November 2024 – “A way to ensure Social Security can meet short- and long-term promises to American workers and their families: Bend the cost curve, grow revenue, and protect lower earners” – Statement to U.S. House Appropriations Committee hearing
March 2024 – “Could long-term Treasury bonds and Fed financing help close Social Security’s funding gap?” – Statement to U.S. Senate Finance Committee hearing
July 2023 – “Legislative Choices for Paying Promised Benefits Statement of Karl Polzer, Center on Capital & Social Equity” – Statement to U.S. Senate Budget Committee hearing: “Protecting Social Security for All: Making the Wealthy Pay Their Fair Share”
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July 2021 – Low Budget ‘Infrastructure’ Deal for the Bottom 50%
Social ‘infrastructure’ improvements for the working class
“Congress could do many relatively inexpensive things to improve working people’s lives. At spending levels near the bottom of what’s being now debated, all workers – including the lowest-paid — could have additional funds to raise their kids, paid sick days, more job training, and some savings for retirement and emergencies. Millions more could have higher wages and health care coverage. And millions more disabled and elderly people could move above the poverty line. Much of this could be done by modifying existing programs and policies.”
- Target subsidies for families (child tax credits, daycare, college) to people most in need.
- Raise the minimum wage and index it for inflation. Give states reasonable flexibility to adjust the minimum. All workers get paid sick days.
- Repair and improve SSI.
- Establish a universal retirement savings system.
- Incentivize states to expand Medicaid. Hold Medicare spending increases to general inflation or less.
- Improve Social Security benefits for the bottom 50%. Achieve long-term solvency through higher taxes mostly on the top 20%.
- Improve the unemployment insurance system and job training.
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2020 Agenda: Increase economic inclusion at reasonable public cost
- Raise minimum wage with annual COLA (option: give states some leeway to adjust ↓ to reflect cost of living/labor).
- Five PAID sick days annually for ALL workers.
- 100% of Americans with health coverage by 2025 – with strong cost controls (any number of payers will work).
- Universal retirement savings system with minimum $500 annual government contribution (so, all Americans own working capital, have stake in market economy).
- No surprise medical bill >$500.
- Cut cost of college/expand apprenticeship programs.
- Improve Social Security benefits for bottom 50%. Achieve long-term solvency through higher taxes mostly on top 20%.
February 2020
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Mixing Capitalism and Socialism: Policies To Moderate Systemic Wealth Concentration in the U.S. – June 2019
Click here for essay
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America’s Inequality and What To Do About It – Spring 2018
Click here for slides
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Policy Update – Thanksgiving 2017
Just after the last federal election, the Center on Capital & Social Equity suggested that the policies below could help make the U.S. economy more inclusive and improve the lives of many citizens. One year later, we note that Congress and the Trump Administration have yet to make any progress in these areas.
Instead, those in power have focused on two major policy initiatives:
1. Reducing citizens’ access to affordable health insurance (by repealing the ACA and cutting Medicaid) and using the savings to cut taxes, primarily for the wealthy, and
2. Overhauling the tax code to provide major tax cuts for the wealthy at the expense of cutting government programs serving most Americans and constricting the nation’s future options by swelling our national debt.
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Inclusive Economic Policies for Consideration
by the New President and Congress (December 2016):
- Improve Social Security benefits for the lowest earners. Part of this could be financed by removing the current income cap on Social Security taxes. Raise Social Security and SSI benefits for the very old and for nursing-eligible elderly who have been receiving long term care for many years.
- Create a universal retirement savings system for all workers including specified minimum contributions from the government, employers, and employees.
- Raise the minimum wage to a “living wage level” based on cost of living in a state or region. The minimum wage could be raised to $12 an hour with states given the authority to adjust minimum wages (10%?) lower to account for geographic variation. States of course can always set the minimum wage higher. Most important: no matter where minimum wage levels are set, in the future they need to be adjusted to reflect changes in the cost of living. Alternative approaches include broadening the reach of the earned income tax credit and improving its take-up rate.
