Wednesday, December 12, 2018

From ‘You Didn’t Build That’ to ‘The Nation's Wealth’


One of the most sinister elements of President Barack Obama’s legacy is his “You didn’t build that” speech. The basic premise of that speech is that because the wealth you earn is built upon the prior accomplishments of previous individuals, like the roads you drive on, the schools you attended, you didn’t really accomplish anything. For example, the carpenter who frames a house didn’t create the lumber he assembles into a house. That was provided by the loggers, the lumber mill workers, and so on. The same is true of the nails, the tools, the knowledge he acquired, and so on. So the carpenter’s career accomplishments weren’t really his own.

But of course the carpenter is not paid for all of those things that other people built. He’s paid for what he made out of it--his individual contribution to the productive process, what he built from the preexisting achievements of others. It is he, the carpenter, who climbed the ladder to nail a header onto the wall he just framed. In the end, the skeletal frame of a home stands, thanks to him. It is he, the carpenter, who took all of the pre-existing elements--the boards and the tools and so on--and turned them into the framed home. That’s the nature of progress; building on what others built, who built on what others built, and so on. It’s a hierarchy of a whole string of “You did build that”s, built up individual by individual.

And it is the carpenter’s individual achievement, produced by his own acquired knowledge, training, initiative, and effort that Obama is targeting--and obliterating from our conceptualization of economic success. The example of the carpenter can be applied to any meaningful, productive work, on any level of ability, physical or intellectual, professional or tradesman. Appreciation for any remunerative line of work is thus stripped from the individuals who perform the tasks. Why would anyone be so mean? What are Obama and his ilk after?

Well, if no individual built that, what’s left? We have an advanced industrial economy? Who built that, if not individuals? The answer--“society.” How society “built that” if the individuals that make up society “didn’t build that” is never explained. But the premise serves a purpose--a socialist purpose. The individual--specifically, individual effort, the heart of capitalism--is the target to be obliterated. Which leads me to The case for paying every American a dividend on the nation’s wealth, by MarketWatch contributor Jonathan Burton. It reads as if the author has no concept of work, of economics, of technological progress, and of productivity--or as if the reader doesn’t. The title tells you all you need to know about where Burton is going. It’s down the road Obama paved.

Burton proposes a variation of the universal basic income.

In this America, men, women and children receive a government-guaranteed regular payment — a universal basic income — regardless of age or how much money they make, simply because they are Americans.

But since that term “universal basic income” has negative connotations, he repackages it as a “dividend.”

To tell it in a way people will hear, some proponents suggest that basic income be presented and structured as a universal dividend. Much as stockholders are given a share of a company’s wealth, Americans would receive a common share of the national wealth.

Burton calls this “free money.” You can spend it any way you want, but without the restrictions of welfare state programs based on need or the stigma of a handout paid for by someone else’s work. Its a dividend, like a stockholder’s--with the fact that this “dividend” is imposed by force of government rather than a reward for taking the risk of voluntarily investing in a private company conveniently evaded. And as a member of the tribe--excuse me, the nation--it’s yours, automatically, by “right,” regardless of how much money you make; which mean, apart from of any effort you contribute.  “Free,” indeed.

The concept of “national wealth” is, of course, the logical outgrowth of “You didn’t build that.” All wealth production is, at its core, individual. But if this fact is evaded--if wealth production is seen as not fundamentally individual--then the only thing left is the savage’s tribal view of wealth as a collective product. And this solves the moral problem of who would pay for it.

A study by the Roosevelt Institute in New York, a left-leaning think tank, concludes that giving $500 a month to every adult American could meaningfully grow the U.S. economy and address its widening wealth gap. (The top 1% of Americans now receive 20% of the national income, while those in the bottom 50% receive 13%.

First, advocates must change American society’s mostly negative reaction to basic income. Can “free money” be made palatable to a public that is highly derisive of government handouts?

Ironically, this same public has no problem with such “handouts” as income-tax cuts and home-mortgage deductions. “We give money away for free to rich people all the time,” said Rakeen Mabud, program director of the Roosevelt Institute’s 21st Century Economy and Economic Inclusion programs. “There’s no stigmatization of how they pay for it; we don’t ask what they do with it.”

