April 2009
by W J Anthony
Are you unemployed?
Are you laid off?
Are you an employer? Until recently? What happened? Lack of customers to buy your products?
That’s why you laid off your employees? Who were your customers? Some were your own employees? …and employees of other employers? Most of your customers are working people? Absolutely?
If the government gave each of you $100,000 dollars, what would you do with it? Pay your bills?
Would that stimulate you back to work and open business again? No? It wouldn’t be enough? To do what? You would need more on a regular basis? That would be true for employees and employers?
If your customers were able to buy your products again, would you go back in business and rehire your employees? As long as you could pay your employees’ wages? You think government should pay the wages pf all employees? Everybody’s wages? Why?
Wages make employees into customers of goods and services? Isn’t that like socialism?
You say, you are an employer, and the government could make employer enterprise work? How? Focus employers on efficiently providing customers with appropriate products, without losing customers to competing companies, who reduce their product costs by paying meager wages to employees in low wage countries?
Do you mean, American workers have been losing their jobs because employees of companies, who pay much lower wages to their employees in other countries, are producing similar products of goods and services?
What kind of wages would the US government pay workers in America? A prevailing wage? A living wage? Would employers agree to have the government pay the wages of workers in the US? Why wouldn’t they agree?
Would the government control employers? Would employers lose their independence from government control? Are the employers independent from government control now? Are they free from Labor Department regulations, OSHA, Workers’ Compensation, income taxes and other taxes, insurance, fair employment practices, fair labor standards, etc.? Does the customers or public now pay the cost of fulfilling the conditions of all such regulations when a product is purchased from the employer? Would the cost to fulfill those regulations still be paid by the customer?
Would the government tax the profits of the employer? Does the government tax the profits of the employer now?
Why would the American people agree to give the federal government the responsibility to pay the wages of all workers in the United States?
Do most Americans believe the words of the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence?
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness, that to secure these rights governments are instituted among men…”
If most Americans want to have business and industry that provide the products, the goods and services that enable them to pursue the unalienable rights that were described in the Declaration of Independence, why did the US Constitution contradict the words of the Declaration? Who gave the Constitution the authority to create money and decide how money would regulate our rights to property and goods and services?
Did the Declaration of Independence say that the Creator endowed us with money to purchase those Rights?
Unless we choose to rebuild the USA, our Creator-endowed birthright to the unalienable Rights as stated in the Declaration will not be permitted, and won’t we need purchasing power to buy our rights to goods and services, as wage-earning employees or employers?
Today we have a world of merchants who trade in money and probabilities, many of which are not backed by physical or marketable goods or services. Some use a form of unpublished promissory notes to pay a pledge, based on whether a trend or policy will or not cause some aspect of policy to occur by a specified time.
Those gamblers were said to not be the lowly riffraff of horse race losers or back alley poker or pool shark scalpers. Congress identified them as chiefs of banking or industry.
Meanwhile, thousands of workers are losing their jobs, because the moneymen were not paying attention to the production and distribution of the goods and services that humanity needs. Instead they gambled with their Midas addiction of financial profit and their egocentric notion of using government/military power to build an empire but found they could not afford to pay the wages of their employees. Many knew not and cared not about the premise on which an empire like Rome succeeds – feed the masses or fall.
In a money-based society, workers are willing to engage in the tasks to produce and distribute the goods and services that the people of their republic, nation, or empire need. Human ingenuity and creativity discover and produce new applications that are essential for free people to enhance their pursuit of happiness, even amidst difficulties that crop up in each new day.
The role of private employers is essential for organizing the workers that are required for the production and distribution of vast amounts of goods and services for public consumption. In a money-based society, the workers need to purchase the goods and services that comprise their standard of living and will perform work in the best and most efficient manner if their wages satisfy their ability to purchase an appropriate standard of living for themselves.
The employer has historically accepted a great responsibility in employing workers. However, if an employer cannot meet the responsibility to pay the wages of his employees, they reluctantly will be forced to look for another employer that can meet their wage needs. The unfortunate result is that the employer’s enterprise will fail or fall and the goods or services that it produced to serve the public will no longer be available to consumers.
Now is the time to ask if our system of money–based economy should be changed.
