ThI am frequently told that we cannot have a social system as they do in Scandinavia or Europe. I feel the need to dispel that because there have been too many distortions on what we can afford. With in year 2004 and 2009 The top 1% received a huge handout in the Trillions. Bush’s welfare for the rich and Obama’s Economic Stimulus and Bailout
As an advocate of the Universal Income and social programs, I had to check the facts.
The items that steal the most money are:
Corporate welfare
Pork Barrel Spending
Tax Havens
Tax Abatement
Socialism for the Rich
Lets look at War at it cost to date:
Cost of U.S. Wars Since 2001
$963,307,450,494 Totaled from below.
Cost of War in Iraq
$708,178,665,506
Cost of War in Afghanistan
$255,128,784,848
Secret Governments
$35,000,000,000
Corporate Welfare
$2,300,000,000,000
$2,000,000,000,000 economic stimulus
GWB 2004 hand out 1,000,000,000,000 (trillion)
Pork Barrel Spending
$410,000,000
Secret Governments
CIA
1,100,000,000,000
Pentagon
$43,900,000,000
Grand Total: $64,442,617,450,494
For Social Spending:$2,002,076,410,463
Socialism for the Rich
N/A: According to 60 Minutes, the wealthy get free homes, beach front homes, SUVs, and other free items. Maybe in the Billions
Tax Abatement: N/A Again, in the Billions
Tax Havens mostly in the Millions. Not Calculated.
http://www.pissedonpolitics.com/2006/04/i_want_my_money_back.htm
http://www.warresisters.org/node/457
http://www.pnhp.org/facts/single-payer-system-cost
http://evidencebasedprograms.org/wordpress
Taxpayers in the United States will pay $907.3 billion for total Iraq & Afghanistan war spending since 2001. For the same amount of money, the following could have been provided:
267,406,630 People with Health Care for One Year
19,596,112 Public Safety Officers for One year
15,559,271 Music and Arts Teachers for One Year
140,275,201 Scholarships for University Students for One Year (eventual free education)
163,477,477 Students receiving Pell Grants of $5550 (See above)
7,057,801 Affordable Housing Units
399,894,220 Children with Health Care for One Year
124,509,400 Head Start Places for Children for One Year
14,904,312 Elementary School Teachers for One Year
939,289,301 Homes with Renewable Electricity for One Year
*2,000,000,000,000 for Universal Income for every person.
* Actually, the BIG/UI would be a faction since this calculates every living persons included infants. Calculated at $30,000 a year per person. For adults and teens this could be cut down by 1/3.
**Also, with installment of many programs the government would be billions if not trillions in downsizing administrations. In effect urban
renewal would be sustainable reducing cost of deteriorating infrastructure and blight. Preventative measures and Social Programs that work and cultivate self ability and free from dependence. Affordability of other social programs.
***Also investment in urban and municipal and social enterprise, reversing the tide of Privatization and creating public enterprise would give the Government in un-totaled Billions (If not Trillions). This would even reduce taxes.
**** We must also stop Democrats and Republicans from throwing money at programs that do not work. Government accountability is a must.
Dedicated to Bill Pelz, Eric Schuster, Cassidy Martinez, Dave Howell, Karl Widerquist, Sandro Gobetti, Mike Marino, Jim Davis,Vitov Munoz, and Mike Spinosi
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Saturday, February 6, 2010
Economic Democarcy
Economic Democarcy(Information Supplied by Varied Sources)
Economic democracy is a social and economic philosophy that suggests an expansion of decision-making power from a small minority of corporate shareholders to a larger majority of public stakeholders. Example can be found in Co-ops and ESOPs and even Municipal BusinessesCentralized corporate monopoly of common resources typically forces conditions of artificial scarcity upon the greater majority, resulting in socio-economic imbalances that restrict workers from access to economic opportunity and diminish consumer purchasing power. Also diminishes workers rights and attacks the impoverished.Economic democracy promotes universal access to common resources that are typically privatized by corporate capitalism . Assuming full political rights cannot be won without full economic, social, or political rights, economic democracy suggests alternative models and reform agendas for solving problems of economic instability and deficiency of effective demand. As an alternative model, both market and non-market theories of economic democracy have been proposed. As a reform agenda, supporting theories and real-world examples include democratic cooperatives, fair trade, social credit, and the regionalization of food production.
