Mitt Romney Running Anti-China Trade Ad Against Obama Yet Has Money in China, Cayman Islands and Switzerland

Mitt Romney Running Anti-China Trade Ad Against Obama Yet Has Money in China, Cayman Islands and Switzerland

The tale of Asimco Technologies, an auto parts manufacturer whose plants dot eastern China, would seem to underscore Mitt Romney’s campaign-trail complaint that China’s manufacturing juggernaut is costing America jobs.

Nine years ago, the company bought two camshaft factories that employed about 500 people in Michigan. By 2007 both were shut down. Now Asimco manufactures the same components in China on government-donated land in a coastal region that China has designated an export base, where companies are eligible for the sort of subsidies Mr. Romney says create an unfair trade imbalance.

But there is a twist to the Asimco story that would not fit neatly into a Romney stump speech: Since 2010, it has been owned by Bain Capital, the private equity firm founded by Mr. Romney, who has as much as $2.25 million invested in three Bain funds with large stakes in Asimco and at least seven other Chinese businesses, according to his 2012 candidate financial disclosure and other documents.

That and other China-related holdings by Bain funds in which Mr. Romney has invested are a reminder of how he inhabits two worlds that at times have come into conflict during his campaign for the White House.

As a candidate, Mr. Romney uses China as a punching bag. He accuses Beijing of unfairly subsidizing Chinese exports, artificially holding down the value of its currency to keep exports cheap, stealing American technology and hacking into corporate and government computers.

“How is it China’s been so successful in taking away our jobs?” he asked recently. “Well, let me tell you how: by cheating.”

But his private equity dealings, both while he headed Bain and since, complicate that message.

Mr. Romney’s campaign insists he has no control over his investments since they are held in a blind trust. That said, a confidential prospectus for one of the Bain funds, obtained by The New York Times, promotes China as a good investment for some of the same reasons that Mr. Romney has said concern him: “Strong fundamentals” like manufacturing wages 85 percent lower than what Americans earn, vast foreign exchange reserves and the likelihood that China will surpass the United States as the world’s largest economy.

“Accordingly, Bain Capital expects to see an increasing array of high-growth companies available for investment,” the prospectus says, noting the relative dearth of private equity in China.

Among the companies in which the Bain funds have invested is a global auto parts maker that is in the process of closing a factory in Illinois and moving most of the equipment and jobs to Jiangsu Province, where the Chinese government has built it a new plant; a Chinese electronics retailer accused by Microsoft of selling computers with pirated software; and a Hong Kong-based Chinese appliance maker that was sued for copying another company’s design for a deep-fat fryer.

Asked if Mr. Romney sees any conflict between his Bain investments in China and his policy positions, the campaign said: “Only the president has the power to level the playing field with China. No private citizen can do that alone.”

The campaign said Mr. Romney put his fortune, estimated at $250 million, in a “blind trust” when he became Massachusetts governor in 2003. “The trustee of the blind trust has said publicly that he will endeavor to make the investments in the blind trust conform to Governor Romney’s positions, and whenever it comes to his attention that there is something inconsistent, he ends the investment,” the statement said.

Should Mr. Romney become president, however, the structure of the trust would most likely not meet the federal requirements for independent management. It is managed by a Boston-based law firm, Ropes & Gray, that has a long history of doing legal work for both Mr. Romney and Bain Capital, including representing some of the same Bain funds in which it invested Mr. Romney’s money.

Mr. Romney’s trustee, R. Bradford Malt, who is chairman of Ropes & Gray, declined to comment.

Bain Capital declined to comment on specific investments, but said in a statement that its Chinese holdings “are consistent with the widely accepted principle that the private sector has a critical role to play in the continuing interdependence of the world’s economies.”

For many sophisticated and wealthy investors, as well as for ordinary workers invested in pension funds, China is a part of any diversified investment strategy. President Obama, a former Illinois state senator, has as much as $100,000 in a state retirement plan that contains shares of Sensata Technologies, the same auto parts company controlled by Bain that is closing its Illinois factory.

Last year, Mr. Romney’s trust sold its stake in an array of foreign holdings, including two Chinese state-owned companies: an oil company and a bank that have done business in Iran. But Mr. Romney continues to have money in Bain funds with sizable holdings in China.

He has as much as $250,000 in the Bain Capital Asia Fund and as much as $1 million each in Bain Capital Funds IX and X, all Cayman Islands entities used by Bain to make sizable investments in China, according to the 2012 candidate financial disclosures and confidential Bain prospectuses obtained by The Times through a public records request.

Among those funds’ holdings is $234 million that Bain invested in 2009 in Gome Electrical Appliances, a major Chinese retailer that was accused by Microsoft this year of selling computers with pirated software. In 2007, Bain’s Asia fund also invested $39 million in Feixiang Group, a Chinese producer and exporter of chemicals that is a designated “state high-tech enterprise,” making it eligible for tax breaks and other government incentives. Ropes & Gray represented Bain in the partial sale of Feixiang three years later for a 53 percent return on the fund’s investment.

The Asia fund withdrew from another deal in 2008 that could have proved politically embarrassing to Mr. Romney. After the Bush administration objected, Bain dropped plans to team up with a Chinese technology giant, Huawei, to buy 3Com, a network equipment maker that supplies software and equipment to the Pentagon and other federal agencies.

Republicans like to say that Americans are lazy and there are plenty of jobs out there. There are jobs in Asia where conservatives stash a lot of their money. What ever happened to America first. And how is it that Romney claims to be a person with values, yet has run televison ads that set a new low for lies and hypocrisy.

Koch Sends Pro-Romney Mailing to 45,000 Employees While Stifling Workplace Political Speech

The billionaire Koch brothers have found a new way to influence the 2012 election—preaching to employees.

Mitt Romney's New Attack Ad is Another Lie (Medicare) Filled With Empty Promises

Mitt Romney's New Attack Ad is Another Lie (Medicare) Filled With Empty Promises

The largest and clearest point of distinction in the presidential race is universal access to health insurance. If President Obama wins reelection, his law to provide access to the uninsured will go forward. If Mitt Romney is elected, it will be gutted, and Medicaid — the bare-bones coverage plan for the most desperately poor and sick — will face enormous additional cuts.

Commonwealth Fund has released a report comparing the stark choice. Estimating conservatively, Romney’s plan — to the extent that the report was able to piece it together — would increase the uninsured population to about 72 million, while Obama’s would cut it to 26 million (his plan does not cover illegal immigrants.) Probably more telling is Romney’s official campaign reaction:

    “Under ObamaCare, Americans have seen their insurance premiums increase, small businesses are facing massive tax increases, and seniors will have reduced access to Medicare services,” Ryan Williams, a Romney spokesman, wrote in an email to POLITICO. “The American people did not want this law, our country cannot afford this law, and when Mitt Romney becomes president he will repeal it and replace it with common-sense, patient-centered reforms that strengthen our health care system.”

