Progress.

The arrow of progress is twirling in the winds today. And I am not talking about hurricane Sandy. America  built its economy on progress, on being the first to take advantage of new technologies and new opportunities. Now look at us. We have fumbled the ball on nearly every playing field except how to conduct war by remote control.

Take energy, for instance. We know that the future for energy lies in tapping renewable sources. We won't run out of fossil fuels tomorrow, but we know they will slowly become harder to access and increasingly expensive. If we want to maintain a leadership position in this field, developing renewable sources is the way to go. But our hidebound energy suppliers are tying our hands and feet on this issue.

Transportation is another field in which we have led the world. We developed canals, railroads, automobiles,  ships and airplanes both as industries and as ways to access the wealth of the world. Now we are struggling to catch up in the automotive industry, our railways chug along at half the speed of other nations, and our airlines need to charge us for our bags in order to make a buck. Today the subways of New York City, once a marvel of our ingenuity, are literally under water. Our movies portray a future of vehicles flying around the city on electronic pathways but we are stuck in traffic jams and our airports still function at the mercy of the weather.

Look what we have done with electronics. We can now communicate with almost anyone anywhere on the planet. And what do we do with this capability? We tweet inanities to people who are sitting next to us. We divert our attention to our cell phones while supposedly driving a car. And there lies an opportunity for progress--building cars that you program for a destination and then go about your business. But our business community is busy trying to make a buck out of our cell phones by capturing our identities and selling them to advertisers. Meanwhile our enemies hack our computer systems and threaten our financial and power industries.

Do the Democrats or Republicans have a clue about how to get us back on the track of progress? Not much. The Democrats talk about developing renewable energy while other nations do it. The party seems vaguely aware that the private sector has lost its way and is not going to be able to continue to supply jobs and income to everyone. So they try to fill in the gaps that used to be filled by private charities. The Republicans object to this approach and insist that our industries can do the job, but the truth is that there is nothing stopping them from doing it now except lack of imagination and will. We have plenty of capital but no will to use it. So our capital, the remnant of our past progress, remains tied up in mansions and yachts and a falsely booming stock market instead of generating new progress. And the Republicans focus on returning us to the glory days before the Civil War.

Speech is Speech.

We are now being assailed by political "speech" in the form of television ads and billboards funded by anonymous groups or persons, telephone robo-calls, letters from our employers telling us which candidates pose a threat to our jobs, and email appeals for money to support or attack particular candidates. According to our Supreme Court all of this "speech" is protected by our federal Constitution.

My Webster's defines speech as "oral communication" and "a form of communication in spoken language, made by a speaker." Television ads usually have an anonymous speaker but much of the message is conveyed by images and printed quotations. My Webster's is too old to know what robo-calls are. Form letters and email messages aren't speech at all. And none of these forms of "speech" allow me to ask questions.

In an article in the New York Times by Steven Greenhouse the author reports that "David A. Siegel, 77,chief executive of Westgate Resorts, a major time-share company, wrote to his 7,000 employee, saying that if Obama won, the prospect of higher taxes could hurt the company's future." In an interview Siegel said "I really wanted them to know how I felt four more years under President Obama was going to affect them." He further explained "It would be no different from telling your children: 'Eat your spinach. It's good for you.' "

So now I have to wonder if political "speech" is like child rearing and the American electorate are a bunch of children. Is that what the framers of our Constitution had in mind?

As for the email appeals I have been deleting them en masse. If money is going to determine the outcome of this election then we, the children, have already lost no matter who wins.

Good Question.

Sometimes a good question is the best answer. This morning I encountered a good question on the opinion page of my local newspaper--the Raleigh News & Observer. Amanda Marcotte was writing about the position on abortion taken by Richard Mourdock, a candidate for the U.S. Senate from Indiana. Mourdock publicly declared that if a woman becomes pregnant because of rape God must have approved that pregnancy and it should not be terminated. Amanda Marcotte asked "If God can ordain the rape and the pregnancy that follows, why can't he (sic) also ordain abortion?"