Worker self-management
According to Schweickart’s model, each productive enterprise is controlled by those who work there. Workers are responsible for the operation of the facility, including organization, operations, production, and the nature, price, and distribution of products. Workers control the means of production and management.Decisions concerning proceeds distribution are made democratically. Problems of authority delegation are solved by democratic representation. Management is not appointed by the State nor elected by the community at large, nor selected by a board of directors elected by stockholders. Whatever internal structures are put in place, ultimate authority rests with the enterprise’s employees.Workers control the workplace, they do not “own” the means of production in Schweickart’s model. Productive resources are regarded as the collective property of the society. Workers have the right to run the enterprise, to use its capital assets as they see fit, and to distribute among themselves the whole of the net profit from production. Societal “ownership” of the enterprise manifests itself in two ways.All firms must pay a tax on their capital assets, which goes into society’s investment fund. In effect, workers rent their capital assets from society.Firms are required to preserve the value of the capital stock entrusted to them. This means that a depreciation fund must be maintained. Money must be set aside to repair or replace existing capital stock. This money may be spent on whatever capital replacements or improvements the firm deems fit, but it may not be used to supplement workers’ incomes.If a firm is unable to generate even the nationally-specified minimum per-capita income, then it must declare bankruptcy. Movable capital will be used to pay creditors. The workers must seek employment elsewhere. In such economic difficulty, workers are free to reorganize the facility, or to leave and seek work elsewhere. They are not free to sell off their capital stocks and use the proceeds as income. A firm can sell off capital stocks and use the proceeds to buy additional capital goods. Or, if the firm wishes to contract its capital base so as to reduce its tax and depreciation obligations, it can sell off some of its assets, but in this case proceeds from the sale go into the national investment fund, not to the workers, since these assets belong to society as a whole.
Inclusive democracy
The proposed system aims to meet the basic needs of all citizens (macro-economic decisions), and secure freedom of choice (micro-economic decisions). Therefore, the system consists of two basic elements: democratic planning, which involves a feedback process between workplace assemblies, demotic assemblies and the confederal assembly, and an artificial market using personal vouchers,a proposed system of vouchers.As with the case of direct democracy, economic democracy today is only feasible at the level of the confederated demoi. It involves the ownership and control of the means of production by the demos. This is radically different from the two main forms of concentration of economic power which ensures freedom of choice but avoids the adverse effects of real markets. Although some have called this system “a form of money based on the labour theory of value”, it is not a money model since vouchers cannot be used as a general medium of exchange and store of wealth.Another distinguishing feature of inclusive democracy is its distinction between basic and non-basic needs. Remuneration is according to need for basic needs, and according to effort for non-basic needs. Inclusive democracy is based on the principle that meeting basic needs is a fundamental human right which is guaranteed to all who are in a physical condition to offer a minimal amount of work. By contrast, participatory economics guarantees that basic needs are satisfied only to the extent they are characterized public goods or are covered by compassion and by a guaranteed basic income for the unemployed and those who cannot work .Within the inclusive democracy project, economic democracy is the authority of demos (community) in the economic sphere — which requires equal distribution of economic power. Therefore, all ‘macro’ economic decisions, namely, decisions concerning the running of the economy as a whole (overall level of production, consumption and investment, amounts of work and leisure implied, technologies to be used, etc.) are made by the citizen body collectively and without representation. However, “micro” economic decisions at the workplace or the household levels are made by the individual production or consumption unit through : capitalist an ’socialist’ growth economy. It is also different from the various types of collectivism , such as workers’ control and milder versions suggested by post-Keynesian social democrats. The demos, therefore, becomes the authentic unit of economic life.For economic democracy to be feasible, proponents of inclusive democracy suggest three preconditions must be satisfied: Demotic self-reliance, demotic ownership of the means of production, and confederal allocation of resources.Demotic self-reliance is meant in terms of radical decentralization and self-reliance, rather than of self-sufficiency.Demotic ownership of productive resources is a kind of ownership which leads to the politicization of the economy, the real synthesis of economy and polity. This is so because economic decision making is carried out by the entire community, through the demotic assemblies, where people make the fundamental macro-economic decisions which affect the whole community, as citizens, rather than as vocationally oriented groups (e.g. workers, as e.g. in participatory economics ). At the same time, workers, apart from participating in the demotic decisions about the overall planning targets, would also participate (in the above broad sense of vocationally oriented groups) in their respective workplace assemblies, in a process of modifying/implementing the Democratic Plan and in running their own workplace.Co federal allocation of resources is required because, although self-reliance allows many decisions to be made at the community level, much remains to be decided at the regional/national/supra-national level. However, it is delegates (rather than representatives) with specific mandates from the demotic assemblies who are involved in a confederal demotic planning process which, in combination with the proposed system of vouchers, effects the allocation of resources in a confederal inclusive democracy.