See what happens when wealth is ascribed to the collective--the “nation?” The money you earn is no longer earned, it’s “received” from the “national income.” It’s not your income--“You didn’t build that,” the nation did. The distinction between a handout and earning is obliterated. A tax cut or a tax deduction is a chance to keep more of what you earned. But according to “You didn’t build that,” it’s a handout no different from “free money” taken from those who earned it and turned over to those who didn’t. Why not? There’s no difference if a nation, not individuals, earn income. Keep more of what you earn? You didn’t earn that!

By declaring that “you didn’t build that,” the road is cleared to obliterate the difference between earning by work and mooching. That clears the road for replacing the welfare state with full socialism. If wealth belongs to the nation, it belongs to the state. Of course, Burton isn’t advocating full, totalitarian socialism--yet. He’s just laying the groundwork--the next step down from Obama’s “You didn’t build that.”

And why do we need this? Because the robots and AI--artificial intelligence--will kill most jobs. Burton evades the historical lesson of technological progress; enhanced productivity creates more jobs than it makes obsolete. But, no matter. The robots will build everything. Everybody will be out of work. But no one will need to work. You may not build that. But, somehow, robots will. Where will the robots come from? Robots are machines. They are tools. That’s all. Just as past machines didn’t make work obsolete or unnecessary--they just improved the kinds of work people do--so robots won’t make work obsolete. Not according to Burton. Somehow, this time it’s different. Seriously. Robots won’t need human effort to back them up. So we all can sit back and collect the dividends, living without effort.

Where will this dividend come from? How else--a tax on people who supposedly don’t build that--productive companies and their shareholders. But that’s just a start.

A stock-owning social wealth fund could also benefit from the government’s requiring the Federal Reserve to buy stocks instead of Treasury bonds with the money it prints. The Bank of Japan has done this for several years, Bruenig pointed out.

“This is a piece of the capital stock of the country that we all collectively own and collectively benefit from,” Bruenig said in an interview. “All 300 million of us are going to come together and collectively own 30% of the country’s wealth.”

Here we go again--”the capital stock of the country.” Capital is unconsumed privately produced wealth, saved and invested. “Collectively owned” means government seized. Money is not wealth. It is a measure of wealth created, and a means of exchange, a claim on wealth. A private person earns that claim by first producing economic value for someone. When the government prints money and uses it to seize private wealth, whether through direct taxation or future taxation (borrowing), it is stealing private wealth. Burton wants to use the Federal Reserve as a vehicle for the theft (a good argument, by the way, for abolishing the Central Bank). And why stop at 30%? Next comes 40%. Then 51%+, at which point the corporate state; i.e., fascism; i.e. socialism will have arrived.

“It’s not welfare; it’s not a tax,” the article claims. Sure it is. Throughout history, whenever productive people creating wealth, trading, and growing economically appeared on the scene, another class of people--legalized government looters--have followed. This time is no different. This “American Independence Dividend,” as it is dubbed, is not “an asset that belongs to all of us equally,” as stated in the article. A handout by any other name is still a handout. Like all wealth redistribution schemes, however it is packaged, this dividend begins with those who produce wealth--those who actually did build that. It has to. Underpinning all of the unimaginably intricate interactions and cooperations of the market economy are individuals like that carpenter, each earning money according to his particular contribution of work--each of whom actually does build that.

No individual builders, no national wealth. You can’t change that act, no matter how hard you try to present and structure your labelling. Like all socialist schemes, the American Independence Dividend begins with theft. Every unearned dollar received is an earned dollar taken from someone else. Period. The American Independence Dividend goes further, in that, unlike the welfare state that targets the poor or the elderly, Burton’s “dividend” makes everyone dependent on, and thus a slave to, the state--not completely, not yet, but the die will be cast. Worse still, it could greatly expand government control by essentially nationalizing a big swath of American business. It is just another road to socialism, the social system that grows out of the barrel of a gun--the government’s lawmaking powers. There’s a reason why every peddler of some social scheme, like the “social wealth fund,” turns to government: That’s where the guns are. And that’s where “paying every American a dividend on the nation’s wealth” comes from. It is a legalized criminal enterprise.

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