Note that the statement is almost entirely an attack on Obamacare, with a brief clause at the end vaguely promising something good will take its place. But that something requires resources. Most people lacking insurance are either sick or have a sick family member or they're poor. If you want to cover them, you need to cough up some money. Obamacare undertook the massive political heavy lift of providing those resources, and that’s what Romney attacks — he included higher taxes on “small businesses” (i.e., people making more than $250,000 a year) and “reduced access to Medicare services” (i.e., cuts in reimbursements to Medicare providers, as a trade-off for providing them with 30 million new paying customers.)

Romney’s budget is premised on denying the government enough resources to fund any kind of universal health insurance program. His promise to cut tax rates by 20 percent would reduce tax revenue well below current levels. But even if you accept Romney’s arithmetically impossible claim that he can cut tax rates by 20 percent and raise the same tax revenue as the tax code does right now (and without raising taxes on the middle class), merely holding revenue at current, Bush-set levels would make any kind of universal coverage impossible.

Both campaigns describe the election as a stark choice, and this is correct. It’s a choice between universal health coverage for legal citizens and preserving the Bush tax cuts.

Only the elite like Romney think they people who make $250k plus per year are middle-class. Half the country has a household income under $52k. If someone making even $150k per year wants to cry that they're struggling, they need to learn some personal finance and spending discipline.

Romney Budget Proposals Would Necessitate Very Large Cuts in Medicaid, Education, Health Research and Other Programs

Clueless Elitist Mitt Romney Cites Businesswoman Who Presided Over Huge Losses And Job Cuts As Model For His Cabinet

Clueless Elitist Mitt Romney Cites Businesswoman Who Presided Over Huge Losses And Job Cuts As Model For His Cabinet

During an interview published on Monday by Politico, Mitt Romney praised one of his favorite business leaders, Hewlett Packard CEO Meg Whitman. According to Politico, Romney said that his cabinet “would be dominated by people from the private sector, citing Meg Whitman of Hewlett-Packard as a model for female leaders he would like to surround himself with.”

This isn’t the first time that Romney has pointed to Whitman — who is also the former CEO of Ebay and a former California gubernatorial candidate — as a leader to emulate. But at the moment, Whitman is presiding over a company in free-fall. HP just suffered its largest quarterly loss ever and is shedding tens of thousands of jobs:

    Hewlett-Packard Co. (HPQ) posted a record (HPQ) quarterly loss and reported slumping sales for personal computers and services aimed at businesses, underscoring the turnaround challenge facing Chief Executive Officer Meg Whitman.

    The fiscal third-quarter loss of $8.86 billion includes a writedown for the enterprise-services unit and reflects a 10 percent decline in PC revenue…Whitman is cutting 27,000 jobs over two years.

During her unsuccessful 2010 run for California’s governorship, Whitman released a slew of half-baked economic plans. These included a proposal to balance the Golden State’s budget that, according to a ThinkProgress analysis, wouldn’t come anywhere close to actually balancing the budget.

While at Ebay, Whitman succeeded in boosting net income, but eventually left the company crippled due to disastrous acquisitions: “A year after Whitman bailed on eBay, the stock had sunk so low that employees were left holding onto stock options that would actually cost more than than eBay’s market stock price, making them worse than worthless.” Before moving to Ebay, Whitman was CEO of FTD.com, where she oversaw a fifty percent drop in business during her two-year tenure. And evidently this is the sort of experience Romney would like to bring to the federal government.

There has always been a crazy element to American politics and elections. One of the most bizarre things about this election cycle is that a guy who has never done an honest day's work in his life, had a disastrous record of creating jobs as governor, pioneered the offshoring of American jobs to Asia, has multiple foreign bank accounts, has a budget plan that spells disaster for the middle-class is being seriously considered by the same people who would return a pair of socks for being poor quality. How is it that some Americans will not tolerate a poor quality sock, but will make a person of such poor character, with a delusional world view, president.

Add It Up: Taxes Avoided by the Rich Could Pay Off the Deficit

Remember Romney said he had no active role in Bain, Romney asserted active role in Bain to claim half-million dollar tax deduction in 2010

Big Conservative Pundit David Brooks argues there is nothing to be done to bring back lower middle-class jobs

Big Conservative Pundit David Brooks argues there is nothing to be done to bring back lower middle-class jobs

It didn’t take long to crank up the backlash against European voters. This is inevitable whenever a socialist wins a major election, but particularly now, when new French president François Hollande rode to victory shouting, "Austerity can no longer be inevitable!"A protester holds a banner that reads 'Austerity enough is enough' during a demonstration in Paris. (MEHDI FEDOUACH/AFP/Getty Images)

This sounds like the beginning of what will be a very heated debate over who has to pay for the excesses of the financial crisis. It was previously assumed that everybody but the actual financial services sector would have to pay, but voters in Europe now are refusing to go along, sparking a wave of eye-rolling editorials in the financial press. Even David Brooks got into the act today, penning a lugubrious editorial about the errant political instincts of the populist masses here and abroad.

Markets all over the world freaked out over the prospect of having ignorant European voters meddling in the recovery process the geniuses of the high finance world had already painstakingly laid out for them. The model for economic progress in the financial bubble era, after all, is supposed to go something like this:

    Let banks inflate massive asset bubbles with the aid of cheap or even free government cash, and tons of leverage;
    
    Before it all explodes, carve out gigantic sums for bonuses and compensation for the companies that inflated those bubbles;
    
    After it explodes, get the various governments to bail those companies out;
    
    Pay for it all by slashing services to what’s left of the middle class.

This is the model we used in America. We had a monster asset bubble based on phony mortgages, which Wall Street was allowed to inflate to spectacular dimensions with minimal reserve capital, huge amounts of leverage, and tons of fraud for good measure. When that bubble exploded, we first rescued the banks who inflated the thing in the first place, and then our plan for paying for it mostly revolved around folks like Paul Ryan and Chris Christie, who made great political hay by trying to take an ax to "entitlements" like health care and retirement benefits.

They're replaying the same script in Europe, sort of. The causes of crises in places like Spain, Greece, Portugal and Italy vary somewhat and are less simple to define, but a common denominator in all of them is weak growth mixed with giant budget deficits.

