<SIGH>
Another day riding the merry-go-round, getting nowhere and getting nothing done. And it all comes down to no money and nothing I can do to get enough to actually do anything. I could be selling the hell out of my custom tumbrels, except I don’t have the $$ to buy the raw stock I need to build a tumbrel.
I create in two media, the words you are reading now, and moving things like cars, bicycles, and even tumbrels. Words are easy because I pull the whole creation out of my brain and put it in my computer and from there onto the Internets. All the costs of creation have already been covered, with the ongoing costs rolled into other costs that are covered as part of “shelter” subset “cable, phone, and internet”.
But the other creative impulse, building moving things, that takes a lot of capital outlay, and this household just does not have the disposable income needed to fund such things. Really, that’s where capital comes from, people who already have enough money that they can afford to invest in the future instead of trying to not get run over by the present.
And there is how income inequality is killing the economy. The real “Job Creators” are the people inventing new things, or new ways to do old things. But if they don’t have money to build the thing, or change the way of doing the thing, then all the jobs that could be created by the change or new thing die in the non-birth of the new thing or way to do the old thing.
So, you want to grow the economy? Do something that ensures creative people don’t have to ride the survival merry-go-round that goes nowhere except around again. Let creative people create, even though Sturgeon’s Law still applies (90% of Everything is Crap) that 10% will still move Humanity forward. The equation is not good: 10% of everyone are creative, but only 10% of those will create something that will move Humanity in a positive direction, meaning the hope for the 99% depends on 1% of the population, and it isn’t that 1% with all the money. Sure there are people in the economic 1% who got there because they are in the creative 1%, but 90% of the economic 1% did not and are there because they are descended from someone that was part of the creative 1%.
So, the first thing is to restore the Estate Tax to get the Freeloading 90% out of the Economic 1% and make room for the Creative 1%. The point is to make an economy that doesn’t require having been born to the right parents a requirement for security, build security into the basis of the economy. Sure you will get a lot of people sitting around doing pretty much nothing except Consuming what Creators produce, Sturgeon’s Law ensures that, but they are as much a part of the economy as Creators. If you want Creators to flourish, they need Consumers to buy what they create. And if the people who would be the Consumers are too busy chasing survival on the merry-go-round to look up and see what’s there to consume beyond the merry-go-round, they don’t consume. And when people are able to look up from whatever treadmill or merry-go-round they are on, they might even find out they are part of the 10% who can make, or do, things that others would pay for. Which starts the cycle again, creators creating, consumers consuming, and the profits getting recycled back into the economy.
And now that I have solved the world’s problems, ima go check my e-mail.
Witch on a Bicycle 