Answering the Vicious Cycle

Well, Save the Rust Belt inspired me to make my first, self posted posting.

Save the Rust Belt appears to be asking for help in his posting about the downturn of Michigan and Ohio. So, I thought this is a good post to jump on to start a line of solutions as oppose to just looking at data and trends. Let’s put that knowledge to work on his question: is there anything anyone can do, …?

I answer: Yes, there are things that could be done. But it means reversing years of rhetoric about what the purpose of an economy and a government are. I mean, what is a company’s only purpose, only reason to exist?
Is an economy truly an entity unto it’s self?
Is government us or not?
Who or what is serving whom here?

I’ll start. Lets produce policies that reverses the rise of income to the top 1%. Letting them have all that money has not caused the economy to grow any faster than in the past. It certainly is not being turned into investment in this country in an amount equal to their acquisition.

We’ll take it back to 1981 the beginning of St. Reagan. From 21.83% (2005) to 10.02%. Using BEA’s table 2.1 total national personal income and Saez-Piketty’s data we free up $1209.27 billion in 2005. That leaves 1025.97 billion to the top 1%. Or $2.578 million to each of the 397, 900 tax units that make up the 1%. Using the labor force for 12/05, that gives $8055.73 dollars to all those potential workers.

To much you say? We’re being to hard on the top? Ok, how about we go to the end of St. Reagan’s time and let them have 14.49%? We free up 751.56 billion and leave them with 1483.66 billion or $3.728 million each. This gives those potential workers another $5006.52. I’ll even be progressive in this top 1% being that the average income goes from $370,887 for the top 1% to $695,764 for the top 0.5% to $2,316,353 for the top 0.1% to $14,027,614 for the top 0.01%.

Remember, these are numbers just for 2005.

So, there is the money. Now, how do we want to get this extra $5K to $8K each to the labor force? I assume it will not all be give as a direct payment. Anyone?

Divorced one like Bush