In most all of these cases, you had enormous sums of money entering these countries in the middle and late 2000s as global financiers in the midst of the bubble boom looked for higher-yield investments around the world – Spanish real estate, Greek debt, etc.

The local economies sucked up the bubble money, and in Greece's case they used it to ramp up state benefits, which they could no longer afford once the bubble burst. A lot of these countries turned to Wall Street to finance their way out of budgetary messes using swap deals and other hocus-pocus moves, kicking the can down the road as it were, and those decisions are now blowing up in their faces.

Now that it’s the next morning, and everyone has a severe hangover from the bubble, the dominant narrative is that these countries brought their troubles on themselves by being reckless spenders with unsustainable welfare states. The solution, naturally, is going to be "austerity," slashing state budgets, reining in those wasteful citizens with their unreasonable demands for returns on taxes.

Take today's Brooks column in the Times, for instance, which seems aimed at his colleague Paul Krugman (who has been arguing that cutting public spending and job stimulus in European countries will be disastrous). Brooks claims that the financial crisis was caused by "structural" problems, the first of which is that we’ve simply grown out of a need to pay low-skilled workers real wages:

    Hyperefficient globalized companies need fewer workers. As a result, unemployment rises, superstar salaries surge while lower-skilled wages stagnate, the middle gets hollowed out and inequality grows.

According to Brooks, this organic trend toward lower salaries for everyone but the "superstars"  managing those hyperefficient companies has forced politicians into the bad decision of borrowing and taxing to extend more welfare/charity to the less fortunate:

    Politicians tried to compensate by reducing the tax bill, increasing deficit spending, ensuring easy credit for homebuyers and by helping workers shift out of the hypercompetitive, globalized part of the economy and into the less productive and more sheltered parts of the economy – mostly into health care, government and education.

    But you can only mask structural problems for so long …. The current model, in which we try to compensate for structural economic weakness with tax cuts and an unsustainable welfare state, simply cannot last.

Naturally, since that welfare state is "unsustainable"” we need to be real about things and stop the deficit spending and the stimulus, etc.

This world view ignores the fact that those "superstar" leaders of "hyperefficient" companies have been sucking up a thousand times as much welfare as those low-skilled workers Brooks is talking about. Here’s how the "superstars" of the banking world sometimes earn their bonuses: they borrow trillions from the U.S. Federal Reserve at zero or near zero interest, then they turn right around and lend chunks of that free money to a place like Greece (ex-FDIC Sheila Bair, in a hilarious editorial on the subject, pegged the ten-year yield at 21%), then they pocket the proceeds and call it capitalism.

Brooks’ analysis of the financial crisis leaves out things like the $16 trillion in emergency loans the banks secretly got from the Fed in the years since the crisis. It ignores quantitative easing, bailouts, and the trillions of dollars of bets Wall Street made on the unreal economy during the bubble years that we all ended up paying for, either through taxes or reduced home values or lowered interest on our savings.

The point is, when people talk about “austerity,” they only ever talk about the pain the general population should voluntarily accept, in the form of reduced services and curtailed “stimulus.” No one ever says the financial services sector should have to cut back on its access to easy money, and there hasn’t been much in the way of serious plans to restore some sanity and prudence to the lending and investing business.

Instead, governments have stood by and allowed banks to lend thirty and forty dollars for every one on the books, they’ve watched lenders almost completely do away with underwriting standards, they’ve continually pumped the big firms full of cheap cash from the Fed and the ECB (printing new trillions when the real money runs out), and they’ve allowed Wall Street to build giant sandcastles of illusory wealth using synthetic derivatives, all with minimal reserve requirements.

The result of all of this easy money is an endless succession of speculative bubbles that simply shift from one market to another as financial companies run around the globe in search of high yields. It was Spanish real estate yesterday, and Euro sovereign debt before that, and American home mortgages at other times, and then it was wheat and corn and other food commodities last year (which led to the social unrest in the middle East), and it was oil in 2008, oil in 2011, and oil again this year, and so on. 

In addition to the direct consequence of huge stunning losses when these bubbles collapse, the insane volatility of all of these markets creates panic in the business community, and puts a brake on real lending to grow real businesses. When you don’t know if oil is going to cost $40 a barrel or $140 three months from now, it’s pretty hard to invest in a new airline, or a chain of supermarkets (as commodities, many food prices will also rise and fall with oil), or anything at all, really. It’s not surprising that no one wants to lend in this environment.

 The Founders would certainly see the irony that the conservative agenda has wrought. We now have an economy that rsembles the royal economies of 17th century Europe where royalty never loses money. No, in our economy when the very wealthy elite lose money the peasant workers pay for it. This is what an economy looks like on conservationism, the lazy, crooked and rich rake in the cash while the middle and working classes lose ground.

CNN's Smiley-faced fascist Dana Loesch Doesn't Disclose Her Link To Conservative Activist Investigated Over Possible Sen. McCaskill Threat

How Romney Budget will Cut Social Security and Medicare by 26% & Then Raise Taxes On the Middle Class by $3 Trillion

How Romney Budget will Cut Social Security and Medicare by 26% & Then Raise Taxes On the Middle Class by $3 Trillion

I just read the Glenn Hubbard editorial in the WSJ claiming thatthe President's budget is really a secret plan to raise everyone's taxes by11%.
Glenn and I have been friends for pushing 20 years but onthis one, Glenn seems to have jumped the shark.
Basically Hubbard says he has looked at the Obama budgetand, according to his calculation, after subtracting off the revenue projected from returning to the Clinton rates for high income people plus adding aBuffett rule, Obama's budget will raise everyone's taxes by 11% to stabilize things as a share of GDP.
Two things stuck out to me here:
1) Hubbard's numbers seem in pretty serious danger of violating the league's substance abuse policy.
His claim that the President's budget requires large tax increases on the middle class to stabilize the debt is just factually  wrong.  Just go look at the Congressional Budget Office's numbers.  They examined the President's budget and directly refute the central claim of the op-ed: http://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/attachments/03-16-APB1.pdf
Figure 2 on page 6 shows their forecast of debt as a share of GDP with the President's budget--and it's stabilized and falling without any taxes on the middle class.  Figure 1shows similar stability on the deficit.
I can understand the argument of some people when they say that Republicans will never allow the Obama budget to pass so it would be better to debate the right approach to reaching a grand bargain rather than arguing about the administration budget. That's probably true but unlikely in the election season.  I can also understand the people who think that we shouldn't raise revenue only from high income people but to spread it around.  But Hubbard isn't saying either of those.  He's saying something that looks to me (and the CBO) like it just fundamentally isn't true.
2) Using Hubbard's logic, an alternative title for would be HOW MITT ROMNEY'S BUDGET WILL CUT SOCIAL SECURITY AND MEDICARE BY 26% AND THEN RAISE TAXES ON THE MIDDLE CLASS BY $3 TRILLION
Sadly, I'm being only slightly flip about it.  Hubbard imputes future policy based on the implications of the budget plan.  So what happens if you do that for Romney's budget promises?  Well, he has proposed a multi-trillion dollartax cut, a balanced budget amendment to the constitution and a cap on government spending at 20%.
The cap forces a cut of social security and medicare (and everything else) of 26% (you can see the numbers for yourself at http://www.cbpp.org/files/1-23-12bud.pdf).
But his tax cut reduces revenue by an additional $3 trillion or so.  Using Mr. Hubbard's argument then,the Romney budget will raise taxes on everyone earning less than $200,000 per year to cover it (and since the deductions Romney says he will limit don't come  remotely close to paying for the cost of the tax cuts, it's a bit like having your cousin take all the money from your wallet but offer to let you rummage through the couch for coins as repayment).