The answer a person gives to this question tells us more about the person than the issue. Mourdock apparently believes that God is not the Creator of all things. Or else Mourdock is confused. If God is the Creator then God is omnipotent and responsible for everything. That is what I was taught and how could it be wrong? Surely God would not allow my minister to lie to me. Unless lying doesn't matter.

Perhaps God intended for random, uncontrolled events to occur. Such as rape, pregnancy, miscarriage and abortion. Nearly half of all human conceptions end in miscarriage. If that isn't God's will I don't know what is.  Maybe we should continue to allow abortion just in case that is what God intends. After all, the Supreme Court in Roe vs. Wade could have stopped it right there. Does God not speak to the Supreme Court? Or smite them?

Some clergy, in defiance of the laws of this land, are telling their congregations to vote for candidates who say they will outlaw abortion. Their explanation for this behavior, if the ministers give one, might be that human life begins at conception and abortion is murder. If so, why isn't a drone strike on a group of suspected terrorists murder? Why, then, would clergy not also urge people to vote for candidates who support peace instead of war?

Why am I looking for logical consistency in a political campaign?

The quest to save America.

It is amazing to me that so many people are on a quest to save America. We are the richest nation on Earth, with the strongest military, a strong currency, a democratically elected government, with land and resources that are the envy of the world. And yet the tea party, the occupy movement, Mitt Romney, the Koch brothers, and many of our religious leaders, just to name a few, think America needs to be saved.

Save America from what? Sixteen trillion dollars (and growing) of national debt, a weak job market, paying entitlements to our elderly and infirm citizens, allowing illegal immigration, having more citizens imprisoned than any other nation, growing drug addiction, avaricious banks and bankers, fracking, obesity, inadequate care for our returning troops, gay marriage, rampant political advertising and debates. You name it. If there is anything about America that does not meet your standards, the nation needs to be saved from it.

One small problem. Almost everything we want to save America from is something that other citizens want to keep. Too much money in the hands of the one percent? That's what a capitalist nation is supposed to have. A lot of people out of work? More leisure is what some of us have been looking for our whole lives. The pews are empty? We are finally ridding ourselves of that Medieval claptrap. Too many citizens in prison? Well, at least that helps the job deficit problem. Fracking is good for everyone until we need that groundwater. And why should anyone worry about gay marriage? After all, they don't reproduce.

So lets concentrate on saving America from terrorism. There is wide agreement that terrorism is bad for America. The people who want terrorism in America are mostly elsewhere. America is an easy target with all those open borders and shops where guns and ammonium nitrate can be purchased. And we have so many tall buildings to topple. Our cell phones and cable networks facilitate communication in terror networks and attacks on our electronic controls. And our government is behind on protecting these facilities because it can't afford to hire the best.

There are several tracks we could take to save America from terrorism. We could hide in bunkers and minimize our interaction with the rest of the world. We could train every citizen in anti-terrorist self defense. We could invade any nation that sends terrorists our way or even gives them safe haven. Or we could join the terrorists as a few of our citizens have already tried to do. What we need is a leader to tell us which way to go. What we have is leaders of many stripes pointing to many different paths. We must save America from its leaders!

Pro-life

On the basis of scientific evidence I believe that each human life begins when an egg is fertilized. The genetic facts of each life are established at that point. To that extent I agree with the Pro-life position.

Any deliberate act intended to interfere with the implantation or development of a fertilized egg could be defined as an illegal act such as murder or assault. People who adopt the Pro-life position generally believe that such interference should be prohibited by law. Many seek to change the laws of this country to protect fertilized human eggs from any harmful interference. I disagree. A newly fertilized egg has almost nothing invested in it. We have not fed it, we have not carried it, we have not given birth to it, we have not clothed or loved or educated it. Our only human investment is one egg and one sperm out of zillions that are available.