Rather than an economic shortfall, many analysts consider the gap between production and purchasing power a social dividend. In this view, credit is a public utility rather than debt to financial centers. Once reinvested in human productive potential, the surplus of societal output could actually increase Gross Domestic Product rather than throttling it, resulting in a more efficient economy, overall.
National dividend
In this view, many proponents advocate Basic Income Guarantee (“B.I.G.”) Or Universal Income (UI), previously proposed in the United States by economists, politicians and reformers, including Thomas Paine, Milton Friedman, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and John Kenneth Galbraith. Friedman originally proposed a negative income tax to support this system, but then opposed the bill because its revised implementation would have merely supplemented existing tax-structures rather than replacing them. In 2006, the basic income guarantee was again proposed on the national level by State Representative Bob Filner (D-CA) as H.R. 5257, supported by author Matthew Rothschild.According to the U.S. Basic Income Guarantee Network:“The basic income guarantee (BIG) is a government insured guarantee that no citizen’s income will fall below some minimal level for any reason. All citizens would receive a BIG without means test or work requirement. BIG is an efficient and effective solution to poverty that preserves individual autonomy and work incentives while simplifying government social policy. Some researchers estimate that a small BIG, sufficient to cut the poverty rate in half could be financed without an increase in taxes by redirecting funds from spending programs and tax deductions aimed at maintaining incomes.”* What maybe problematic about this is the fact that Democrats and Republicans may distort political facts about poverty and place people into another management scheme taking away freed, liberty, and affordability.Likewise, Richard C. Cook suggests existing surplus in United States Gross Domestic Product (GDP) could support such a system, as GDP of $12.98-trillion minus $9.21-trillion in purchasing power (“wages”) equals a difference of $3.77-trillion. Divided equally amongst United States citizens, Cook estimates a “National Dividend” of approximately $12,600 could be provided annually to every U.S. citizen. A primary function of monetary reform is to “provide sufficient individual income” — not merely “create jobs” — for American workers displaced by technological advancement, outsourcing, and other economic influences beyond their control. Funding of the National Dividend would be drawn from a national credit account, which would include all factors that generate production costs and create new capital assets. The national credit account could also be used for price subsidies to discourage manufacturers from cutting costs by shipping jobs overseas.Rather than Federal Reserve Notes, circulated only through debt payable to a bank with interest, the National Dividend would be “real money”, based on the productive capacity of the economy expressed as GDP. Cook says, “it’s important to realize that Social Credit is not a socialist system. Rather it is ‘democratic capitalism,’ in contrast to the ‘finance capitalism’ that has become so damaging”. Rooted in the ideals of Social Credit, proposed by C.H. Douglas in the 1920s, Cook explains:“The difference between a National Dividend and a basic income guarantee is that the dividend is tied to production and consumption data and may vary from year to year. During years that the dividend falls below a designated threshold, the balance of a basic income guarantee could be provided from tax revenues. But in a highly-automated economy such as that of the U.S., the National Dividend would normally be where all players start with a fair distribution of financial opportunity to succeed, and try to privatize as much as they can as they move around “the commons”. Distinguishing the board game of Monopoly from contemporary real-world business, . Contrasting “redistribution” of income (or property) with “pre-distribution”, (without corporately privatizing) “the commons” to spread ownership universally, without taking wealth from some and giving it to others. His suggested mechanism to this end is the establishment of a “Commons Sector”, ensuring payment from the Corporate Sector for “the commons” they utilize, and equitably distributing the proceeds for the benefit of contemporary and future generations of society.One real-world example of such reform is in the U.S. State of Alaska, where each citizen receives an annual share of the state’s oil revenues called, “Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend”. Barnes suggests this model could extend to other states and nations because “we jointly own many valuable assets”. As corporate pollution of common assets increase, the permits for such pollution would become more scarce, driving prices for those permits up. “Less pollution would equal more revenue”, and over time, “trillions of dollars could flow into an American Permanent Fund”.However, none of these proposals aspire to the mandates recommended by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.:Two conditions are indispensable if we are to ensure that the guaranteed income operates as a consistently progressive measure. First, it must be pegged to the median income of society, not the lowest levels of income. To guarantee an income at the floor would simply perpetuate welfare standards and freeze into the society poverty conditions. Second, the guaranteed income must be dynamic; it must automatically increase as the total social income grows. Were it permitted to remain static under growth conditions, the recipients