If Romney's silly and dangerous notions about taxes and revenue ring a bell, if you having one of those deja vu moments its because these are warmed over George Bush policies that every conservative in Congress supported. Conservatism does not work. Never has and never will. In the short term it makes a few people very wealthy. In the long term it turns the USA into some dystopian nightmare. These policies will destroy an already weakened middle-class..

FACT CHECK: Americans For Prosperity Announces $6.1 Million Ad Buy To Push Totally False Green Jobs Claims

Fox Won't Let Go Of Ridiculous Myth That Obama "Apologized" For America. When will Fox News apologize to America for its daily truckload of lies. True patriots have honor, Fox news has none.

Obama Energy Policy Created 75,000 direct and indirect jobs and up to $44 billion in total economic output

Obama Energy Policy Created 75,000 direct and indirect jobs and up to $44 billion in total economic output

The Energy Department’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, Colorado, issued a study on Friday estimating the economic impact of investments that received federal support through the Treasury Department’s 1603 grant program.

The Section 1603 program was created under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to support the deployment of renewable energy resources. The 1603 program offered project developers the option to select a one-time cash payment in lieu of taking the Investment Tax Credit (ITC) or the Production Tax Credit (PTC), for which they would have otherwise been eligible.  
The NREL study makes clear that projects receiving payments from the 1603 program have supported tens of thousands of jobs while also diversifying our energy economy. In fact, the program’s primary goal was to jumpstart private financing for renewable energy projects. From both perspectives, the program has been a huge success.

NREL’s analysis estimates that up to 75,000 direct and indirect jobs and up to $44 billion in total economic output were supported by the design, manufacturing, construction, and installation of solar photovoltaic (PV) and wind projects funded by the 1603 Treasury grant program. In addition, the study estimates that the operation and maintenance of these solar and wind facilities will continue to sustain up to $1.8 billion per year in economic output over the lifetime of the facilities (20 – 30 years). 

When it comes to expanding domestic energy production, the 23,000 PV and large wind projects funded by the program between 2009 and late 2011 that the NREL study examined added 13.5 gigawatts of renewable energy to America’s electricity generation capacity – enough to power 3.4 million U.S. homes – and attracted more than $20 billion in direct investment from private, regional, and state sources, in addition to the approximately $9 billion in federal funds under the 1603 program. NREL’s analysis also estimated that economy-wide, these projects supported up to $44 billion in total economic output.

In fact, the 1603 program has played a central role in meeting President Obama’s goal of doubling domestic energy production from renewable sources like wind and solar in his first term – which we are well on track to achieve. Furthermore, it has played a critical role in building the infrastructure that America will need to continue to compete globally in clean energy for years to come, ensuring we do not cede the industries or the jobs of the 21st century to countries like China. And it has supported tens of thousands of jobs across the country. That is why President Obama has called on Congress to extend the highly successful 1603 program.

There is a nice graphic table at the link.

Neo-Fascist Gov.Scott Walker(R-WI) Quietly Signs Controversial Anti-Abortion, Abstinence Measures On Eve Of Holiday. Why Walker hates freedom, women and America is anyone's guess. Improper upbringing perhaps.

How Unfortunate That Paul Ryan(R-WI) is an Anti-American Serial Liar and Conman

How Unfortunate That Paul Ryan(R-WI) is an Anti-American Serial Liar and Conman

“Promoting the natural rights and the inherent dignity of the individual must be the central focus of all government.”

That’s what Congressman Paul Ryan wrote earlier this month in an exclusive commentary for Spotlight on Poverty and Opportunity. This week, he revealed exactly where his laser-like focus on dignity would lead this nation. He released his budget proposal, as clear a statement of one’s principles and priorities as there is in politics.

Here are the results, and they’re not pretty. Nation readers with young children should probably ask them to leave the room before reading onward.

Mr. Ryan’s focus on dignity… means a cut in food stamps of $133 billion over ten years, even though 76 percent of participating households include a child, senior or disabled person, nearly half of all recipients are children and 40 percent of single mothers use food stamps to help feed their families.  A $13.4 billion cut in one year translates to as many as 8.2 billion meals lost for low-income people, more kids at risk of being underweight or developmentally delayed, worse educational outcomes and more stressed-out parents.

The congressman would also block-grant the program so it would no longer be able to respond to rising need during times like these—in 2010 alone food stamps kept 3.9 million people out of poverty. If you liked the cash assistance for poor families (TANF) block grant—which resulted in a free-fall from 68 of every 100 poor families receiving help to 27 of every 100—then you will absolutely love the Don’t Worry Ryan Will Feed You block grant.

All told, Ryan hands out about $4.4 trillion in tax cuts that primarily benefit the very best off, and pays for it with $4.15 trillion in spending cuts to programs that primarily benefit the poor and middle class.

Mr. Ryan’s focus on dignity… means the repeal of the Affordable Care Act and attacking Medicaid with his block-granting light saber. The repeal results in at least 33 million people losing their healthcare, and the Don’t Worry Ryan Will Heal You block grant shifts costs of covering poor people to the states (because their budgets are in such great shape)—cutting federal funding by approximately 20 percent over the next decade and adding “tens of millions of Americans to the ranks of the uninsured and underinsured,” according the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP). Worth noting too is that two out of every three Medicaid dollars currently goes to care for people in nursing homes, victims of catastrophic accidents and disabled children, according to the Center for American Progress.

“The inherent dignity of all people is the foundational principle of Catholic social teaching because we’re all created in the image of God,” Father Thomas Kelly, a constituent of Representative Ryan’s, told me after a conference call with Half in Ten. “A budget that cuts nutrition programs for poor children and tells working families they must sacrifice even more so the wealthy can have bigger tax cuts offends bedrock Catholic values. It’s hard to square Representative Ryan’s moral rhetoric with the cruel reality of this budget.”

