[image: bobpollen/achetron.com]
Needed Economic Changes
The future belongs to those who dare to see a vision of what can be and are willing to fight to make it happen. If their vision is on the right side of history, they can become heroes in the cause of justice. It helps to have a substantial knowledge base and an IQ that are light years ahead of your critics. Robert Pollen is such a person. He is a distinguished professor of economics at University of Massachusetts--Amherst. He uses his platform in the “groves of academe” to speak clearly about our economic needs—where academic freedom and a gifted mind are his constant companions, if not his entire arsenal in a hostile world that is hell-bent on silencing him. As an example, he has brazenly stated the following: “The profits of oil, coal, and natural gas companies will have to yield to the imperative of sustaining life on earth.”
If I haven’t made myself clear, I like this guy. Treat his words with respect and an open mind.
Life can sometimes be reduced to simple truisms. For example, it isn’t necessary to carry a lengthy curriculum vitae to understand facts, careful analysis of those facts, and limited conclusions that follow when you hear them. It is that simple set of tools that distinguish scholars from obstructionists; or those who speak for humanity from those who speak for greed and cowardice; those who can versus those who cannot. All the fluff, pomp, and circumstance that obscure that bit of clarity do not alter how most of us can view the world and our place in it if we really try. There are others: Live and let live; be true to yourself; and the Golden Rule are good examples. But this is not an essay in morality. It is about clear thinking.
Let’s return to Bob Pollen and his thinking on a few important economic issues. He supports a single-payer medical care system, raising the minimum wage to $15/hour, and taxing Wall Street to help pay for these changes. All are rational changes that would be consistent with our needs and with the contemporary standards of the industrialized world. They would contribute to a healthier more productive workforce, they would generate greater economic growth, and they would bring about a small measure of greater equality in the country with the highest inequality in the world. Everyone would benefit from them, even though conservatives stand solidly, and irrationally, against them. Such opposition puts them squarely against the tide of history and against the cause of justice. Here are a few facts in support of Pollen:
A Single-Payer Medicare-for-all System. There is nothing unique about such a system. Canada, the UK, Germany, France, Australia, and Japan among others have such a system now. They spend approximately 10 percent of their GDP for theirs whereas we spend 17 percent for our less efficient system. The notion that we could not devise such a system here is absurd on its face. If they can do it, we can do it. Moreover, such a system would bring an additional 33 million residents under the umbrella of comprehensive health care. It is always better economically, socially, and morally to have a healthier as opposed to a less healthy population. Nearly all economists and many others know this. Our health care costs as a percent of our rising GDP would fall.
$15/hour Minimum Wage. This proposal extended over four years would double the minimum wage in many areas, less in others. It would affect 65 million workers, or 44 percent of our workforce. While that may sound expensive, it would only raise those workers up from extreme poverty to normal poverty. The cost would be $975 billion annually, paid for by the additional spending of $400 billion, which would result in $2.4 trillion of additional GDP and $360 billion in additional profits. A small tax on Wall Street transactions would pay for other priorities.
Wall Street Tax. A tax on security transactions would be like a sales tax, but far less. It would include 0.5 percent on all stock trades, 0.1 percent on all bond trades, and 0.005 percent on the underlying values of derivative trades, such as the value of a stock in a stock-option asset. It would generate about $300 billion per year which would also be sufficient to fund free college education for all at a cost of $75 billion per year, and it would leave $225 billion for clean energy research and infrastructure repairs. These changes would create many new jobs, and new growth raising GDP to about 5.3 percent annually over a 10-year period from its present level of 2.4 percent.
Overall, these changes would raise living standards and reduce insecurity for working people and the poor, expanding higher educational opportunities, and reversing the decades-long trend toward rising inequality. It could bring Wall Street’s dominance under control and help prevent a repeat of the financial crisis of 2000-2008. It will also strongly support investments in education, clean energy, and public infrastructure, generating millions of good jobs in the process.[1]
There you have it—a concise, rational, defensible set of needed economic changes, paid for, that would have benefits throughout our economy. No intelligent, thoughtful, rational person could oppose them on intelligent, thoughtful, rational grounds. It would take concocted, contrived, and deceptive arguments dredged up from very ugly places to be against this list.
Even first year students of debate know that you cannot debate facts with opinions, or careful analysis with assertions, or sound conclusions with principles. Politicians try it, and too many get away with it. Defeating such false ways of argument, alone, are worth the price of an educated society,
[1] See Nation magazine, Mar, 29, 2016.
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Unfortunately, pundits and politicians often don't seem to have clear insight in ideological views of tax laws which range from greed driven to ridiculous.
Ron