While emergency assistance is necessary, Thom Hartmann is another one-factor thinker: LABOR ONLY!––with a focus on wages rather than income, and "full employment" rather than "full production" as the economy's panacea.

The political maneuvering in Washington is directed at benefiting the wealthy capital ownership class, not the average person on "Main Street." Such policies as are pursued will further concentrate ownership of wealth-creating, income-producing productive capital assets among the 1 to 5 percent of the American population and further enhance the economic and political power of the wealthy ownership class.

Technological change makes tools, machines, structures, and processes ever more productive while leaving human productiveness largely unchanged (our human abilities are limited by physical strength and brain power––and relatively constant). The technology industry is always changing, evolving and innovating. The result is that primary distribution through the free market economy, whose distributive principle is “to each according to his production,” delivers progressively more market-sourced income to capital owners and progressively less to workers who make their contribution through labor.

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 capital workers (productive 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.

Conventional economist such as Paul Krugman, political leaders and the national media are oblivious to the structural problems that plague our economy, especially with respect to the ways the system further concentrates ownership of wealth-creating, income-producing productive capital assets and growth among the already wealthy ownership class, which represents 1 to 5 percent of the population. With such concentrated economic power, the American majority is barred from participating in the ownership of the non-human factor assets that are doing the bulk of the production of products and services, leaving them with their ONLY income source a job or welfare. Thus they are shut out from a most significant income source to effectively empower them to be "customers with money" and propel economic demand, and thus real growth of the economy.

There is a way out if the Federal Reserve System can be reformed to act as a purveyor of economic growth.

Right now the Federal Reserve creates money by loaning it to banks, who re-loan it multiple times because of fractional banking rules. With Capital Homesteading, money would be created by loaning it directly to citizens via banks at near-zero interest to invest in FUTURE wealth-creating, income-generating (full dividend payout) productive capital assets formed by producer companies. To build real wealth and also phase out our near-defunct social security scheme, the new full-reserve money would go into a long-term retirement account to be invested in dividend-paying, asset-backed shares of corporations. That way, money power would be spread to all citizens. The middle class would be invigorated using the principle of compounding interest, instead of being decimated by mushrooming public and personal debt.

The Federal Reserve could play a more positive role, removing artificial barriers to equal citizen access to acquiring and owning productive capital wealth. By creating asset-backed money for production, supported by growth-oriented tax policies, the Federal Reserve could truly help promote shared prosperity in a market system.

Virtually all the economic gains have pertained to the wealthy ownership class within the top 1 to 5 percent of the population, who own the vast wealth-creating, income-generating productive capital assets of American corporations.

Unless we reform the system inequality will expand and the American people will experience far greater competition globally as teams of people and machines compete to produce and sell their products and services. This means that we must look to increasing the productiveness of technological innovation and invention. The system is rigged by the wealthy ownership class 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 to 5 percent ranks.

The reality is that personal and family household income for those who are dependent on a job as their ONLY income source is declining. Wage and salary incomes will continue to decline simultaneously with global competition and, as a result of the necessity to turn to increasingly more productive non-human means of production, destroy jobs that will become unnecessary and devalue the worth of labor.

Full employment is not an objective of businesses. Companies strive to keep labor input and other costs at a minimum in order to maximize profits for the owners. 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. This will not change with companies realizing that they can operate more efficiently with fewer employees. Therefore, unless the employees are owners, the share of corporate profits going to the employees will continue to decline.

The reality is that more and more people are being squeezed financially, faced with dismal job prospects (their only source of income) and on the blink of having to turn to the government for welfare support funded by tax extraction and national debt. Americans, for the most part, are in a mode of retrenchment even though they have tremendous pent-up demand and unfulfilled dreams for a more affluent life, which they see enjoyed by the wealthy ownership class (without realizing that those people are wealthy because they OWN).

Probably paradox was a better word than irony.

