What if everyone made learning a lifetime habit?
• And what if every person were able to work at a job that was both interesting and fulfilling?
• Most importantly, what would happen if every single person on the planet who is at all capable of doing some measure of work earned at least twice as much as it costs to purchase all the necessary goods and services required to enjoy a dignified existence--so that even the lowest-paid person has at least some extra money to spend beyond their basic needs?

 

The World I Imagine: A creative manual for ending poverty and building peace is a collection of essays discussing how providing universal job training, education, and employment would provide the tools necessary to solve most of the other economic and social problems in our society.

 

If we could resolve the issues of education and employment at the same time, then society would have enough resources available so that solutions to almost every other problem would be within reach. All that would be needed would be to apply common sense and the combined effort of every member of society. It’s as simple as that!

 

For instance, a lot of people say the economy is the biggest problem we face these days. They cite the housing crisis, lack of access to health care, and other gaps in the delivery of basic goods and services to millions of people in this country and billions around the world.
 

But imagine what our society would be like if everyone earned at least a little more than it takes to pay for their basic needs, including health care (as opposed to the insurance system that enriches for-profit businesses while denying care to many people who actually need it), housing, food, basic transportation, and especially job training and education.
 

In that case, everyone would be able to participate in a universal saving program in which everyone invested a small percentage of their salary for a preset length of time. Such a plan would not only ensure that everyone could build personal wealth but would provide a static economic base to strengthen businesses, in this country and around the world. Costs would stabilize, thus putting a brake on the scourge of inflation.
 

If everyone received a good basic financial education and were assured of continuous employment as long as they’re able to work, few people, if any, would spend themselves into the deep holes in which so many people find themselves today. There would be few, if any, foreclosures. Business could rely on a strong and steady market for goods and services, depending more on the quality of their products and services rather than the vagaries of shifting economic sands.
 

The elimination of the conditions that perpetuate poverty--inadequate job training, education, underemployment, and unemployment--would also lead to a marked reduction in crime, which would lower costs for everyone and eliminate much of the stress we now experience in our everyday lives. And the natural reduction of stress that results from a thriving economy would reduce health problems for most people, which would be a big step toward reducing currently out-of-control costs of medical care.
 

Of course, I could list many other areas in which the resolution of these basic issues would affect a host of problems that many people rarely think about but are a sad fact of life in our system. In fact, I’ve done exactly that in the columns collected in my book, The World I Imagine: A creative manual for ending poverty and building peace, and I'll continue to do so in future columns and articles.
 

I’ve often had the pleasure of discussing these issues in radio interviews, and I hope to have more chances to discuss these issues whenever public forums are available. Perhaps something I say will help people to focus on finding and applying more win-win-win solutions to the root causes of our problems, instead of just "picking at the scabs."

　

The World I Imagine: A creative manual for ending poverty and building peace and my historical mystery novel, Lion’s Pride, are available through your local bookstore. They are featured at Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, and most online bookstores around the world. Both are available for Kindle readers.



Moving forward: From the Three R’s to the Four RE’s

In these troubled times, the Republican mantra is that we must make sacrifices. Shared sacrifice, they call it. Except they expect the sharing to begin at the bottom and move up just far enough to envelop all those who’ve sacrificed for the past 30 years, whenever right-wingers have been in charge.

Heaven forfend anyone in the upper economic classes would ever have to cut back on luxuries. In fact, the GOP policy is to take whatever is saved by cutting benefits and services to the poor and middle classes and reward their rich cronies with lower taxes and higher corporate salaries and profits.

Meanwhile, the economy is in the toilet and no one seems to know the way out. Worse, by cutting educational funding, among other services, the GOP is not only hurting society now but stunting future economic growth.

Danger signs have been obvious for years, even when Republicans claimed things were great. While they worked well for politicians and their rich buddies, policies that also seemed to benefit folks closer to the bottom contained hidden booby traps.
For instance, when the Bush administration claimed they’d led the nation into the greatest era of home ownership in history, banks were giving lower-income people complicated loans deliberately designed to collapse later on. At the same time, corporate leaders plotted to lay off hundreds of thousands of those new home owners and reward themselves for their crimes.

When the multitude of foreclosures struck, the ensuing costs of unemployment and poverty quickly destroyed the consumer market that their much-touted capitalist economy needs to function. Their greedy plot to grab as much gold as they could as quickly as possible was destined to destroy the economy, first in this country and finally throughout the world.

That’s just the tip of the problem, and it’ll continue as long as Republicans stubbornly impede change. Still, the solution is simple. The journey from this point to prosperity could be short. We just have to agree on the goals, plan the steps, and get to work. Consider this blueprint:

RE-TEACH: Education is the basic building block of a successful society, but too many young people are poorly trained in reading, math, science, and the entire range of skills necessary for 21st century jobs. Besides streamlining primary and secondary educational methods, we must establish a comprehensive public-private system to train people of all ages for today’s jobs.