would suffer a relative decline. If periodic reviews disclose that the whole national income has risen, then the guaranteed income would have to be adjusted upward by the same percentage. Without these safeguards a creeping retrogression would occur, nullifying the gains of security and stability.Moreover, proponents of Economic Democracy generally deem any such reform unlikely under the dominance of contemporary command economies. While Thomas Paine originally recommended a National Dividend to compensate for the brutality of British Enclosures, no such large-scale disbursement has materialized in over 200-years since.Since times have changed, there should be a consideration of a Living Wage and a Universal Income comparable with a Living Wage.Monopoly power versus public utilityMain article: J. W. SmithRather than superficially compensating for legalized inequities, many analysts recommend the “enclosures” themselves—property rights laws—should be either abolished or redefined with particular respect for “the commons”. According to J.W. Smith, exclusive title to natural resources and technologies should be converted to inclusive conditional titles –- the condition being that society should collect rental values on all natural resources. Smith suggests the basic principles of monopolization under feudalism were never abandoned, and residues of exclusive feudal property rights restrict the potential efficiency of capitalism in Western cultures. Estimating roughly 60-percent of American capital is little more than capitalized values of unearned wealth, Smith suggests elimination of these monopoly values would double economic efficiency, maintain quality of life, and reduce working hours by half. Wasteful monetary flows can be stopped only by eliminating all methods of monopolization typical in Western economies.J.W. Smith divides “primary (feudal) monopoly” into four general categories; banking, land, technology, and communications. He lists three general categories of “secondary (modern) monopoly”; insurance, law, health care. Smith further claims that converting these exclusive entitlements to inclusive human rights would minimize battles for market share, thereby eliminating most offices and staff needed to maintain monopoly structures, and stop the wars generated to protect them. Dissolving roughly half the economic activity of a monopoly system would reduce the costs of common resources by roughly half, and significantly minimize the most influential factors of poverty.In Smith’s view, most taxes should be eliminated, and productive enterprise should be privately owned and managed. Inventors should be paid well and all technology placed in the public domain. Crucial services currently monopolized through licensing should be legislated as human rights.Smith envisions a balanced economy under a socially-owned banking commons within an inclusive society with full and equal rights for all Federated regions collect resource rents on land and technology to a social fund to operate governments and care for social needs. Socially-owned banks provide finance capital by creating debt-free money for social infrastructure and industry. Rental values return to society through expenditure on public infrastructures. Local labor is trained and employed to build and maintain water systems, sewers, roads, communication systems, railroads, ports, airports, post offices, and education systems. Purchasing power circulates regionally, as labor spends wages in consumption and governments spend resource rent and banking profits to maintain essential services.According to Smith, all monetary systems, including money markets, should function within fractional-reserve banking. Financial capital should be the total savings of all citizens, balanced by primary-created money to fill any shortfall, or its destruction through increased reserve requirements to eliminate any surplus. Adjustments of required reserves should facilitate the balance between building with socially-created money or savings. Any shortage of savings within a socially-owned banking system should be all eviated by simply printing it. The Universal Income should be favored over all, But it must equal the to living wage. Other wise it will be just another poverty management program'
Democratic Economics is the mission of Democratic Socialists simply for the reason that these would present democratically controlled institutions, employment. Some would dispell these as Capitalism and the Government should own everything. This is not true Democratic Socialism.
Economic democracy is a social and economic philosophy that suggests an expansion of decision-making power from a small minority of corporate shareholders to a larger majority of public stakeholders. Example can be found in Co-ops and ESOPs and even Municipal BusinessesCentralized corporate monopoly of common resources typically forces conditions of artificial scarcity upon the greater majority, resulting in socio-economic imbalances that restrict workers from access to economic opportunity and diminish consumer purchasing power. Also diminishes workers rights and attacks the impoverished.Economic democracy promotes universal access to common resources that are typically privatized by corporate capitalism . Assuming full political rights cannot be won without full economic, social, or political rights, economic democracy suggests alternative models and reform agendas for solving problems of economic instability and deficiency of effective demand. As an alternative model, both market and non-market theories of economic democracy have been proposed. As a reform agenda, supporting theories and real-world examples include democratic cooperatives, fair trade, social credit, and the regionalization of food production.