The Pro-life position seems to be that God arranges for each fertilization to occur. God selects which egg and which sperm shall get together. Thus each fertilized egg is sacred. Where is that written? In which fiery bush has God proclaimed it?

If each fertilization is God's will then God has a lot to answer for. Studies of the fertilization process tell us that about 22% of all fertilized eggs fail to implant in the womb. Without implantation they can receive no sustenance and must quickly die. Is this some sort of cosmic game, rolling the dice with fertilized eggs? If implantation is successful another 31% of the fetuses miscarry before they are viable outside the womb. More of God's play? Or is God testing each and every fetus before it is born? I can't find anything about that in my Holy Bible.

God by definition is all-powerful but God also delegates decisions to His human creatures. Isn't that what the story of Adam and Eve tells us? Humans are called upon to exercise judgment in such matters as whether the egg and the sperm are from healthy stock and carrying good genetic characteristics and whether the parent(s) are prepared to take good care of the resulting infant. A pregnancy resulting from rape, for instance, may not predispose the mother toward love of the child. Shall we condemn the fetus to the Hell of being an unloved stepchild? If we are trained in the exercise of medical care we may also have to make judgments about the effects of pregnancy on the health of the mother. Does God really require that we suspend human judgment on matters such as these?

Human life is obviously not sacrosanct in the eyes of American law. That law provides for execution of murderers, for instance. Homeowners are permitted to shoot to kill in order to protect their property. Soldiers are not only permitted to kill their human enemies in times of war; they are commanded to do so. And the law requires no action to save the millions of lives that are lost through spontaneous miscarriage. Why, then, should we suddenly be concerned about lives in which very little has been invested? What punishment would you mete out to a pregnant teenager who chose abortion because she was nowhere near ready to bear and raise a child? What punishment is appropriate for the manufacturers and pharmacists who make and sell pills designed to keep a fertilized egg from implanting itself in the uterus?

What does Pro-life mean? What does it mean when a politician says it he is Pro-life and then calls for war?

HIStory

Our presidential candidates are touting their credentials as supporters of equal employment and equal pay for women. Gov. Romney described how, as Governor of Massachusetts, he deliberately sought out female candidates to appoint to high-level jobs in his administration. Pres. Obama noted his support for the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009, the first bill he signed into law as President. He also appointed eight women to his Cabinet. That is only 35 percent of his Cabinet appointments but he also nominated two women to the Supreme Court.

Unfortunately there are problems with both of these stories. Romney implied that as Governor he "went to a number of women's groups" in search of information about qualified female candidates for positions in his administration. But the nonpartisan Massachusetts Government Appointments Project has rebutted this story, saying that they came to him with this information. Pres. Obama failed to note that in spite of the Fair Pay Act women in America are still paid only about 80 percent of what men receive in the private sector for the same work and qualifications. And he did not tell us what, if anything, he has tried to do about that. Does he expect women to do all the work by filing millions of lawsuits?

A more important question for Gov. Romney is what he did as head of Bain Capital to hire and promote qualified women or pay them equally. Practicing gender equality in the light of government office is a no-brainer. Failure to do it in private enterprise is the real problem.

Pres. Obama really failed to answer the question asked by a young woman on the panel at the debate on Tuesday. She asked what his Administration had done to bring women's pay up to the level of their male equals. The answer is--very little. The Fair Pay Act makes it easier to sue for discrimination in pay but our employers should not be discriminating against women in the first place.

What could our federal government do? It could be shining a spotlight on discriminatory employers but it is not doing so. It could be requiring equal pay as a condition of awarding government contracts but it is not doing so. It could be providing tax incentives for equal pay and employment or tax penalties for discrimination but it is not doing so. It could enact tariffs to penalize foreign employers who discriminate against their female employees but it has not done so.

If the women of this country formed their own political party they could win. They are the majority. And there is no law against it.