- Initiate a major national commitment to expand job opportunity and job training:
- Increase financial aid for low- and moderate-income people for college education and technical training. Interest rates for college and technical training loans should not exceed the overnight borrowing rate charged by the Fed by more than a reasonable amount (2 percentage points?).
- Work with universities and colleges to improve training programs for an economy that will see increasing automation and use of computer technology.
- As part of the effort above, provide citizens with an opportunity to have at least one year of paid service in federal employment in the armed services or in federally sponsored projects improving national infrastructure — or one year of training toward a career. Citizens can take this option at any point in their working lives, but must meet performance standards to receive compensation or benefits.
- Tasks could include fixing roads, picking up trash, improving water systems, development of renewal energy infrastructure, and mitigating damage to coastline cities from rising sea levels, should this occur.
- Provide business incentives to keep technology development and manufacturing jobs in the U.S.
- Agree to sign the Trans-Pacific trade deal and continue support of expansive international trade only if a substantial commitment is made toward retraining displaced workers.
- Control illegal immigration, not through building physical walls, but by fining and publicizing employers who repeatedly hire illegals.
Center on Capital & Social Equity — www.inequalityink.org
Reading
“Visions of Inequality: from the French Revolution to the End of the Cold War” – Branko Milanovic
“An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought” – Murray Rothbard
“The Soul of America” – Jon Meacham
“White Trash: The 400-year Untold History of Class in America” – Nancy Isenberg
“The Code of Capital: How the Law Creates Wealth and Inequality” – Katharina Pistor
“Supreme Inequality: The Supreme Court’s Fifty-Year Battle for a More Unjust America” – Adam Cohen
“Goliath: The 100-Year War Between Monopoly Power and Democracy” – Matt Stoller – Also: “No Going Back: The power and limits of the anti-monopolist tradition.” – Gabriel Winant
“Under the Cover of War: The Zionist Expulsion of the Palestinians” – Rosemarie Esber
“The Lessons of History” – Will & Ariel Durant
“The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration” – Isabel Wilkerson – also her book: “Caste”
“The Fed and Lehman Brothers” – Laurence Ball
“Fictitious Capital: How Finance Is Appropriating Our Future” – Cédric Durand
“Capitalism, Alone: The Future of the System That Rules the World” – Branko Milanovic
“Paper Dragons: China and the Next Crash,” – Walden Bello
“The Triumph of Injustice: How the Rich Dodge Taxes and How To Make Them Pay” – Emmuanel Saez & Gabriel Zucman
“Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy,” – Joseph Schumpeter
“Capital in the 21st Century” – Thomas Piketty
“Global Inequality: A New Approach for the Age of Globalization” – Branko Milanovic
“An Essay on Economic Theory” – Richard Cantillon
“The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money” – John M. Keynes
“The Wealth of Nations” – Adam Smith
“Economic Thought before Adam Smith” – Murray Rothbard
“The Forgotten Americans: An Economic Agenda for a Divided Nation” – Isabel Sawhill
“The Return of History” – Jennifer Welsh
“The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger” – Kate Pickett & Richard Wilkinson
“The Price of Inequality” – Joseph Stiglitz
“$2 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America” – Kathryn Edin & Luke Shaefer
“The Road to Serfdom” – F. A. Hayek
“Micromotives & Macrobehavior” – Thomas Schelling
Amendments to the U.S. Constitution
“Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789 – 1815″ – Gordon S. Wood
“The Federalist Papers” – Publius
“Alexander Hamilton” – Ron Chernow
“A Theory of Justice” & other writings – John Rawls
“ The Age of Jackson” – Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.
“Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln” – Doris Kearns Goodwin
“Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant“
“Red Notice” – Bill Browder
“The Secret History of the War on Cancer” – Devra Davis