Worker self-management
According to Schweickart’s model, each productive enterprise is controlled by those who work there. Workers are responsible for the operation of the facility, including organization, operations, production, and the nature, price, and distribution of products. Workers control the means of production and management.Decisions concerning proceeds distribution are made democratically. Problems of authority delegation are solved by democratic representation. Management is not appointed by the State nor elected by the community at large, nor selected by a board of directors elected by stockholders. Whatever internal structures are put in place, ultimate authority rests with the enterprise’s employees.Workers control the workplace, they do not “own” the means of production in Schweickart’s model. Productive resources are regarded as the collective property of the society. Workers have the right to run the enterprise, to use its capital assets as they see fit, and to distribute among themselves the whole of the net profit from production. Societal “ownership” of the enterprise manifests itself in two ways.All firms must pay a tax on their capital assets, which goes into society’s investment fund. In effect, workers rent their capital assets from society.Firms are required to preserve the value of the capital stock entrusted to them. This means that a depreciation fund must be maintained. Money must be set aside to repair or replace existing capital stock. This money may be spent on whatever capital replacements or improvements the firm deems fit, but it may not be used to supplement workers’ incomes.If a firm is unable to generate even the nationally-specified minimum per-capita income, then it must declare bankruptcy. Movable capital will be used to pay creditors. The workers must seek employment elsewhere. In such economic difficulty, workers are free to reorganize the facility, or to leave and seek work elsewhere. They are not free to sell off their capital stocks and use the proceeds as income. A firm can sell off capital stocks and use the proceeds to buy additional capital goods. Or, if the firm wishes to contract its capital base so as to reduce its tax and depreciation obligations, it can sell off some of its assets, but in this case proceeds from the sale go into the national investment fund, not to the workers, since these assets belong to society as a whole.
Inclusive democracy
The proposed system aims to meet the basic needs of all citizens (macro-economic decisions), and secure freedom of choice (micro-economic decisions). Therefore, the system consists of two basic elements: democratic planning, which involves a feedback process between workplace assemblies, demotic assemblies and the confederal assembly, and an artificial market using personal vouchers,a proposed system of vouchers.As with the case of direct democracy, economic democracy today is only feasible at the level of the confederated demoi. It involves the ownership and control of the means of production by the demos. This is radically different from the two main forms of concentration of economic power which ensures freedom of choice but avoids the adverse effects of real markets. Although some have called this system “a form of money based on the labour theory of value”, it is not a money model since vouchers cannot be used as a general medium of exchange and store of wealth.Another distinguishing feature of inclusive democracy is its distinction between basic and non-basic needs. Remuneration is according to need for basic needs, and according to effort for non-basic needs. Inclusive democracy is based on the principle that meeting basic needs is a fundamental human right which is guaranteed to all who are in a physical condition to offer a minimal amount of work. By contrast, participatory economics guarantees that basic needs are satisfied only to the extent they are characterized public goods or are covered by compassion and by a guaranteed basic income for the unemployed and those who cannot work .Within the inclusive democracy project, economic democracy is the authority of demos (community) in the economic sphere — which requires equal distribution of economic power. Therefore, all ‘macro’ economic decisions, namely, decisions concerning the running of the economy as a whole (overall level of production, consumption and investment, amounts of work and leisure implied, technologies to be used, etc.) are made by the citizen body collectively and without representation. However, “micro” economic decisions at the workplace or the household levels are made by the individual production or consumption unit through : capitalist an ’socialist’ growth economy. It is also different from the various types of collectivism , such as workers’ control and milder versions suggested by post-Keynesian social democrats. The demos, therefore, becomes the authentic unit of economic life.For economic democracy to be feasible, proponents of inclusive democracy suggest three preconditions must be satisfied: Demotic self-reliance, demotic ownership of the means of production, and confederal allocation of resources.Demotic self-reliance is meant in terms of radical decentralization and self-reliance, rather than of self-sufficiency.Demotic ownership of productive resources is a kind of ownership which leads to the politicization of the economy, the real synthesis of economy and polity. This is so because economic decision making is carried out by the entire community, through the demotic assemblies, where people make the fundamental macro-economic decisions which affect the whole community, as citizens, rather than as vocationally oriented groups (e.g. workers, as e.g. in participatory economics ). At the same time, workers, apart from participating in the demotic decisions about the overall planning targets, would also participate (in the above broad sense of vocationally oriented groups) in their respective workplace assemblies, in a process of modifying/implementing the Democratic Plan and in running their own workplace.Co federal allocation of resources is required because, although self-reliance allows many decisions to be made at the community level, much remains to be decided at the regional/national/supra-national level. However, it is delegates (rather than representatives) with specific mandates from the demotic assemblies who are involved in a confederal demotic planning process which, in combination with the proposed system of vouchers, effects the allocation of resources in a confederal inclusive democracy.