The Buck Stops Here

Pres. Truman had a sign on his desk in the Oval Office: The Buck Stops Here.  Pres. Obama should have that sign too. It doesn't matter when he was informed about the attack on our embassy in Benghazi, Libya or when he was told that it was apparently a planned attack, not just a riot. He knew that the budget for embassy security had been cut and he signed that budget. The buck stops there.

On the other hand the buck also went through the hands of Rep. Ryan and the House of Representatives. They engineered the cut in money for embassy security. They squeezed and redirected the bucks. And Pres. Obama had to consider many other items in the budget when he signed it. He is responsible for all those items as well, for better or worse. And Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is responsible for how the funds were allocated. And her operatives in the field were responsible for advising her on where the security funds were most needed. And the attackers in Benghazi were responsible for disguising their efforts so that we would not know about their attack in advance.

The buck makes many stops along the way. Life is like that. And so is our economy. Bucks are supposed to move and make many brief stops along the way. That is what they do when our economy is booming. When the bucks pile up in banks in Switzerland or the Cayman Islands they are not doing their job. They can't be used to fund an expansion of the military or to cut the national deficit or to repair our crumbling roads. So Gov. Romney and his 1% buddies need to put a sign on their foreign accounts: The Bucks Stop Here.

The Sin of Low Wages

Republicans and Democrats alike are yammering about how they are going to create jobs and restore prosperity to America. The fact is they are not going to accomplish those goals until they recognize and fix a major glitch in our economy, the failure of wages to keep up with productivity.

According to data collected by the Bureau of Labor Statistics the wages of our hourly-paid workers rose steadily as their productivity increased from 1950 to the early '70s. The recession of 1973-75 knocked us off that track and since then wages have increased only about 13% while productivity more than doubled. What did this do to the economy? It put a strangle hold on the purchasing power of our workers, the people who are most likely to spend what they earn and buy what they produce. 

As productivity increased but spending didn't, our manufacturing and marketing sectors tried to maintain profitability by cutting prices and jobs. They also siphoned more cash out of the system by increasing executive pay faster than profits were growing. Meanwhile working families, thinking that they should be part of the economic boom, bought houses on shaky mortgages. Then the whole scheme collapsed in the Great Recession. But it all started with the failure of wages to keep up with productivity.

Have you noticed that the stock market has fully recovered while employment has not? That is because the stock market is where executives and other rich people put much of the money they can't spend. But stock prices have almost no effect on employment or on production of goods and services or on spending for those things. If we want to jump start our market economy we must find a way to put more money in the pockets of workers and their families. 

You don't begin by creating jobs, you begin by spreading cash around. When it is spent the spending will create jobs. And the best way to spread cash around, if you don't want to just give it away, is to increase wages.

Money is Speech

The Supreme Court has declared that money is speech. And the Court is right. Very right.

Since money is speech we ought to listen to it. As with all speech--such as your mother telling you to clean up after yourself--it might be correct or incorrect, important or unimportant. But you don't know until you listen to it.

These days it is easy to find money to listen to. It blares from my TV every time I turn it on. What money is saying is that we should not vote for anyone who is running for President, Governor, Senator or Representative. The major candidates are all liars, thieves, idiots and cunning plotters against American values.

Why doesn't money have anything better to do? Why couldn't it speak for renewable energy, for instance? We are certainly going to need that after we frack ourselves to death. But money doesn't seem to want to say anything useful these days. So why do we need more of it? What is the purpose of cutting taxes if the money is simply going to sit there and nag us? Right now money is nothing but speech.

Money was not invented for purposes of speech. It was invented to facilitate trade and the collection of taxes. It was easier for the King to collect coins and pieces of paper than to gather up livestock, produce, lumber and ore. But the King learned that when he had something to say to a neighboring monarch money often said it more clearly than cannon balls. And if his neighbor refused to listen money could also buy cannon balls.

