Agreed. See HUMAN INVESTMENT, on the Aesop Institute site, for a way to sharply increase employment. Weak versions of the incentives we suggested in Discussion Papers we wrote for the Economic Development Administration (U.S. Department of Commerce) were included in the Jobs Tax Credit of 1977 and resulted in 2 million jobs. The Human Investment Tax Credit program is designed to generate 6 million jobs and help 4 million small firms.
The sad fact is that the current Congress is not likely to pass such sensible law. Mark Goldes Co-Founder, Chava Energy CEO, Aesop Institute www.chavaenergy.com www.aesopinstitute.org 707 861-9070 707 497-3551 fax ________________________________________ From: OrionWorks - Steven Vincent Johnson [orionwo...@charter.net] Sent: Saturday, January 26, 2013 11:45 AM To: vortex-l@eskimo.com Subject: RE: [Vo]:Another article about the impact of automation on employment >From Ashfield: > ... The referenced article was rather unimaginative in places but > noted the basic question: “who is going buy all these nice goodies > if they are unemployed?” Precisely. <personal rant> IMHO, too many politicians are focusing on a misguided belief that balancing the national budget is the most important thing, above everything else, that must be tackled. What most fail to realize is the fact that "money" is nothing more than a contractual representation of the exchange of goods and services between individuals and legal entities. Most don't like to ponder the realization that "money" is quite ephemeral in nature, despite all attempts to back it with a representation of limited physical resources like gold and silver. In a sense, I think this is false advertising of the worst kind. It's worshiping the value of "money" over the value of the actual work & labor that creates said goods and services that "money" attempts to accurately represent. It's as if "money is being worshiped as a false god. It's putting the cart before the horse. IMHO, politicians need to focus more on whatever it takes to create environments that allow people to go back to work (or remain working) so that that they can start (or continue) acquiring enough of these symbolic representations of goods and services that they can cash in for themselves. I don't think one can accomplish that by constantly slashing national budgets in a misguided belief that doing so will stabilize the value of "money", which in turn will somehow miraculously cause businesses to automatically flourish so that they will automatically start employing more people... many whom may end up being hired at minimum wage. But Hey! It's a job! All that national budget slashing... the national budget employs a lot of people too, just like out in the private sector. If massive amounts of them lose their jobs due to forced budget cutting and are forced into the unemployment lines, it's absolutely no different than private companies firing it's employees because it has insufficient "money" to pay them for their services. Everyone suffers as fewer goods and services are being generated which, in turn, devalues the value to "money". We need to stop finding scapegoats to blame (i.e. national budget), and start focusing on ways to make sure everyone has a chance to continue to make valuable contributions to society. In the end, allowing enough people to continue to make valuable contributions to society is the only real way of saving the value of "money". I don't think one can accomplish that by, in a draconian manner, slashing the budget. </personal rant> Regards, Steven Vincent Johnson www.OrionWorks.com www.zazzle.com/orionworks
