IV

Though the conspicuous absence of such Constitutional specification of individual economic rights is glaring – especially within the context of an ostensibly “free market” economic environment and theoretical orthodoxy which formally asserts that maximizing systemic efficiency actually hinges on minimizing or eliminating competitive barriers to entry to achieve universal participation - in more recent times, inklings have…

ACTIVIST ALERT: SINS OF OMISSION

Prelude

With the 1848 publication of The Communist Manifesto, in what may be among the most renowned (or notorious, depending on your econo-political persuasions) opening lines in all of social and economic literature, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels proclaimed to the world that there was a specter haunting…

We are living through a political crisis of the Transfer State: the United States has reached social and political limits beyond which it has become very difficult to squeeze the wage earnings of the working population for the benefit of those who do not earn wages.  The signs and symptoms of this crisis are essentially everywhere: in the drive to cut the federal budget, in welfare reform, in the continuing debate over health care, in recurring drives to…

"Such access to the ownership of capital cannot be brought about by taking from some who have too much and giving to others who have too little or none, for this would be an attempt to maintain the integrity of private property in capital by means which would destroy it. But it would seem worth considering whether a system of financing new capital formation can be devised which would simultaneously promote the growth of new capital formation and increase the number of households owning…