Thom, Listening to you rant (justifiably so) against the bigoted homophobic dude from dumb-down-Duck Dynasty and Martin Bashear (BTW, Martin Bashear worked for MSBC, not CNN) I am hit with how we as progressive intellectuals, (arguably you obviously are, at least), are being sucked into the social engineering taking place at the highest levels of global industry. Just as I sat down to respond to your blog post yesterday, Abby Martin came on. She had on an environmentalist, Guy McPherson, Professor Emeritus at University of Arizona and author of the book 'Going Dark', who confirmed what I have known for 25 years. We have , +/- 3ish years, until 2030 before an all out crash of civilization and industrialization fueled by fossil fuel. We passed the tipping point in the 70s...in terms of the rate of population growth and it’s artificial acceleration brought about by creating a society depending on fossil fuels. This in conjunction w/ the environmental destruction we have caused has created a scenario whereby, unless industrial society as we know it is halted immediately, and maybe even if it is, most of us will die.

If we keep trying to approach problems from the polarized us V. them Dems V. Repugs, business-as-usual approach...flogging the dead horse our Congress, Exec. Branch and Scotus has become, we will drag our fellow Man/Women off the cliff along with us.

Solutions: we must completely eliminate the concepts of ownership in global culture, eradicating ‘me’, ‘mine’, ‘yours’, ‘ours’...etc. We must learn to live tribally instead of as individual families in towns..using technology to convert our wasteful individual homes into cutting edge green tech shared dwellings. We must share resources- tools, musical instruments...everything. We must presume the inalienable rights of life(as in total access to that which is necessary for comfortable survival in terms of food, shelter, clothing and health care) Liberty(as in freedom of expression and movement, etc.) and thus, the ability to pursue happiness. In the pursuit of happiness IS the productivity that gives back to society as a whole. Although perhaps a bit rigid in their approach, http://www.thevenusproject.com has some really good ideas.

This may sound, and indeed be, totally unrealistic, but short of the proverbial ‘Christ” returning on a space ship to save us, these are the only solutions we should focus on. An industrial, Capitalist US Government system has not only proven corruptible, failing miserably in less than 300 years, but as well meaning as the founders who wrote the constitution were, lets not forget, that at the time, anyone who was not white, and male was considered property.

Globalism in the form of a democratic socialist governments run in turn via lottery (like jury duty) by those who pass a civil service exam required to be taken by all students in order to graduate high school as long as they are academically able would go a long way to getting money out of politics...and indeed, the POLITICS out of politics.

In the mean time, we must hold the Planet in the light and go gracefully into, with love whatever awaits us...knowing that if as individual souls we are drops of water, what awaits us at worst, is the Ocean. Keep the Faith, no matter what Tag, We’re IT.

I totally agree with you. I hope the worker cooperative movement gains more traction in the US, as it has in other countries. I also want to point out that workers in the government sector are also being abused-except for those at the top of the income scale, who have all the power. The gap between the highest & lowest paid is expanding w/ public sector jobs, too. Most employees have been living with flat or decreased wages & cuts in benefits. The Right has managed to convince the public that we have "cushy" jobs w/ fat benefits, & turn the anger & frustration of private sector workers onto government employees. But, we're all in this together-when we lose, everyone else loses, too, in the race to the bottom. A public sector employee losing pay & benefits doesn't help the private sector employees, it hurts them. I want to see everyone have a decent salary, vacation time that's in line w/ other developed countries, paid sick leave (for God's sake, we don't even have that as a legal right!), and a pension, instead of being subjected to the perils of the stock market w/ a 401K. We need to strengthen unions & make sure everyone can be in one who wants to. If you have the option, join a union-they need the support!

Do you not have any respect for the Constitution or the intention of the Founders? The Senate was never intended to reflect the percentage of the population. That is one of the functions of the House and the redistricting process takes care of that.

This is called the profit survival mentality .When is enough enough never because the purpose of your (the) economic system is to generate profit.

Humans have created this system because they live the illusion,s so deeply that they make them their reality. It,s from the dual illusions of insufficiency and Disunity that the whole economy emerges.The ideas that there is " not enough " of what humans need to be HAPPY ,and the idea that humans are separate from each other ,forms the basis of our entire economic model.