RE-SOURCES: Plenty of jobs are waiting to be done, from rebuilding aging infrastructure to providing services to people and communities everywhere. All that’s missing is the resources to make it happen. Step One, above, would provide well-trained workers; governments from the local to federal levels, must plan and organize projects; and businesses, from small companies to multibillion-dollar corporations, should sign up to lead projects, even investing resources when and where they can realize eventual returns. Rather than treating this plan as a short-term stimulus, it should be viewed as a firm policy for the long term.

RE-TURN: This is the most controversial step, but if done correctly, it’ll be temporary. Taxes on high-income earners must return to 1990s levels to provide seed money to implement the plan. As I explain in Step Four, below, success would mean these funds would eventually be replaced by revenue from a newly active work force.

RE-WARD: The payoff is win-win-win for workers, governments, and companies. Well-trained, fully employed workers return wages in the form of taxes and payments for goods and services needed to enjoy a dignified lifestyle; tax revenues allow governments to provide necessary services; and sales ensure that companies thrive. This is truly vibrant capitalism--the direct opposite of the reward-the-rich-at-the-expense-of-the-lower-classes system that Republicans have touted for three decades.
This idea isn’t new. Even as the Bush administration claimed things were fine, I began writing articles explaining the plan in detail. I compiled 47 of those essays into The World I Imagine: A creative manual for ending poverty and building peace. The book can be purchased from online bookstores, including Barnes & Noble and Amazon.com, as an e-book from Outskirts Press, and downloaded to Kindle.

As bad as things seem, planning and implementing simple positive steps could turn the economy completely around. All it would take is the political will to organize governments, companies, and citizens into a work force for the future, a future in which prosperity and peace are the norm, rather than the exception.

Economics: Defining the language

In the three earlier articles of this series, I discussed the variety of impact on the economy by people who receive different amounts of income. The conclusion, supported by research, is that people who earn the highest salaries return a lower percentage of their earnings than lower-paid workers to the economic machine that keeps businesses and governments running smoothly.

Unfortunately, too many people who exercise the greatest control over policy believe otherwise. They reward wealthy people with even more political and economic privilege than anyone could ever earn. This is usually done by denying people at the lowest economic levels access to many of their most basic needs.

In fact, some people believe perpetuating a poverty class is vital to the economy. They believe it would actually be dangerous to implement policies to end poverty and allow everyone to earn enough money to purchase all the basic goods and services they need to enjoy a dignified existence.

These policy makers claim the only way to solve economic problems is to depend solely on capitalism, at least the way they define it. They warn that Americans should completely eschew any hint of socialism. They believe businesses must be free to operate without restrictions, and government should have only a minor role, if any at all, in the way American businesses are run.

The trouble is, their definition of capitalism leaves a lot to be desired. Especially when you consider the fact that over the years, their form of capitalism has cost millions of people their jobs, their health, and their lives. If they continue to have their way, things can only get worse for all of us as we face a very dismal future.

Understanding Effective Capitalism

That brings us to the real definition of “capitalism.” These days, economists, politicians, and even the people who compile dictionaries focus on the wealth-building aspect of capitalism. To put it another way, they see capitalism as the tool by which a few people become very wealthy through business enterprises that control the lives and well-being of millions of people.

Certainly, private ownership was always an important part of effective business practice. But capitalism began as a very different model than the one that’s in use today.

Capitalism first appeared early in human history. The turning point came with the introduction of basic technology into agriculture, which was the first human industry. When the plow first came into use, farming advanced from mere subsistence, the production of just enough crops to feed, house, and clothe family members, to the point that families were able to produce more crops than they needed for their own survival. With time to do more work than was necessary for basic survival, people also began to produce extra clothing, craft items, and even art.

From the beginning, basic capitalism was based on production, service, and sales. It began when people started to exchange and sell excess agricultural products and items they produced first in homes and later in small shops that gradually developed as many people prospered. Technology spawned not only an agricultural boom but social and economic revolutions.

At first, products and services were exchanged for other products and services in a crude bartering system. Eventually, volume demanded something to symbolize the value of sales, and currency was invented, using such items as rocks, salt, metals, and eventually paper. Over time, successful communities developed sophisticated economic models. Even while trading with neighboring groups and travelers from far away, people still understood that their economy was based on the model of production, service, and sales, using both barter and different types of currency.

As businesses grew, so did the employer-employee model. Workers provided labor to help owners run their businesses in exchange for wages. Employees used these wages to purchase goods and services from other businesses. Eventually both owners and workers paid some of their earnings to governments. That tax money was also used to pay workers and purchase goods and services, just like businesses, owners, and workers.

For businesses, communities, and governments, success depends on a fluid economic model. As long as money keeps moving around the community from one person to another, one institution to another, everyone enjoys a measure of success. That’s the basic nature of capitalism.

Along the way, the goal of making a few people rich slithered into the picture. But the original purpose was to develop creative ways for people to move away from mere subsistence up to gleaning profit from the extra product and time they gained from improved farming techniques. It began with a positive step in human progress but soon warped into a twisted model that now threatens to destroy us all.