“A budget that diminishes what we provide for the one in six Americans who are struggling with hunger is not a budget befitting a moral country,” said Rabbi Steve Gutow, president of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs. “A plan reflective of our national priorities should seek to lift up our neighbors in a time of high unemployment and poverty; instead, this demands the most from those with the least, and flies in the face of the common dignity of all Americans.”

Mr. Ryan’s focus on dignity… means that the man is in desperate need of LASIK surgery. Better hurry, before he’s forced to rely on his proposed Don’t Worry Ryan Will Give You A Voucher healthcare system for seniors.

Ryan is like most modern conservatives. If given their way, for all their dire warnings about America becoming socialist, Ryan's conservative America will look a lot like the poverty ridden, food deprived Soviet Union of the 1960s. We'll have mothers, children and the disabled looking through trash cans for food. All this while corporate America is already making per-recession level profits - if they are being taxed or regulated too much you sure cannot tell by the bottom line. If Ryan and his immoral elite conservative pals want to punish work and reward wealth there is a way for them to do that, they can move somewhere and start their own 16th century monarchy.

How Conservatives Threaten Basic Personal Freedom With The Perpetual Culture War

How Conservatives Threaten Basic Personal Freedom With The Perpetual Culture War

The political press takes it as a given that there is a sharp dividing line between the “social issues” propelling the culture wars (abortion, school prayer, gay rights) and matters of substance (the economy, foreign policy, immigration and safety-net programs like unemployment benefits). But as the American conservative movement has veered sharply rightward over the past 30 years, that line is no longer so clean. Today, conservatives have a social argument for every subject of debate – everything has become part of the culture wars.

Viewing tangible matters through a cultural lens is not new. In the 19th century, dime novelist Horatio Alger wrote a series of formulaic books about poor, young, street urchins meeting some wealthy benefactor who teaches them the value of hard work and living a clean life. Once the urchins get on a properly Protestant, chaste path, their fortunes grow and they end up rising to the middle-class. It's a narrative that resonates with the right today.

But the intermingling of social and concrete issues has accelerated in the age of Obama. Many on the right consider Barack Obama alien – consider birtherism, or Dinesh D'Souza's claim that the president is influenced by “Kenyan anti-colonial behavior.” Whereas social issues once served as a distraction from matters of substance, today cultural narratives dominate conservatives' arguments.   

This is not just a matter of academic interest. It's helping to fuel the growing reality-gap between conservatives and liberals – and not just because we continue to see these issues as matters of substantive policy while increasingly they see them as cultural. It's also because people tend to be more defensive about social issues, and less likely to be open to counter-arguments or new information.

In his new book, The Republican Brain: The Science of Why They Don't Believe in Science, Chris Mooney explores years of research into the cognitive and neurobiological features associated with our ideologies. “The way the mind works,” Mooney writes, “suggests that good arguments only win the day when people don't have strong emotional commitments that contradict them.” Scientists, he writes, have long noted that “cold reasoning (rational, unemotional) is very different from hot reasoning (emotional, motivated).”

We are better able to have a cool, unemotional debate about the merits of, say, higher or lower corporate taxes. But cultural beliefs resonate more deeply, especially with conservatives; these beliefs become integrated into their identities, and once fixed, are difficult to dislodge with factual arguments. One area where conservatives and liberal tend to differ, according to Mooney, is “in their need to defend their beliefs, their internal desire to have unwavering convictions that do not and cannot change.” The culture wars are ultimately tribal, and as Mooney notes, conservatives are more likely to “be sure that their group is right, and the other group is wrong – in short, their need for group solidarity and unity, or for having a strong in-group/out-group way of looking at the world.”

So, having turned substantial issues into cultural debates, the right is more deeply invested in their outcomes, and less likely to be swayed by the reality we see around us. That “facts have a liberal bias” has become more than just a quip, and this is part of the reason why.

That is not to say that conservatives have stopped deploying non-cultural arguments – many still do. But consider some of the specific ways that what we think of as debates over concrete matters of public policy have been “culturalized” by the right.

The Economy and the Role of Government

Many conservative policy experts and politicians still make the same substantive arguments they have for years about corporate taxes sending jobs overseas or “entitlements” breaking the budget, but this is the area where the culturalization of formerly non-social issues is most apparent.

Consider one of the most enduring and pernicious untruths in our political economy. As I wrote last summer, most conservatives have come to embrace the view that poverty and inequality don't actually result from tangible economic factors.

    Rather, the poor are where they find themselves as a consequence of some deep-seated cultural flaws that keep them from achieving success. They're held back, the story goes, by what is known alternatively as a “culture of poverty,” or a “culture of dependence.” It's a popular fable for the right, as it absolves the political establishment for public policies that harm the working class and the poor.

It's also thoroughly and demonstrably untrue, flying in the face of decades of serious research findings. Yet it reinforces the in-group/out-group dynamic at the center of the culture wars and raises conservative defenses to factual information.

An excellent example of this is the simple fact that there are now 4.5 unemployed people for every full-time job opening (and 7.5 people looking for a full-time gig if you include those stuck “involuntarily” working part-time jobs), yet it remains a core belief on the right today that the unemployed are simply lazy – a cultural flaw -- and therefore unemployment benefits (which are extremely modest in the United States relative to other wealthy countries) contribute to the problem.

The hottest book in conservative circles right now is Charles Murray's Losing Ground, which calls for dismantling the social safety net based on a cultural analysis of inequality and has been touted by everyone on the right, from raging social-con Rick Santorum to David Brooks, the New York Times' Upper West Side-friendly “center-right” columnist.

As far as taxation, the stand-by claim that taxing the wealthy leads to lower business investment has been overtaken by another cultural narrative – the Randian view of a world made up of a few virile, virtuous “producers,” and the many “parasites” who feed off their labors. It’s the producers who create wealth and make a better world, and they do so by pursuing their own dreams of success. In Ayn Rand’s books, though, moochers and petty, visionless bureaucrats persistently bite at the ankles of her capitalist “supermen,” which has the effect -- unintended, but pernicious nonetheless-- of harming all of society. Therefore, freeing the wealthy from their obligations, freeing the elite from their social contract with the rest of us, is the apex of morality. Rand may have been a staunch atheist, but this argument resembles a religious viewpoint more than it does a matter of simple economics.