With that in mind, as Americans, let’s consider the meaning of the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence.
Is it true that each of us is “endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”?
Is it true that “governments are instituted among men” to secure these rights for each of us?
Does the second paragraph tell us that government is intended to secure the unalienable Rights of each person?
Does that tell us that people, by themselves, as individuals, cannot secure their unalienable rights and pursue Happiness?
Is it our right to give our government the principles and the powers to organize the appropriate production and distribution of goods and services that will support our safety and pursuit of happiness?
Could the present threat of economic collapse be stopped if our government assumed the responsibility and authority to pay the wages of all employees?
Could employers restart their operations, if they had to shut down their business and laid off workers because they could not afford to pay the wages of their employees?
Should we relieve employers of the responsibility of paying the wages of their employees and assign that responsibility to the government?
If we transfer to our government the responsibility to pay the wages of all employees, could employers invest that saving to upgrade their products or services at a competitive price that the public needs?
If employers had no obligation to pay wage costs would employers move their business operations to a low wage area?
Did most employers, who moved their operations to low wage areas, do so to avoid paying the higher wages of American workers?
Would those employers have remained in the US if the government had assumed the responsibility and authority to pay the wages of all employees?
Would employers not have laid off American workers or moved their operations overseas if the government would have assumed the responsibility to pay the wages of their workers?
Without the threat that he may not be able to afford to pay his employees, the employer can focus on his true responsibility to efficiently serve the public good.
The consumer economy can be better served by that arrangement than by the present assumption that it is the responsibility of the employer to pay the wages of his employees.
It is to be expected that some patriotic Americans will respond to this idea with an assumption that doing this is evidently socialistic or communistic. They may recall that we were mobilized to oppose socialist ideologies to the point of going to war to defeat socialism as a threat to our democracy. We need to look at our experiences with such a response and determine if that is legitimately true.
If a money-based government allows financial stock investors to strategically wager the sustainability of the nation’s complex of Gross Domestic Product and cause the economic and social collapse of the nation’s commerce and destroy the unalienable Rights and lives of American workers by governmental permissions, is such a government a true democracy “of the people, by the people and for the people”? The workers did not choose to participate in that collapsible venture. They faithfully devoted themselves to their work, but the monetary controllers of corporations assumed no responsibility for the workers or the public good. Instead, the government allowed banks and corporations to privately strategize the maximizing of profit for their investors of corporate money.
Even though workers are indispensable as consumers, they were left without the right to influence the determination of corporate policies. The workers were not the controllers of those corporate greedsters.
The day has arrived when workers of all America and the nations of the world must realize their jeopardy and compel their government to secure their economy by funding the payment of all wages for workers. The employers should be encouraged to continue their enterprises. The wages of their employees should be based on what are regarded as prevailing wages or living wages.
The employers should be allowed to have a satisfactory profit beyond their costs of production, but should be taxed in proportion to such profit with an appropriate assistance to encourage them to continue their efficient growth and innovation.
The income of workers should be taxed at a level that would not jeopardize their motivation to excel in their performance and innovation.
The government cost of funding workers’ wages would be fully returned by continued taxes as the spirit of the entrepreneur motivates the ingenuity of employers to increase their success in efficiently producing or distributing better goods or services that generate consumer satisfaction and income.
We need to realize that the long conflict between proponents of capitalist ideology and socialist or communist ideology always included a money-based economy in their attempt to enable their systems to function.
The premise of capitalism claimed that democracy could be an expected fruit of private enterprise, but corporate control proved to have an overwhelming motive for investor profit and little if any regard for democratic participation by workers.
Socialist communism claimed to have motivated their government with the goal of enabling all people to participate as workers and consumers of the fruits of government-owned industry. The structure of government control of enterprise and innovation diminished the variety and abundance of products, when it did not allow the personal enterprise-vision convictions that drive many entrepreneurs to develop innovations that produce a marvelous variety of fruits and products in abundance and improve living standards.
The plan to have government secure the public good by paying the living wages of all employees, will encourage the entrepreneur trait of employers and inspire the diligence of workers to also innovate. The plan will satisfy consumers, and the public good will be achieved – all serving one another without strife.
We are at that historic crossroad of economic success that needs our consent.