Rather than an economic shortfall, many analysts consider the gap between production and purchasing power a social dividend. In this view, credit is a public utility rather than debt to financial centers. Once reinvested in human productive potential, the surplus of societal output could actually increase Gross Domestic Product rather than throttling it, resulting in a more efficient economy, overall.
National dividend
In this view, many proponents advocate Basic Income Guarantee (“B.I.G.”) Or Universal Income (UI), previously proposed in the United States by economists, politicians and reformers, including Thomas Paine, Milton Friedman, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and John Kenneth Galbraith. Friedman originally proposed a negative income tax to support this system, but then opposed the bill because its revised implementation would have merely supplemented existing tax-structures rather than replacing them. In 2006, the basic income guarantee was again proposed on the national level by State Representative Bob Filner (D-CA) as H.R. 5257, supported by author Matthew Rothschild.According to the U.S. Basic Income Guarantee Network:“The basic income guarantee (BIG) is a government insured guarantee that no citizen’s income will fall below some minimal level for any reason. All citizens would receive a BIG without means test or work requirement. BIG is an efficient and effective solution to poverty that preserves individual autonomy and work incentives while simplifying government social policy. Some researchers estimate that a small BIG, sufficient to cut the poverty rate in half could be financed without an increase in taxes by redirecting funds from spending programs and tax deductions aimed at maintaining incomes.”* What maybe problematic about this is the fact that Democrats and Republicans may distort political facts about poverty and place people into another management scheme taking away freed, liberty, and affordability.Likewise, Richard C. Cook suggests existing surplus in United States Gross Domestic Product (GDP) could support such a system, as GDP of $12.98-trillion minus $9.21-trillion in purchasing power (“wages”) equals a difference of $3.77-trillion. Divided equally amongst United States citizens, Cook estimates a “National Dividend” of approximately $12,600 could be provided annually to every U.S. citizen. A primary function of monetary reform is to “provide sufficient individual income” — not merely “create jobs” — for American workers displaced by technological advancement, outsourcing, and other economic influences beyond their control. Funding of the National Dividend would be drawn from a national credit account, which would include all factors that generate production costs and create new capital assets. The national credit account could also be used for price subsidies to discourage manufacturers from cutting costs by shipping jobs overseas.Rather than Federal Reserve Notes, circulated only through debt payable to a bank with interest, the National Dividend would be “real money”, based on the productive capacity of the economy expressed as GDP. Cook says, “it’s important to realize that Social Credit is not a socialist system. Rather it is ‘democratic capitalism,’ in contrast to the ‘finance capitalism’ that has become so damaging”. Rooted in the ideals of Social Credit, proposed by C.H. Douglas in the 1920s, Cook explains:“The difference between a National Dividend and a basic income guarantee is that the dividend is tied to production and consumption data and may vary from year to year. During years that the dividend falls below a designated threshold, the balance of a basic income guarantee could be provided from tax revenues. But in a highly-automated economy such as that of the U.S., the National Dividend would normally be where all players start with a fair distribution of financial opportunity to succeed, and try to privatize as much as they can as they move around “the commons”. Distinguishing the board game of Monopoly from contemporary real-world business, . Contrasting “redistribution” of income (or property) with “pre-distribution”, (without corporately privatizing) “the commons” to spread ownership universally, without taking wealth from some and giving it to others. His suggested mechanism to this end is the establishment of a “Commons Sector”, ensuring payment from the Corporate Sector for “the commons” they utilize, and equitably distributing the proceeds for the benefit of contemporary and future generations of society.One real-world example of such reform is in the U.S. State of Alaska, where each citizen receives an annual share of the state’s oil revenues called, “Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend”. Barnes suggests this model could extend to other states and nations because “we jointly own many valuable assets”. As corporate pollution of common assets increase, the permits for such pollution would become more scarce, driving prices for those permits up. “Less pollution would equal more revenue”, and over time, “trillions of dollars could flow into an American Permanent Fund”.However, none of these proposals aspire to the mandates recommended by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.:Two conditions are indispensable if we are to ensure that the guaranteed income operates as a consistently progressive measure. First, it must be pegged to the median income of society, not the lowest levels of income. To guarantee an income at the floor would simply perpetuate welfare standards and freeze into the society poverty conditions. Second, the guaranteed income must be dynamic; it must automatically increase as the total social income grows. Were it permitted to remain static under growth conditions, the recipients would suffer a relative decline. If periodic reviews disclose that the whole national income has risen, then the guaranteed income