"The Citizen Dividend" -- maybe a legitimate theory of wealth redistribution (less inequality)
Just heard this book promoted on a Left-wing talk show.
Our Fair Share by Brian C. Johnson.
This might be legitimate economics vs. the very popular employer-bashing Crybaby Economics we hear so much. The
worst of Crybaby Economics can be summed up as
• free-trade-bashing, globalism-bashing, China-bashing
• immigrant bashing and bashing employers who hire immigrants
• demand for higher minimum wage
It's not only Democrats who are the crybaby-panderers, but also Republicans:
Donald Trump was a champion for Crybaby Economics, bashing foreign competition/globalism, cracking down on desired immigration to get needed work done, and even promoting higher wages in his revised Mexico-U.S.A. trade agreement. Democrats and labor favored this latter part of Trump's trade deal, as usual putting petty politics and labor union demagoguery ahead of the economy. Driving up the wage level for autoworkers serves no purpose other than to drive up prices consumers must pay, and also hurt production. Artificially higher cost of business is popular among some crybabies but makes the whole population worse off.
But Crybaby Economics is not the only element in Progressive/Left wealth-redistribution agenda. The crusade for income redistribution has a good part to it, along with the bad. The bad part is the constant obsession with wages and employer-bashing.
GOOD LEFTIST ECONOMICS VS. BAD
When the Leftists go after the employers as a class, demanding higher minimum wage and more labor laws to crack down indiscriminately on employers per se, they are destroying the economy by discouraging work and needed production.
On the other hand, a tax on the super-rich per se (not on employers as a class), might be a legitimate way to redistribute wealth from the extreme top down to the middle- and lower-income classes.
This author was interviewed by Chicago's progressive talk show host Joan Esposito, and this discussion was able to go several minutes without one crybaby attack on employers, and without identifying the whole country with "the working class" and "the workers" as being the ones victimized by the income inequality (or wealth inequality) problem.
Instead of identifying "the workers" or "the working class" as the counterpart to the super-rich who dominate the economy, the author identifies all of us, all who are not in the top 10% or top 1% wealthiest, as the ones who deserve a larger share. And this larger share is to be gained not mainly through giving money to select victims down below, but by having the super-rich pay for public needs, like infrastructure, which is being neglected. So that the resources are to go to us all, from the lowest to the highest, for benefits to everyone.
excerpt from a book promotion:
Brian C. Johnson combines accessible scholarship on wealth and income inequality in America with deeply personal accounts of six Americans of diverse backgrounds who are each wrestling with what it means to survive and thrive in this new economic world. In so doing, he offers a solution that is as visionary as it is practical. Dubbed the Citizen Dividend, this revolutionary model assumes that economic growth is built off of the wealth we have created together as a country, and together we all reap its benefits. In Our Fair Share, Johnson lays the groundwork for implementing this solution, detailing what the Citizen Dividend is, offering examples of similar existing models, outlining the benefits of such systems, tackling some of the common concerns that arise, and offering a path toward making it a reality.
It appears to at least reduce way down, if not eliminate altogether, the element of employer-bashing and Crybaby Economics we constantly get from the Left, from the Bernie-AOC-Left assault against capitalism, aimed at the hated employer class, and instead focuses on simply taking a larger share of wealth from the very top 1% (or 10%) wealthiest, without scapegoating employers per se or equating this class with the super-rich.