Conservatism has produced the two worse economic recessions in the last 35 years. Even a mildly irrational person might pause to wonder where they went wrong. Conservatives not only deny facts, they are in denial about recent history. Many Americans think that if we just have a civil debate we can work these things out. Not true when the conservative side cannot and will not face facts.

Conservative Romney’s plan would increase debt to 96 percent of GDP by 2021

Romney’s plan would increase debt to 96 percent of GDP by 2021

Several independent analyses have shows that the economic plans put forth by the GOP presidential candidates Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum would cause the deficit to explode. Just last month, Romney — who won the Arizona and Michigan primaries this week — unveiled a plan that would increase deficits by $10.7 trillion.

But Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), who chairs the House Budget Committee, told Bloomberg TV today that he finds the GOP candidates’ plans “very credible,” before he went on complain about the Obama administration’s budget for increasing deficits too much:

    Very credible. They are talking about entitlement reform. They are putting specifics on the table on Medicare and Social Security reform. The president, knowing that these are the big drivers of our debt, is ducking it. He gave us a budget that increases spending about $1.5 trillion and has a tax increase of $1.9 trillion. So out of the $47 trillion he is planning over the next ten years, he only wants to deliver about $400 billion of deficit reduction– is a scintilla of deficit reduction. It is ignoring the program, punting, ducking the issue. It’s the fourth budget from the president. It is not serious. We need serious leadership, and both of these candidates have put very credible, specific, serious plans on the table.

Ryan then dismissed the Tax Policy Center analysis showing that Romney’s planned 20 percent reduction in tax rates and repeal of the Alternative Minimum Tax would increase the debt by $3 trillion, claiming that Romney has “base broadening” that will offset the cost. Romney has made the same claim, but has yet to provide any specifics about what sort of tax provisions he’ll eliminate. Simply put, his plan’s math doesn’t add up.

According to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, Romney’s plan would increase debt to 96 percent of GDP by 2021, unless he actually follows through with his offsets, at which point it would go to 86 percent. Santorum’s plan, meanwhile, would bring it to 104 percent of GDP. The Committee’s “realistic baseline” for the debt projects it going to 85 percent of GDP by 2021. So all of the GOP candidate’s plans (except for Ron Paul’s) make the debt projection substantially worse.

Ryan, of course, has plenty of experience with budget-busting economic plans, so perhaps its not surprising that he finds the latest offerings from the GOP candidates so enticing.

At no time when conservative Republicans have held the nations' purse strings have they presented a reasonable or balanced budget. During the Bush years as some may remember Republican John Mccain even said conservatives were spending like "drunken sailors". Conservatives seem to have no concept of math or what is best for America. Conservatism has become the sheath anti-America movement, hiding its radical agenda behind a lot flag waving fake patriotism.

Conservative Economics is Trickle on The American People Economics

Conservative Economics is Trickle on The American People Economics - “Trickled On” Economics

One thing about an election year, particularly this one, is that it reveals the fallacy that humanity has somehow emerged from “mere animal conditions.”  We may have comfortable homes, climate-control, exo-skeletons (known as automobiles) to allow us to move about rapidly and move objects many times our own weight, etc.  But beavers, ants, and foxes have these things.  One thing that humans have the capacity for, if they strive to use it, is being able to see life from another’s viewpoint – we have the capacity for compassion.  If anything would allow us to rise from a “mere animal condition,” it is this compassion.  But under the capitalist model, currently the dominant paradigm in the world, the priority is put on expropriating land and labor in order for a small group to accumulate wealth they did not produce.  In our deluded national narrative, these people are said to be “job creators.”  In fact, their access to wealth and power has allowed them to create a sort of neo-feudal system that can be aptly called, “Trickled-On Economics.”

In this dominant paradigm headed by Big Capital, compassion is highly discouraged.  There is a tendency among the politicians, managers, and overseers of capitalist institutions to live like there is no tomorrow and pretend like there was no yesterday.  After all, the working class – those who actually produce wealth – can be depended upon for a source of insurance in the event the gaming schemes of Big Capital fail.  This attitude of borrow now (“leverage” if you are rich), worry later, unlike the wealth itself, has trickled down, or should I say “trickled on” the general public.

The so-called “debt crisis” currently providing rationale for cutting social programs was created by capitalists manipulating the housing and financial markets for short-term profit, a scheme that crashed the global economy.  While they were doing that, working class people struggled with a steady decline in income resulting from off-shoring American manufacturing, union sell-outs, and outright union-busting.  To make up for this decline, they were handed credit cards, deregulated during the Reagan years, and usurious lending became the order of the day.  In addition, instead of providing education for its citizens as some social welfare states of western and northern Europe have done, the student loan industry was created, with student loan giant Sallie Mae becoming a for-profit corporation by 1995.  As if this was not enough (it never is), for-profit health care, starring Big Pharma, has become ensconced in Congress, K-Street, and Wall Street.  Also, moving in from the desert is a dust devil known as the for-profit prison system.  Examples of profiteering from others’ misfortune, or indeed manufacturing misfortune for profit, (note: I do not even broach the war profiteering game in this essay), has no limit in the capitalist paradigm.

With the declining share of wealth enjoyed by the working class, it was logically reasoned that higher education was a way out of mind-numbing, dead-end jobs and into a better life.   Both federally-insured and private loans for education skyrocketed.  For some, this better life came to pass, for others it became a trap and in some cases a death-trap.  Student loans do not have bankruptcy protection, and the collection agency can seize your home, your social security, your disability income – pretty much anything they want to seize.  There are numerous horror stories out there, including many suicides.  Indeed, as Alan Collinge has written in his book The Student Loan Scam, defaulted loans are more lucrative than those not in default because assets can be seized.

Credit card debt, which now ranks behind student loans in consumer debt as of the summer of 2010, is the result of falling wages and job loss.  By 2012, there were well over a half billion credit cards in use in the U.S. alone.  That is double the total population of the country.  Bankruptcies were down in 2011; with a mere 1.37 million filings in the U.S. (it was 1.55 in 2010).  Many bankruptcies were brought about by medical bills contracted in a system that preys on the sick.

A compassionate set of policies that would address these issues would not include taking billions of dollars in tax revenue from the working class and handing it over to Wall Street bankers to cover their failed schemes and scams as has been done more than once since 2008.  In this paradigm of the Bean-counter, we can hand $700 billion at a pop over to criminals in suits, but we cannot help struggling college graduates or families stranded without gainful employment.