As a nation today do we need more speech or more cannon balls? Some of the candidates who are assailing our ears seem to think we need more of the latter. If so, why aren't their moneyed supporters investing in more and better cannon balls? And if we need better medical care I am sure that money could speak for that too.

Assumptions

At the Vice Presidential debate a lot was said about Rep. Ryan's plan to reduce the national debt with a combination of tax cuts, removal of tax loopholes, and slashing of government programs. His assumption is  that the cuts would stimulate the economy, thereby creating jobs and profits that will pay off the debt in 20 years. Vice Pres. Biden countered that the math shows this plan will not work and will actually increase the national debt. His assumption is that there are not enough savings in the loopholes and programs to offset the loss in taxes.

It is not the math that is out of whack in this scenario. It is the assumptions. The evidence of the effects of the Bush tax cuts throws cold water on the assumption that these new tax cuts will stimulate the economy enough to pay off our debts. Instead of creating a boom Pres. Bush's cuts generated stock manipulation and overheated the housing market, causing a crash. And at the consumer level a lot of money from the cuts was spent in multinational megastores on foreign goods with very little benefit trickling down to our local businesses.

The effects of throwing money at the economy to stimulate it have been lukewarm at best. The fact is that if we put more money in the pockets of our citizens by means of tax cuts we have no idea what they will do with it. If they spend it on goods from China this will not increase employment in the US and will provide no incentive for our corporations to invest in increased production. A lot of the wealth that has been created in the US is now being spent on a frenzy of political "speech" but that boom will soon end.

Another unexamined assumption is that the jobs lost through cutting government programs will somehow be replaced by private sector jobs. So far that has not happened. States and communities in particular have had to cut many jobs in education, road and bridge maintenance, police and fire departments, and the social safety network. And jobs in parts of the private sector such as manufacturing and banking continue to be lost to better machines and robotics. The bailout of our domestic auto industry did save some jobs but it probably would not have succeeded without substantial investment in tooling that replaced workers. How do you think Japanese and Korean auto plants do it? Any assumption that depends on creating jobs has to take into account changes in the way we do business such as automated tellers, electronic shopping, word of thumb or phone advertising, and growing food in "factories" that automatically feed, pluck, collect and slaughter the stock.

I predict that we never will return to the level of employment we had. We simply don't need that many man-hours of  production or service. What we could do is to spread the existing employment by reducing the standard workweek and workyear. But that will not substantially increase the money available for consumer spending. It will simply spread it thinner. That is my assumption.

Affirmative Action?

The Supreme Court's review of affirmative action in college admissions raised a great variety of connexions with other topics. What is race? What does it have to do with diversity in a university?  What sort of action does it call for? What does it have to do with education? In what ways is it affirmative?

The entire human race is one species. It arose in Africa and spread from there to Europe, Asia, Australia and the Americas. Recent findings about our gene pool indicate that along the way there may have been some mixing with Neanderthals. Otherwise the cosmetic differences among us are just that--cosmetic. When people of different skin colors engage in sex they have no difficulty in reproducing and their children are not neuter like a mule. They are human like Pres. Obama.

So how did we end up with racial subspecies based primarily on skin color? We know that skin color can be a factor in "survival of the fittest" because of its effects on susceptibility to skin cancer and on receiving our daily requirement of vitamin A. The need for dark skin is high in an environment of intense exposure to sunlight and low in the higher latitudes. So it appears that our color differences are adaptive. However, if we are going to continue to migrate from one climate to another perhaps a bit of a mix is the safest strategy for the future.

Skin color has historically led to segregation in America for slaves, former slaves, native Americans, and Chinese, Japanese, and Latino immigrant groups. But even immigrants from various parts of Europe have been segregated until they assimilated into the community. An important part of the assimilation process is our public schools. We have desegregated the public schools and employed affirmative action at the college level in order to break the cycle of segregation and provide equal opportunity for all our citizens. Affirmative action is also supposed to expose our light-skinned collegians to the diversity of American culture so that they will better understand the world they are preparing to face. It turns our that being able to see the world as people from other backgrounds see it is part of education. Who knew?