would have to be adjusted upward by the same percentage. Without these safeguards a creeping retrogression would occur, nullifying the gains of security and stability.Moreover, proponents of Economic Democracy generally deem any such reform unlikely under the dominance of contemporary command economies. While Thomas Paine originally recommended a National Dividend to compensate for the brutality of British Enclosures, no such large-scale disbursement has materialized in over 200-years since.Since times have changed, there should be a consideration of a Living Wage and a Universal Income comparable with a Living Wage.Monopoly power versus public utilityMain article: J. W. SmithRather than superficially compensating for legalized inequities, many analysts recommend the “enclosures” themselves—property rights laws—should be either abolished or redefined with particular respect for “the commons”. According to J.W. Smith, exclusive title to natural resources and technologies should be converted to inclusive conditional titles –- the condition being that society should collect rental values on all natural resources. Smith suggests the basic principles of monopolization under feudalism were never abandoned, and residues of exclusive feudal property rights restrict the potential efficiency of capitalism in Western cultures. Estimating roughly 60-percent of American capital is little more than capitalized values of unearned wealth, Smith suggests elimination of these monopoly values would double economic efficiency, maintain quality of life, and reduce working hours by half. Wasteful monetary flows can be stopped only by eliminating all methods of monopolization typical in Western economies.J.W. Smith divides “primary (feudal) monopoly” into four general categories; banking, land, technology, and communications. He lists three general categories of “secondary (modern) monopoly”; insurance, law, health care. Smith further claims that converting these exclusive entitlements to inclusive human rights would minimize battles for market share, thereby eliminating most offices and staff needed to maintain monopoly structures, and stop the wars generated to protect them. Dissolving roughly half the economic activity of a monopoly system would reduce the costs of common resources by roughly half, and significantly minimize the most influential factors of poverty.In Smith’s view, most taxes should be eliminated, and productive enterprise should be privately owned and managed. Inventors should be paid well and all technology placed in the public domain. Crucial services currently monopolized through licensing should be legislated as human rights.Smith envisions a balanced economy under a socially-owned banking commons within an inclusive society with full and equal rights for all Federated regions collect resource rents on land and technology to a social fund to operate governments and care for social needs. Socially-owned banks provide finance capital by creating debt-free money for social infrastructure and industry. Rental values return to society through expenditure on public infrastructures. Local labor is trained and employed to build and maintain water systems, sewers, roads, communication systems, railroads, ports, airports, post offices, and education systems. Purchasing power circulates regionally, as labor spends wages in consumption and governments spend resource rent and banking profits to maintain essential services.According to Smith, all monetary systems, including money markets, should function within fractional-reserve banking. Financial capital should be the total savings of all citizens, balanced by primary-created money to fill any shortfall, or its destruction through increased reserve requirements to eliminate any surplus. Adjustments of required reserves should facilitate the balance between building with socially-created money or savings. Any shortage of savings within a socially-owned banking system should be all eviated by simply printing it. The Universal Income should be favored over all, But it must equal the to living wage. Other wise it will be just another poverty management program'
Democratic Economics is the mission of Democratic Socialists simply for the reason that these would present democratically controlled institutions, employment. Some would dispell these as Capitalism and the Government should own everything. This is not true Democratic Socialism.
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
The Importance of Poverty
Poverty is very important. It is, if one will, the new slavery. People fall into poverty everyday. The government’s food tamps and welfare programs lead to further distress because people are turned into indentured servants. People are doled out to business and non profits for near than free work, and underpaid work. People fought long and hard for a minimum wage, yet on food stamps and welfare provide exploitation for businesses and corporations for underpaid workers who will be stuck and blamed for remaining on the system.
Let’s look at welfare privatization.
In Wisconsin, the former Vive Governor had started a business putting out welfare workers for substandard wages, and having the government give each business $5,000
Government workers and administrators who keep expanding the public and private social services system, thereby providing exploitation of the poor by a lack of job and salary opportunities. They contribute more money to keep the cycle eternal. They are the ones who make the system so challenging that you practically need a college degree to navigate it, causing loads of frustrated poor people to opt out of the system and often into homelessness.
Originally, well-intentioned workers who have lost sight of the poor as individuals. The same ones, who never really cared in the first place. Essentially, "poverty pimps" callously and purposely profit from the misfortune of others.