It is not hard to see that the issue is systemic.  Capitalism has no built-in moral code other than maximizing profits.  Whatever morality exists is brought to the table by individuals, but the system itself does not reward compassion; indeed, ruthlessness and cruelty are central features of the game.  Capital has been engaged in a long-term struggle to deprive people of access to the resources they need to build a good life for themselves.  It creates an environment that allows a small group or even one person to live extremely well on the backs of those whose access to resources they control.  Once people become separated from the resources that they need to live, they must re-acquire them on terms favorable to the capitalist.  In some cases, the result is modern-day slavery.  The separation of people from the resource base is a central theme in the human history of the world and at the heart of our systemic problem today.

This system has led to the abuse of the non-human resources, as well.  Humans and their resources are, ultimately, not separate at all.  Labor is the interaction of humans with the non-human world and the results are often very beautiful, profound, poignant, moving, powerful, and on and on – in a word: art.  Forcing human beings to interact with resources on terms favorable to the Capitalist is hardly emerging from “mere animal conditions.”  It results in environmental degradation of both human and non-human.  Degrading and dangerous sweatshops, mines, oil rigs, etc., have increased because of deregulation and defunding of safety oversight.  Environmental oversight has been rolled back, defunded, or ignored.  These underscore the systemic nature of the dual expropriation of labor and resources for the sake of the wealth accumulation of a very few.

From mountain-top mining to clear-cutting rainforests, the systemic unsustainable use of resources creates an oppositional relationship between humans and their environment.  “Man vs. Nature” is a conflict drilled into our heads from an early age, but it is this term “Versus” that needs to be questioned and studied.  A political economic system in which compassion features predominately would institutionalize such introspection.  We have examples from our past.  Agriculture, for instance, traditionally employed the concept of “husbandry.”  Farms were once places where abundance was possible for all species involved and sustaining this human and non-human natural order was the priority. Under capitalism, agriculture has industrialized and cold, hard numbers dominate decision-making processes.

Under a more humane system, labor would be an extension of the production of nature; indeed, human labor is an expression of nature.  But its usurpation by a few is like the felling of the forests, the leveling of mountains, the making of war, or the building of sweatshops: we trade our humanity – our compassion – for the sake of accumulation by an ambitious and even sociopathic few.  If we are serious about emerging from a “mere animal condition,” we need to “think outside the box,” and box is the capitalist paradigm.


Doug Harvey is a historian and musician teaching, writing, and performing in the Kansas City area.

Doug means well, but he underestimates  -so all, but so much of the American public's appetite for abuse. Changing from the crony vulture capitalism we have now to a humanistic capitalism is immediately demonized as creeping communism. Until more of the public gets tired of being trickled on we are doomed to repeat these economic collapses -large and small forever - like rats on a treadmill.

Conservative Libertarian plantation owners don't want labor to get too uppity - David Koch Admits Big Spending to Help Scott Walker Bust 'Union Power'

Conservative Libertarian plantation owners don't want labor to get too uppity -David Koch Admits Big Spending to Help Scott Walker Bust 'Union Power'

Billionaire campaign donor David Koch, heir to a fortune and a political legacy created by one of the driving forces behind the John Birch Society, makes no secret of his enthusiasm for Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker.

“What Scott Walker is doing with the public unions in Wisconsin is critically important. He’s an impressive guy and he’s very courageous,” Koch explained in a recent conversation reported by the Palm Beach Post. “If the unions win the recall, there will be no stopping union power.”

That’s no surprise. What is surprising is that Koch is now appears to be bragging about how he and his brother Charles are using their vast fortune to fund an independent campaign aimed at “helping” Walker. Even in an era when billionaires such as the Kochs are emerging as key financiers of Super PACS and other campaigning vehicles Koch’s admission will raise eyebrows—and questions about whether inappropriate coordination of by a candidate, his campaign and a supposedly independent group might be the stuff of “scandal.”

Like their father before them, David Koch and his brother Charles are longtime champions of extreme right-wing causes. And Walker’s militant anti-labor policies coupled with a willingness to cut funding for public education and public services have made him a hero of conservative hardliners like the Kochs. At the same time, Walker’s extremism has inspired a movement to recall him from office, which recently filed petitions with more than 1 million signatures calling for an election to remove the governor.

The governor has already spent a fortune trying to block the recall drive, with millions of dollars in television advertising, as well as expensive legal efforts to block a new vote. Both have been strikingly unsuccessful so far; at least in part because Wisconsin has steadily lost jobs since Walker’s budget was enacted—a dismal record that has caused a loss of confidence in the governor and his agenda.

Even as Walker struggles to explain why Wisconsin is shedding jobs while the rest of the country is gaining them, conservative groups funded by Charles and David Koch, such as Americans for Prosperity, are filling the state’s television airwaves with ads that claim Walker’s policies are “working.” According to Reuters, “a $700,000 advertising campaign sponsored by Americans for Prosperity (AFP), a foundation funded by conservative billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch of oil and gas conglomerate Koch Industries, hit the Wisconsin airwaves, the latest phase of its ‘Stand with Walker’ campaign.”

These ads are supposedly independent expenditures by a not-for-profit organization that operates under tax rules established to benefit the work of “Religious, Educational, Charitable, Scientific, Literary, Testing for Public Safety, to Foster National or International Amateur Sports Competition, or Prevention of Cruelty to Children or Animals Organizations.”

Coordination between candidates and their campaigns and “independent” groups operating under the Internal Revenue Service code as 501(c)3 operations.

The IRS is explicit in this regard: “Under the Internal Revenue Code, all section 501(c)(3) organizations are absolutely prohibited from directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office. Contributions to political campaign funds or public statements of position (verbal or written) made on behalf of the organization in favor of or in opposition to any candidate for public office clearly violate the prohibition against political campaign activity. Violating this prohibition may result in denial or revocation of tax-exempt status and the imposition of certain excise taxes.”

Similar, though slightly less strict rules, apply to campaigning by other co-called “501” groups that the Koch’s have funded.

So, while David Koch’s stated enthusiasm for Scott Walker was not surprising, his explanation of how that enthusiasm is being expressed politically was.

According to the Post, Koch said of Walker: “We’re helping him, as we should. We’ve gotten pretty good at this over the years. We’ve spent a lot of money in Wisconsin. We’re going to spend more.”

The Post added: “By ‘we’ he says he means Americans for Prosperity, which is spending about $700,000 on an ‘It’s working’ television ad buy in the state.”

Governor Walker’s defenders, a group that now officially includes the Koch Brothers (thanks to David Koch’s pronouncement), will surely suggest that the billionaire is merely expressing his right to fund independent activities that just happen to be “helping” Walker.

But it is notable that, during last summer’s Wisconsin state Senate recall campaigns, the Republican Party of Wisconsin issued statements pointing out that “coordination between…political campaigns and independent groups is specifically outlawed.”