Presently on the planet ,wealth is defined as possessions and power.The Old Spirituality encourages you to have dominion over the earth .We have interpreted this to mean domination.And so,we have imagined that ownership of,or power over,people ,places and things is an asset-or part of what we have called "wealth".So more ownership of stuff equals power and you are deemed wealthier.

The model is the problem the beliefs of humanity that created this model are the real problem.Bucky Fuller said you do not change things by altering the existing model the only way this is possible is to create a new model and make the old one obsolete .This is exactly what we must now do .

Thom,s book,s help us find a way and are profoundly spiritual .Real change comes from spirituality and a new spiritual model that declares we are all one .This spiritual adjustment also says There,s enough. If we take these messages to heart ,we will begin at once to devise way,s of treating everyone as you would want to be treated ,giving everyone what you would want to be given ,and providing everyone with what you would want o be provided .

So growing the world,s economy on a never ending upward spiral is not the solution .Attempting to make it possible for everyone to own the same things .Perhaps another way would be to provide everyone with access and use of the same things.

From Tomorrows God

According to Mark Saulys, and regarding worker-owned cooperatives: "In the past, executives and investors of the traditional model have tried to sabotage and prevent the establishment of such businesses simply because they were or would be worker owned and successful..." And why am I not surprised? If these kleptomaniacs are feeling threatened, that must mean it's a viable enough alternative that it could pop their bubble one day. I hope I live long enough to see it. People are tired of feeding these parasites while they themselves go hungry. - Aliceinwonderland

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Worker owned businesses are perhaps of the most successful and efficient model. Absent is the conflict between labor and capital and everyone treats the enterprise as their own.

In the past executives and investors of the traditional model have tried to sabotage and prevent the establishment of such businesses simply because they were or would be worker owned and successful and they didn't want anyone to know how efficient and successful such businesses would and could be.

The fast food restaurant and the big box retail outlet are to today's service sector economy what the factory was to the industrial economy of the Great Depression era.

Douglas, my ears are not deaf to your words of wisdom. And you're right; we vote with our money.

Kend, I don't know how funds are acquired for worker-owned cooperatives. But the fact they already exist would indicate they are a feasible alternative to a status quo that is abusive and intolerable, that simply has to go. People should benefit from the fruit of their labor. Instead we have these blood-sucking parasites like the Waltons, hoarding it all for themselves while forcing their employees to apply for welfare just to get by, and it is we the taxpayers picking up the tab. It infuriates me. These plutocrats need to be knocked off their thrones. - AIW

The United States is well on the way to being a 3rd world country. There are many reasons for this, too many people, not enough decient jobs, too much automation, too much outsourcing, rising costs & decline of essential resources like oil & natural gas, fighting endless illegal wars & occupations that use huge amounts of oil & other scarce resources. We are not "homo sapians sapians" but homo stupideous.

There will be no recovery. To recover we need to grow, to grow we have to use more resources like oil & natural gas but those fossil resources are in decline. Fracking is just the last gasp of the oil age & for an economy that needs cheap oil to grow, we have no way to go but down. We are headed for a economic collapse.

We cannot support needed programs as long as this corrupt government refuses to raise taxes on the rich, the very profitable corporations, raise tariffs, cut subsidies for oil, gas, coal & agriculture, it incourages outsourcing with tax incentives, it permits fossil fuel extraction at maximum rates speeding it's exhaustion & we have nothing to replace it. We are burning our bridge while we are still on it. Then there is the disaster at Fukushima that no one wants to talk about. 300 thousand gallons of radioactive water has been pouring from Fukushima into the ocean since 2011 & radioactive contaminaltion consentrates as it moves up the food chain being highest in the top preditors like tuna & us.

Sure the ocean water here is "safe" so far, but is our seafood "safe"? I am not going to be eating any Pacific tuna or Salmom, I think the crab is still safe but for how much longer? So far, the crab season has been a bust, the crabs aren't there. More radioactive water is due to hit us the first of next year. Will the government be checking our seafood to see how much radioactive contamination it has? If it does, don't expect the government to tell us anything about it, might hurt business. We are on our own, don't expect any help from the government, we have to do our own monitoring of our seafood for radioactive contaminents. Good luck.