People need to be kept down and out because those in power need to keep there power. Like greed there is a psychopathic need to drive people into poverty and than use them for exploitation.
In New York, welfare workers sued the State and won because the court found the State in Violation of the 14 Amendment, now welfare workers must make a minimum wage.
The poor are marketable. Non profit and charities make enormous profits on the poor by charity fund raising. Freeing the poor means these charities and their profits would come to an end. People make great wages by being CEO and Executives in the Charity business.
Criminal business exploit women by marketing them for prostitutes, men are forced into criminal activity. Children are up for sale. Look at Haiti now, people are kidnapping children for adoption. There have been some legitimate churches that hire PR organization to raise money for poverty using false data and use models and false images” for missionary work that aren’t really happening.
The so called legitimate industries use donations and marketing to raise money. The poor get substandard products the executives themselves wouldn’t consume, and they pocket 90% of the profits. This is done with Animal Charity organizations also.
The problem of Solidarity is that whites and blacks and others are divided. While blacks get frequent sympathy, their condition never really in a true manner improves. Poor whites are seen as toothless country bumpkins who deserve our wrath because they are useless stupid hicks.
The lack of socialization, education, and initiative separates two groups from solidarity because they feel they are competing.
Solidarity can be fostered, after all look up the information on the Southern Tennant Union. Black and White tenant Farmers work together in solidarity.
People are living with 20th century values. The work ethic, everyone must have a job. There are no endless jobs, there are no endless opportunities.
One solution is to finally get blacks, whites and other minorities to join in solidarity and demand and end to poverty.
The end of poverty can be through public works, 32 hour work week, The Universal Income. Most of all the socialization of society. We can build a better civilization.
For further information:
http://www.perceptions.couk.com/~perceptions/confirm7.txt
http://www.perceptions.couk.com/~perceptions/fakes.html
This happens especially in the USA
http://cafehayek.com/2007/05/preying_on_the_.html
Let’s look at welfare privatization.
In Wisconsin, the former Vive Governor had started a business putting out welfare workers for substandard wages, and having the government give each business $5,000
Government workers and administrators who keep expanding the public and private social services system, thereby providing exploitation of the poor by a lack of job and salary opportunities. They contribute more money to keep the cycle eternal. They are the ones who make the system so challenging that you practically need a college degree to navigate it, causing loads of frustrated poor people to opt out of the system and often into homelessness.
Originally, well-intentioned workers who have lost sight of the poor as individuals. The same ones, who never really cared in the first place. Essentially, "poverty pimps" callously and purposely profit from the misfortune of others.
People need to be kept down and out because those in power need to keep there power. Like greed there is a psychopathic need to drive people into poverty and than use them for exploitation.
In New York, welfare workers sued the State and won because the court found the State in Violation of the 14 Amendment, now welfare workers must make a minimum wage.
The poor are marketable. Non profit and charities make enormous profits on the poor by charity fund raising. Freeing the poor means these charities and their profits would come to an end. People make great wages by being CEO and Executives in the Charity business.
Criminal business exploit women by marketing them for prostitutes, men are forced into criminal activity. Children are up for sale. Look at Haiti now, people are kidnapping children for adoption. There have been some legitimate churches that hire PR organization to raise money for poverty using false data and use models and false images” for missionary work that aren’t really happening.
The so called legitimate industries use donations and marketing to raise money. The poor get substandard products the executives themselves wouldn’t consume, and they pocket 90% of the profits. This is done with Animal Charity organizations also.
The problem of Solidarity is that whites and blacks and others are divided. While blacks get frequent sympathy, their condition never really in a true manner improves. Poor whites are seen as toothless country bumpkins who deserve our wrath because they are useless stupid hicks.
The lack of socialization, education, and initiative separates two groups from solidarity because they feel they are competing.
Solidarity can be fostered, after all look up the information on the Southern Tennant Union. Black and White tenant Farmers work together in solidarity.
People are living with 20th century values. The work ethic, everyone must have a job. There are no endless jobs, there are no endless opportunities.
One solution is to finally get blacks, whites and other minorities to join in solidarity and demand and end to poverty.
The end of poverty can be through public works, 32 hour work week, The Universal Income. Most of all the socialization of society. We can build a better civilization.
For further information:
http://www.perceptions.couk.com/~perceptions/confirm7.txt
http://www.perceptions.couk.com/~perceptions/fakes.html
This happens especially in the USA
http://cafehayek.com/2007/05/preying_on_the_.html
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