Such coordination might be denied by the parties involved. But, argued the Republicans, reasonable people should recognize coordination as a “scandal.”

In some ways America is still fighting the Civil War and this time, unless ordinary working Americans speak up, the plantation owners like the Koch brothers will win. They hate that ordinary people - firefighters, office workers, nurses or anyone should have any power or say over their working conditions or even their fate in life. One thing these conservative libertarians are not about is freedom - except for the freedom to tyrannize the working class.

How to Restore the Middle Class Let everyone earn dividends from our common wealth-- the commons

 

How to Restore the Middle ClassLet everyone earn dividends from our common wealth-- the commons

A cushion of reliable income is a wonderful thing. It can help pay for basic necessities. It can be saved for rainy days or used to pursue happiness on sunny days. It can encourage people to take entrepreneurial risks, care for friends, or volunteer for community service.

Conversely, the absence of reliable income is a terrible thing. It heightens anxiety and fear. It diminishes our ability to cope with crises and transitions. It traps many families on the knife’s edge of poverty, and makes it harder for poor people to rise.

There’s been much discussion of late about how to save America’s declining middle class. The answer politicians of both parties give is always the same: jobs, jobs, jobs. The parties differ on how the jobs will be created — Republicans say the market will do it if we cut taxes and regulation. Democrats say government can help by investing in infra¬structure and education. Either way, it still comes down to jobs with decent wages and benefits.

It’s understandable that politicians say this: it was America’s experience in the past. In the years following World War II, we built a solid middle class on the foundation of high-paying, mostly unionized jobs in the manufacturing sector. But those days are history. Today, automation and computers have eliminated millions of jobs, and private-sector unions have been crushed. On top of that, in a globalized economy where capital can hire the cheapest labor anywhere, it’s no longer credible to believe that America’s middle class can prosper from labor income alone.

So why don’t we pay everyone some non-labor income — you know, the kind of money that flows disproportionally to the rich? I’m not talking about redistribution here, I’m talking about paying dividends to equity owners in good old capitalist fashion. Except that the equity owners in question aren’t owners of private wealth, they’re owners of common wealth. Which is to say, all of us.

One state—Alaska—already does this. The Alaska Permanent Fund uses revenue from state oil leases to invest in stocks, bonds and similar assets, and from those investments pays equal dividends to every resident. Since 1980, these dividends have ranged from $1,000 to $2,000 per year per person, including children (meaning that they’ve reached up to $8,000 per year for households of four). It’s therefore no accident that, compared to other states, Alaska has the third highest median income and the second highest income equality.

Alaska’s model can be extended to any state or nation, whether or not they have oil. Imagine an American Permanent Fund that pays dividends to all Americans, one person, one share. A major source of revenue could be clean air, nature’s gift to us all. Polluters have been freely dumping ever-increasing amounts of gunk into our air, contributing to ill-health, acid rain and climate change. But what if we required polluters to bid for and pay for permits to pollute our air, and decreased the number of permits every year? Pollution would decrease, and as it did, pollution prices would rise. Less pollution would yield more revenue. Over time, trillions of dollars would be available for dividends.

There’s been much discussion of late about how to save America’s declining middle class. So why don’t we pay everyone some non-labor income? I’m talking about paying dividends to equity owners in good old capitalist fashion. Except that the equity owners in question aren’t owners of private wealth, they’re owners of common wealth. Which is to say, all of us.

And that’s not the only common resource an American Permanent Fund could tap. Consider the substantial contribution society makes to publicly traded stock values. When a company like Facebook or Google goes public, its value rises dramatically. The extra value derives from the vastly enlarged market of investors who can trust a public company’s financial statements (filed quarterly with the Securities and Exchange Commission) and buy or sell its shares with the click of a mouse. Experts call this a ‘liquidity premium,’ and it’s generated not by the company but by society.

This socially created wealth now flows mostly to a small number of Americans. But if we wanted to, we could spread it around. We could do that by charging corporations for the extra liquidity that society provides. Let’s say we required public companies to deposit 1 percent of their shares in the American Permanent Fund for ten years, up to a total of 10 percent. This would be a modest price not just for public liquidity but for other privileges (limited liability, perpetual life, constitutional protections) we currently grant to corporations for free. In due time, the American Permanent Fund would have a diversified portfolio worth trillions of dollars. As the stock market rose and fell, so would everyone’s dividends. A rising tide would truly lift all boats.

There are other potential revenue sources for common wealth dividends. For example, we give free airwaves to media companies and nearly perpetual (and nearly global) copyright protection to entertainment and software companies. These free gifts are worth big bucks. If their recipients were required to pay us for them, we’d all be a little richer.

Banks are another large recipient of our collective largesse. I’m not talking about bail-out funds; I’m talking about the hugely valuable right we give banks to create money out of nothing. Banks do this (with our generous permission) by lending roughly seven times the money customers deposit (this is called ‘fractional reserve banking’); they then charge interest on these magically minted dollars. This gift to banks is justified on the grounds that it injects needed cash into the economy, but a comparable boost could be achieved by giving people new government-issued dollars — for example, by wiring money to their bank accounts — and limiting bank lending to money actually on deposit. Fresh money would then trickle up through households rather than down through banks.

Regardless of its revenue sources, the mechanics of an American Permanent Fund would be simple. Every U.S. resident with a valid Social Security number would be eligible to open a Shared Wealth Account at a bank or brokerage firm; dividends would then be wired to their accounts monthly. There’d be no means test — and no shame — attached to these earnings, as there are to welfare. Nor would there be any hint of class warfare — Bill Gates would get his dividends along with everyone else. And since the revenue would come from common wealth, there’d be no need to raise taxes or cut government spending. All we’d have to do is charge for private use of common wealth and feed the resulting revenue into an electronic distribution system.

How large should dividends be? The amounts paid would vary from year to year just as corporate dividends do. But the system should be designed so that dividends supplement rather than replace labor income. One good guide is Warren Buffet’s rule for bequeathing money to children: give them “enough to do anything, but not enough to do nothing.” We could also bear in mind that the higher the dividends, the stronger the middle class and the smaller the gap between the richest 1 percent and everyone else.

The United States isn’t broke, as some Republican say; we’re a very wealthy and productive country. The problem is that our wealth and productivity gains flow disproportionately to the rich in the form of dividends, capital gains, rent and interest. If we want to remain a middle class nation, that needs to change. Jobs alone won’t suffice. We need to complement wages with non-labor income from the wealth we all own. That would truly make us an ownership society.
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Peter Barnes—an entrepreneur who co- founded Working Assets and a solar energy company—is co-founder of On the Commons.