But is affirmative action still needed? Diversity in our public schools has helped to raise the performance of children from the formerly segregated groups so that more children from these groups qualify for college admission without affirmative action. We have not reached equality of performance yet, unless you are talking about athletics, but there has definitely been progress. What the Supreme Court is trying to assess is whether there has been enough progress to stop being affirmative. Affirmative, it turns out, means using lower standards of admission for dark-skinned students than for light-skinned ones.

Something like affirmative action was clearly needed when desegregation began because most of our previously segregated population had not received proper preparation for college. By now, however, we should be able to build equality from the ground up by assuring that all of our children get a good education pre-K and K through 12. Research has shown a key to this goal lies in assuring that our school populations are truly diverse so that children whose families lacked opportunities are exposed to children with higher aspirations. If we can affirm that we probably won't have to affirm anything else.

Will Darwinism Survive?

Poor Charles Darwin. He is so misunderstood. Everyone says “Darwin? Oh yeah. Survival of the fittest.” It is true that being fit may help you to survive and reproduce but that is only a small part of what Darwin was trying to say.

Fitness depends on your environment. What Darwin observed was that birds of a species, when exposed to different environmental conditions, over time developed small differences in characteristics such as the size and shape of their beaks. These changes were related to factors such as the kinds of food available to them. Long thin beaks were good for gathering some foods, short stout beaks were better for other kinds. Whatever shape worked better tended to be preserved because its possessors survived and multiplied more successfully.

But fitness could also be related to how a bird looked to its potential mates. A male who looked more attractive or behaved more aggressively might spread those characteristics by fertilizing more eggs. A female might build a better nest to take care of the eggs.

Changes in the environment could change the characteristics of the species that survived. For instance a drying climate that caused loss of forests could, by favoring agility on the ground rather than in trees, develop a new species of apes who walked upright. And if staying together in families or flocks or tribes made survival more likely the survivors would spread the traits, such as empathy and ability to communicate, that facilitate staying together.

Notice that there is competition between various traits for survival. Is looking good and being aggressive more or less important for species survival than being able to communicate well? The only way we can know for certain is to wait and see what traits survive. And even then we will only have the answer for a given environment. It is not survival of the individual we are talking about.

Can a species survive so well that it multiplies beyond the capacity of its environment to support it? The human species may currently be working on a test of that hypothesis. Dinosaurs may have tested it too.  

Indigenous Peoples Day

Yesterday was Indigenous Peoples Day. It used to be Columbus Day but that had to be canceled when we learned he did not really discover America. Yes, I know it still says Columbus Day on your calendar. These things take a while to fix.

America was “discovered” by Amerigo Vespucci who proceeded to name the continents after himself.

Columbus “discovered” Hispaniola, an island in the Caribbean Sea, but it had already been discovered by indigenous people whose ancestors probably came from Asia. Columbus took care of that little problem on his next trip by bringing Spanish conquistadors who proceeded to eliminate the indigenous population. The native people weren't Christians and they failed to cough up enough gold. But Columbus never reached the land masses now called North and South America. And he never reached India, which was his intended destination.

So far as we know the indigenous population of North, South and Central America came originally from Asia by way of a land or ice bridge across the Bering Strait. There may also have been some ancestors who sneaked across the Pacific ocean on rafts, just as debris from a tsunami in Japan has been drifting to the coast of Alaska and our northwestern states. And a few Vikings in boats may also have preceded Columbus, although it is not clear that they left any descendants.

Populations migrating to unpopulated regions were popular in early times. The first migrations were from Africa to Europe and Asia. Some of the Asian immigrants settled in India, a land mass that had earlier migrated from Africa and slammed into the continent to form the Himalayas. Later there were migrations of people from Asia eastward toward Europe, southward toward Australia, and westward to America. Some of the westward migrants may actually have come from India, thus justifying the designation of the indigenous people of America as “Indians.” The indigenous peoples of Europe came from various parts of Africa or Asia. So let us belatedly celebrate Indigenous Peoples Day.

