Listening to all the barking at parked cars is becoming exhausting for all Americans. If what we all desire is a safe, comfortable life, and productive, good paying jobs are our way of achieving this goal, does anyone wonder why no one in government has yet recommended material solutions?
Is our nation really going to accept the Larry, Curly, and Moe alternate solutions that have been presented thus far as our only hope going into the 2012 elections? Are the Republicans really going to stick by their mantra of no government intervention after having participated in the government intervention that optimized the way forward for our banks and multinational corporations to mine America’s wealth for the Great Extraction to the East? Are Democrats really going to bring forward enormous government largesse to create makeshift government jobs as a temporary band aid, when America is already being punished by the international financial market for grossly expanding our government employee base? Is the current administration going to continue to pursue wimpy programs that on their face seem rational, but as implemented are so lackluster as to only support more wealth transfer to the weakest in our society without affecting any real support for a revitalized economy?
If we continue to bicker about our pet peeves, the flees on the dog, without dealing with the fact that the dog has been put out of the house, and will not be let back in until it brings forth a collectively supportable plan, America will get the flee bitten, dog house solution it deserves. But do we really deserve such a fate? Can we not together find a way forward to put all Americans back to work?
Certainly the solution rests in the vast middle plane, a best methods approach, an approach which has been absent in Washington for a great many years. The Democrats and Republicans have denigrated into looking at solutions which are compromise at best. They see the solution set as linear, a thick tug of war rope with alternately competing solutions, with each of the parties attempting to pull the little red flag tied to the middle of the rope toward their side.
After each successive election, the winning party having pulled the rope a little bit in their direction, attempt to implement their full set of solutions as if the flag were triumphantly pulled completely into the midst of their camp. Of course, as soon as the American public gets them home to the next election, they disapprovingly spank them for having acted like arrogant and selfish children.
What is needed is to have both parties see the solution set as at least having two dimensions, a great plane with an x and y axis. At the origin of the plane, the intersection of the x and y axis, both parties get nothing of what they want. However, as the solution pushes farther up both the x and the y axis, both parties get more and more of what each other want without having to compromise at all, a win-win solution.
In the context of jobs, the win-win solution is that America is fully employed, government is an active participant but not a director of the economy, social welfare is supported but not extended, entitlements are decreased, no additional agency is formed, no bureaucracy lives on indefinitely, no shift of electorate power is extended to either party for having implemented a solution that helps all of America, domestic businesses are supported without helping them to send jobs overseas, the rich increase their riches, the poor are protected, and the middle class is secure.
Can such a win-win solution be achieved without it being caught up in the rope pulling? Only if a paradigm shift can occur in the American consciousness will we be able to overcome the partisan bickering that is incentivized by political power struggles, inflamed by media hype, and financed by the remunerated elites. However, if necessity is the mother of invention, then crisis can be the father of epiphany.
So the solution that I have been writing about for the last nine months takes these issues into account and attempts to find that win-win solution as far out on the great plane as possible. The program essentially gives all unemployed a job voucher that lets them work for a small domestic company at the same rate of pay they would receive on unemployment benefits, but the benefits pass through the employer as an incentive to hire them. You can find many aspects of my thoughts here on my blog http://www.jobvoucherplan.com but in essence of it is thus.
•All Americans employed – each unemployed person is entitled to a job voucher, a golden ticket if you will. This voucher allows any qualifying business to hire them essentially free of having to pay the wage. Other overhead costs such as work desks, phones etc. are borne by the business.
•The Government is an active participant – Recognizing that the capitalist economy has a concentration of wealth flaw that breaks the economy every 50 to 70 years of so, the government does not wait to have a broken economy heal itself.
•The Government does not direct the economy – The job voucher program allows the invisible hand of millions in the economy to decide what the highest and best use of our work force will be, not just some inefficient, centralized but well meaning government bureaucracy.
•Social welfare is not extended – This program does not extend unemployment benefits but expects all able Americans to work and to contribute toward putting America back on its feet.
•No additional agency is formed – The program is managed by existing unemployment offices. Their work is somewhat changed now that the unemployed are actually obtaining jobs.
•No bureaucracy lives on – The program builds in unemployment level milestones for drawing down the program.
•No shift of electorate power – No entitlement is created by this program that indebts individuals to any one party.
•Domestic businesses are supported without helping them to send jobs overseas – Job vouchers aid small domestic businesses that have been recently cut off from commercial credit, but are not available to MNCs.
•The rich increase their riches – The program stays in place as long as needed so that a consistent economy can be counted on to boost consumer confidence and sustain the beginnings of a new business cycle. More workers producing means more consumers available to consume, boosting profits.
•The poor can be protected – If more tax payers can be added to the tax base and the economy can begin once again to grow, deep austerity measures that would only further exacerbate our nation’s social problems can be abated.
•The middle class is secure – A growing, competitive, producing economy protects America’s financial security also supports funding of our national security.
This solution set, this extension into the frontier of the great plane is only part of the complete set of solutions that can be achieved once our nation breaks free of its tug of war mentality. We can then put each problem on its own plane, each spinning round the same origin, and now we have a set of solutions on an x-y-z three dimensional axis where the frontier lies on the surface of a great sphere. What seemingly is a set of solutions at the extremities of our political consciousness is actually the result achieved when America sets about to find within its great middle, the best that can support our collective future.
Clif Carothers
Job Voucher Plan 