The Role of Socialism

Socialism was a basic part of the community economic model even before capitalism appeared. Humans survived in their earliest years on the planet by congregating into small groups so they could share responsibilities and resources. As their numbers grew, they gathered together as families, then communities, but sharing resources remained a significant tool for the survival of the tribe and eventually the village. As societies began to develop into larger communities, the practice of group sharing and providing for people who were weaker or needed extra help to survive waxed and waned, usually guided by the philosophy and religious practices prevalent in each society.

Perhaps the first and best-known American socialist was Benjamin Franklin. His printing business was the basis for one of the earliest American rags-to-riches stories. As a capitalist owner, he began making other entrepreneurs successful by franchising his printing empire. He also invited local businessmen in Philadelphia to join a social networking group so they could exchange creative ideas to enhance the success of their businesses and their community.

Franklin’s networking group became the intellectual and financial incubator for the first municipal fire department, lending library, and other public service projects in the American colonies. Today, almost every community of any size uses tax money to provide various services based on Franklin’s socialistic model of using public money to pay for fire and police departments, libraries, roads, clinics, and other basic services to residents.

According to Benjamin Franklin’s model, well planned socialism is an effective tool for enhancing the quality of life for citizens of any community and is certainly not antithetical to the success of capitalism. In fact, successful communities manage to balance responsible capitalism with basic social services in a way that guarantees residents will have the best opportunity to enjoy productive lifestyles.

Welfare and Unemployment: Payment for no labor

The tradition of welfare and unemployment benefit payments have come and gone throughout history, finally gaining a measure of consistency over the last century. These payments fall into the “good news, bad news” category. They’re supposed to be stopgap measures to help people through temporary economic downturns. Sadly, political circumstances have turned welfare into a multi-generational anchor that prevents entire classes of people from escaping the prison of poverty. And now that we’re well into the worst recession since the 1930s, unemployment payments are literally smashing all previous records in both numbers of recipients and lengths of time people receive those benefits.

Certainly there’s an immediate economic benefit to providing people with the means to meet their most basic needs, especially when virtually all the money that’s handed to them goes right back into the economy. On the other hand, 100% of these payments are provided with no reciprocal exchange of labor contributed to the economy. Unlike the standard work-salary model, social benefits like welfare, unemployment, and other public and private grants cannot be considered a positive benefit to the economy.

What’s more, as I explained in my book, The World I Imagine: A creative manual for ending poverty and building peace, it would be possible for truly creative leaders to turn these problems around and fulfill the goal of the book’s title to end poverty, which would help to eventually end armed conflict as the most expensive political policy of human endeavor. There is simply no reason governments should have to pay people not to work when so many community needs continue to go unmet.

I offer this friendly challenge to everyone to read the chapter in my book on “Universal Employment.” After you’ve had a chance to ponder some of the ideas I’ve collected from many sources, I’d love to hear your creative ideas for solving the education and employment crises that have become the permanent anchors that prevent most members of society from enjoying dependable and long-lasting economic success.

Fixing the Economy: Enrich the wealthy? Or end poverty?

Okay, which economic class is more beneficial to the economy:

• The top earners?
• The middle class?
• The people who live in poverty?

Most people have an opinion about this matter, but what are the facts? What are the economic effects of spending by people who make a million dollars a year? Fifty thousand dollars? Fifteen thousand dollars? How does capitalism really work? Is socialism good or bad for the economy? What is the real economic impact of continuing to allow people to depend on welfare or unemployment insurance payments, along with other public and private charity benefits?

Several studies have been done to clarify this issue. The numbers generally agree and fall within predictable ranges, so I won’t bore you with statistics here. The important lesson is not the numbers extrapolated from the studies but the principles demonstrated by those numbers. It should come as no surprise that the numbers support the practice of more humanitarian principles than current policies that favor the rich and place undue burdens on poor people.

To put it bluntly, the real cause of the failure of our economic system is greed. More to the point, a society that caters to demands of the wealthy by penalizing poor and middle-income citizens and accepts unemployment and poverty as standard economic policy is doomed to eventual failure. That conclusion runs counter to the commonly held belief that economic success depends on perpetuating the super-wealthy lifestyle of a small percentage of the population.

During recent banking disasters when taxpayers shored up failing financial institutions, top executives continued to receive hideously huge salaries and bonuses. The mantra, according to corporations and economists alike, was that companies have to pay big bucks for the big brains. The apologists totally ignored the fact that these “geniuses” were the same ones who brought their companies, and the world economy, to the brink of disaster. With brains like that, we’d have been better off with Mickey Mouse, Goofy, and Pluto running the Wall Street circus.

Meanwhile, whenever anyone suggests raising taxes for the wealthiest among us, loud voices shout down the idea by claiming the economy depends on making sure the already filthy rich keep on getting richer. The unspoken opposite side of that policy requires ripping as much money and as many rights as possible away from the most down-trodden in society.

Never mind the morality, or lack of it, with this policy. People who favor the rich certainly don’t. In my next postings, I’ll take a good look at the economic effects of continuing to steal from the poor and middle class in order to support people who don’t really need any help. In fact, later in this series, I’ll discuss how capitalism works, or should work when it’s done right. Watch this space for these articles in the next few days.