If you already celebrated Columbus Day that's okay. Good holidays are hard to find.

Producers, Consumers, and Scavengers

Our understanding of the human economy is based on the fact that we are producers and consumers. We are also scavengers. We gather materials from the earth and the forests, energy from the sun and winds and rivers and rocks. We “produce” food from farming and ranching but we also harvest it through hunting, fishing and gathering. Scavenging is part of the “production” side of the economy.

Our economy is based on maintaining a flow between acquisition and consumption. Whether we produce goods or simply gather them there needs to be a positive balance on the acquisition side in order for the economy to work to our advantage. If we expended more energy in acquiring our food than we gained from eating it we would rather quickly come to the end of our rope.

So what happens when we introduce machines, particularly robots, into this equation? Machines have to be more efficient than people at some aspect of scavenging or producing. Otherwise there would be no point in introducing them to the economy. And machines are also consumers; they require resources, especially energy.

People look at machines as aids but also as competitors. As machines become more sophisticated they replace human skills in the production side of the economy. Machines also consume some of the same energy resources. And as machines become more intelligent and versatile they compete even with highly skilled workers.

When a worker with a machine can produce as much as ten workers without machines a lot of workers are likely to lose their jobs. That is, they drop out of the producer side of the economy. Without income from jobs the losers fall out of the economy on the consumer side as well. And with a shrinking market for the goods they produce even the machines may be idled.

The forces on the economy that I have just described have been operating there for more than a century but the effects have become increasingly severe in America in the last 40 years. With an excess supply of human labor employers have not had to compete for workers. Wages have stagnated and even the employed have lost purchasing power. With less money in circulation on the consumer side markets have shrunk. For employers the only productive use for the savings in wages is to invest in more and better machinery. In the short run that improves the economy for producers of the machinery but the long range effect is to eliminate jobs and wages.

The vicious circle of decline I have described does have some escape routes. People with special skills are still needed in the development of better machines and robots. Money is being poured into education in the belief that it can propel young people into productive occupations. Many goods have become cheaper and thus more accessible even to the unemployed. The extension of human lives and the freeing up of time have opened up needs for more workers in areas such as medicine, personal care and entertainment. But the overall trend toward a less robust American economy is clear.

If our leaders are willing to do what is necessary to reverse this trend the first step is to put more spendable money in the hands of the working class, whether or not they are working. The key is that they will spend the money because they have immediate needs. Spending will create markets for goods and services, markets will attract investment, and investment will provide jobs for more workers and better machinery. The cycle of scavenging, producing and consuming will boom again.

Making Money Work

Pres. Obama and Gov. Romney have both talked about freeing up money to help business grow, thereby creating jobs. Their plans differ in details, or the lack thereof, but the basic idea seems to be that money is somehow frozen in place and needs to be liberated.

The place up from which--picture Winston Churchill rolling over in his grave--money needs to be freed is the accounts of people like Romney. Money was intended to circulate but instead it is piling up in tax havens. And the reason why the rich are not investing it is that there is no use making more stuff because most people have no loose money to spend on it.

In a blog posted on Ezra Klein's WONKBLOG on August 10, 2012 Dylan Matthews showed that “Higher productivity doesn't mean higher wages.” Using unpublished data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), generously provided to him by the Economic Policy Institute’s Larry Mishel and Nicholas Finio, Matthews showed that wages tracked productivity growth until the early 1970s. After that, wages stagnated even as productivity continued to grow. To show the relationship he presented the following graph based on EPI's analysis:

Source: Economic Policy Institute.

