Replacing NeoCons

Hey Barry:

Well, the NeoCon economic philosophy seems to be withering to dormancy on the vine. But have no fear; it will come back again as soon as our memories fade.

Why is it withering? Well, it's fading because it won the war of ideas; it took over economics and politics. NeoCon philosophy was the dominant economic idea for several years. And, we - the good ol' U S of A - put its ideas into practice.

And, what did it give us? Among other things, it gave us high unemployment, the Great Recession, a housing crisis, a banking crisis, a debt crisis and a still developing European crisis that may well put us into another, deeper recession.

So, NeoCon ideas are correctly blamed for the mess we're in; and, those ideas are disappearing, for now.

John Maynard Keynes knew all this in the 1930's,

But, we forgot. And forgetting cost us, boy did it cost.

So, you may ask, what is the alternative anyway?

Well, the alternative is really pretty simple and it's mostly a lot of common sense.

See, markets are pretty good at creating jobs when there is some consumer demand. But, the problem is that when the entrepreneur's capital demands all the profits instead of giving fair shares to employees, customers, suppliers and society, then wealth becomes concentrated and society suffers.

Left alone this simple-minded NeoCon approach guarantees recessions because it chokes off demand from the consumers.

Consumer spending is two-thirds of the economy and consumers get their buying power from wages. If they don't have enough wages, then they can't buy things. That's called a recession.

That's where we are right now.

The better idea is to share the profits from business ventures with employees, suppliers, customers and society instead of giving all the profits to the capital. Allow capital a fair return but not everything.

After all, society is the thing that allows a venture to make a profit. Society provides a legal structure, educated workers, customers who buy things and so on. Without all of these things a business will simply fail from lack of revenue.

Of course, business owners will resist the idea of increasing wages and giving back to society. That reduces their profits and return on investment.

So, that means that you, Barry Obama, have to figure out a way to take some of the business' profits and billionaires' wealth - just a little - and give it to wages and to schools and roads and medical insurance - stuff like that.

But, wait a minute; we already have those mechanisms in place Barry. All you have to do is to tune them up a little. Let unions organize. Pass laws to protect them. Raise taxes on businesses to support education and infrastructure. You get the idea. It's not news, Barry.

Well Barry, we can hear it now, the screams and complaints will be really loud and panicky.

'That's socialism and it's anti-American. It's theft and stealing. It's Un-American.'

And so on and so on.

OK, Barry, here's the bottom line: this is the only way to survive as a country.

It's survival, not politics.

It's way more important than politics.

How about it, Barry? What will you do?

Your pal,