For the last thirty years, ideologues on the left and right have kept an easy peace over subsidizing what each thought was excessive war or excessive social engineering by allowing the other to have their pet spending and by borrowing from the Chinese (and others) to pay for it. That way their constituency did not have to fund the other’s extremist views and their would be no wealth or income redistribution in the mix of continuing both policies without compromise.
Unfortunately, this short-sided thinking got America to the brink of collapse it is in today. There is no way we could have expected to run up our debt without effect. That debt funded our international competitors and took 15 million jobs and 40,000 factories offshore. More importantly, the elites outfoxed the masses in that massive wealth transfer did occur from consumers to investors at the expense of the middle class.
The poor remained poor at the level of the safety nets in place. Millions more joined them. Millions more joined the ranks of the working poor and the wealth of the middle class was taken in the housing collapse as middle class wages stagnated. This wealth was then redistributed to investors and overseas ventures. The detente between left and right must end with the wall coming down. We just haven’t figured out who is on what side of the wall.
The Job Auction Plan ends detente. It ends wealth transfer overseas. It ends jobs transfers overseas and begins to reverse the trend. Now the wealth transfer issue only get resolved if we balance the budget. For if we do not then the government will fund my plan just as it is funding the current plan of social safety nets and big war and nothing else will change except that at some time, the dollar will simply become worthless.
If the Government does not balance the budget, then my plan will result in everyone that is able to have a job will have jobs, businesses producing products that are exportable and as inexpensive to the American consumer because they were produced at international wage rates, Therefore America will shift purchases to American manufacturers and exports will go up to absorb the increased production.
The wage differential will be paid by the government. The wealth transfer in this case goes to the small business owners and the millions of new workers as opposed to the elite, who essentially have been taking a share of the debt as their payment for detente for the last wo years. Yet the cost to the taxpayer remains the same, zero, because just like the current plan is being paid for with debt, this one will be too.
If the Government chooses to balance the budget, then whomever is responsible for paying for the budget balancing will pay for the plan. Yet the cost of this plan will be no different than what we are paying now, if anything, I expect it to be less. We will simply transfer costs of unemployment and social safety nets now being paid for by taxpayers and transfer them to the auction process. The only difference is that instead of paying people to sit in their homes without jobs, we will now be assisting all to get real productive jobs and to contribute to our country.
Therefore the issue of who pays becomes moot, and the issue of balancing the budget goes back to solving detente. That may mean either that elites pay more, or everyone along the tax chain, flattening out wages in income redistribution. It may be consumers of social services that are cut to balance the budget pay for the program. Nonetheless, solving detente makes us all finally decide how big a military is big enough and how much subsidizing of the capitalist system flaw that keeps so many people idly out of work we will accept.
Consider The Job Auction Plan an adjustment to capitalism that actually improves the current system flaw while reducing the cost, inefficiency, and lack of empathy of our current patchwork of social safety net programs.
Clif Carothers
Job Voucher Plan 