When hourly compensation ceased to grow even as productivity increased, the purchasing power of hourly-paid workers no longer enabled them to buy the additional products with cash. (Picture Henry Ford rolling over in his grave.) To continue their lifestyle many of the workers used credit. This led to debt piling up on the workers until the dam burst and their mortgages ceased to float. Suddenly much of the market for the increased productivity disappeared. The recession at least in part was caused by the failure of pay to keep up with productivity.

It is not that employers ought to pay their workers more. It's not a moral imperative. It's an economic imperative. Money was meant to circulate. If you choke off the money supply to the consumers you eventually break the economic cycle that produced prosperity. That is what our employers have done.

It is time for a redistribution of wealth in America. If our major parties actually understood economics I think they would both agree that more money needs to go to the poor and middle class. The reason is simple: They will spend it instead of sitting on it. When people spend money, markets are created and the upper class has something profitable to invest in. Everybody wins.

If the upper class really want an economy that works for THEM they are going to have to redistribute some of their money to the consumers in the lower classes. It doesn't matter whether they do it through charity or government dole or deciding to pay workers better. If they don't do it somehow, the USA is soon going to resemble the impoverished nations in Africa and the Middle East whose dictators hide their people's wealth in Swiss bank accounts.

Policy versus Proposals


Gov. Romney clearly won the debate last night. He remembered to look at the camera, he grinned aggressively, and he told the Moderator what to do. Yet we learned almost nothing specific on what he proposes to do about unemployment, deficits, tax rates, loopholes, or medical care insurance, to name just a few of the items that were "discussed." What we did learn was about policy: Romney favors a minimal role for the federal government in almost every sphere except the military. He made it clear that he thinks the states and private enterprise should take over most of whatever else the feds are doing now. So we are to become the Collected States of America. 

I think he should expand that plan. The US armed forces could be reorganized around the National Guard units in each of the States. The US Senate and House of Representatives could be populated by state-selected representatives from the state legislatures. The federal bodies would meet once or twice a year while the state legislatures are not in session. Likewise the US Supreme Court could be composed of representatives from each of the District Courts, which would in turn be made up of reps from the state supreme courts. These changes would greatly reduce the cost of federal government, thereby allowing Gov. Romney to accomplish a substantial reduction in federal taxes.

Carrying this theme one step further I would recommend that the US Presidency be filled by state Governors on a monthly rotation. This would give the state Lieutenant Governors a chance to step in and do something useful about once every four years. I suspect that Gov. Romney may not be ready to advocate this particular proposal but I am sure he will see the value of it when he gets to the Oval Office. It becomes awfully hot in Washington DC in the summer and there is no good place to drive your boat.

Focus of Connexions

The focus of this blog will be on hidden connections between items in the news. News stories, editorials, columns, and letters to the editor usually focus on single issues. But that is not how the world works. To really understand the world we live in we need to know how events and issues are linked. Below is my first example.

Jobs

In a recent column entitled “The robotic revolution in jobs” Froma Harrop helped us understand why investment in American enterprise does not automatically translate into more jobs. Her point: Much of the work that used to be performed by people is now done better and more cheaply by robots. We are bringing jobs back from overseas but the work is going to robots instead of employees. We must stop expecting that investment in business is going to improve the job picture in America.

One problem with this picture is that people without jobs have no money to buy the goods that the robots produce. Without customers there is no incentive for American businesses to invest their capital to expand production, and even if they did that might not create more jobs. In order for our economy to expand there needs to be some way to get money into the hands of potential customers.

One obvious way to accomplish this expansion of the customer base is to share the work that exists. The standard work week in America has been stuck at 40 hours for more than half a century. Cut it to 35 hours or even 30 hours and increase the standard vacation from two weeks to four. So simple! Many other industrialized nations have already done it.

Another obvious method is for our state and federal governments to hire more people. We need more teachers, more people maintaining our roads and bridges, more maintenance in our parks, better care for our wounded veterans. These are jobs that cannot currently be roboticized. And they even involve work that actually needs to be done! Next question: How do we pay for it? That's another blog.