Expand Capital Ownership Now - ECON 1.0

Perfect Justice,...

2011-10-21T11:01:00.000-07:00

http://youtu.be/JFIe-fqs0lE

"We don't have a political crisis, or an economic crisis, we the people and this nation have a crisis of moral ignorance."

"Wisdom without action, is neither wise nor useful."

"Justice is love serving God alone."

A Plan for the culture of Ownership
http://www.cesj.org/homestead/donnersocialsecurity.pdf

Possess the land and all there in
http://jesusourallinall.blogspot.com/2011/05/possess-land.html

In the Name of His Justice. (Paul VI)
http://www.aipnews.com/talk/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=14600&posts=5

Expand Capital Ownership Now - ECON 2012

2011-08-30T11:16:00.000-07:00

CAPITAL HOMESTEADING - 'SOLUTIONS'

http://youtu.be/7r-vRwMlBtw - Part I

CAPITAL HOMESTEADING - 'SOLUTIONS II'

http://youtu.be/oYohwgKXv6Y- Part II

POSTED & PRODUCED BY GUY C. STEVENSON

2011-02-17T14:15:00.000-08:00

Capital Homesteading for Every Citizen

The Capital Homestead Act is a comprehensive national economic strategy for empowering every American citizen, including the poorest of the poor, with the means to acquire, control and enjoy the fruits of productive corporate assets. Or as Louis Kelso would say; "... to create , repair and defend that which ownership provides". This long-range agenda involves major restructuring of our tax system and our Federal Reserve policies to lift unjust artificial barriers to more equitable distribution of future corporate capital and faster growth rates of private sector investment. It would shift primary national income maintenance policies from inflationary wage and unproductive income redistribution expedients to market-based ownership sharing and dividend incomes.

Economic democracy is an idea not yet tried.

The Capital Homestead Act's central focus is the democratization of capital (productive) credit. By universalizing citizen access to direct capital ownership through access to interest-free productive credit, it would close the power and opportunity gap between today's haves and have-nots, without taking away property from today's owners.

The Capital Homestead Act is designed to: 1) Generate millions of new private sector jobs by lifting ownership-concentrating Federal Reserve credit barriers in order to accelerate private sector growth linked to expanded ownership opportunities, at a zero rate of inflation. 2) Radically overhaul and simplify the Federal tax system to eliminate budget deficits and ownership-concentrating tax barriers through a single rate tax on all individual incomes from all sources above basic subsistence levels. Its tax reforms would: a) eliminate payroll taxes on working Americans and their employers; b) integrate corporate and personal income taxes; and c) exempt from taxation the basic incomes of all citizens up to a level that allows them to meet their own subsistence needs and living expenses, while providing "safety net" vouchers for the poor.

The basic interdependent components of the Capital Homestead strategy are like the legs of a three-legged stool:

1) Democratization of productive credit. Capital Homesteading would reform monetary policy to conform to the goal of sustainable, market-oriented, non-inflationary growth. The new policies would aim at an immediate reduction in prime supply-side credit charges to 3% (without subsidies) for private-sector investment, through a two-tiered credit policy. Central banks would:

(a) Be restrained from further monetization of deficits or encouraging other forms of non-productive uses of credit (i.e., demand-side credit), which would then be forced to seek out already accumulated savings at market interest rates; and
(b) Use the Fed discount mechanism exclusively for discounting, at low discount charges but subject to a 100% reserve requirement, "eligible" industrial, agricultural and commercial paper financed through its member commercial banks. This reform would synchronize the supply of real money with real growth of the economy. It would provide, from the bottom-up, an asset-backed currency reflected in more efficient instruments of production and keep basic economic decisions and corporate accountability in local hands.

2) Simplification of tax systems. Capital Homesteading reforms would be centered around taxing incomes from all sources (above poverty levels) at a single rate. This would offer a universal yardstick for political hopefuls to compete against, and a direct means for:

(a) Balancing national budgets and restraining overall spending, including social security and Medicare programs;
(b) Ending the use of the tax system to circumvent the appropriations process; and
(c) Eliminating double taxation of profits in ways that maximize greater savings and investments in new plant, equipment, rentable space and infrastructure, plus removing other taxes that discourage expanded capital ownership as a basic pillar of national economic policy.

3) Linkage between all tax and monetary reforms to the goal of expanded capital ownership. This would encourage every citizen to share directly in the equity growth and profits from our ever-expanding high-technology frontier, and would insure the broadest possible base of private sector stakeholders (and thus political supporters) of reforms affecting "green growth" policies or good stewardship.

In contrast to mounting social security deficits, this strategy would create for every voter a "Capital Homestead Exemption" for accumulating over his or her working lifetime an income-producing, tax-sheltered personal estate of up to $1 million, a modern equivalent of the 160 acres of land that government made accessible to American pioneers in the orginal Homestead Act of 1862.

Citizens would accumulate their Capital Homestead shares in many ways, including such "credit democratization" vehicles as: Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs); Capital Homestead Accounts (CHAs); Consumer Stock Ownership Plans (CSOPs); and Citizens Land Cooperatives (CLCs). These high-powered financing vehicles would systematically close the wealth and income gap by linking all new monetary and tax incentives for productivity growth under the proposed Capital Homestead strategy, with an ever-expanding base of empowered citizen-shareholders.

Effects of Capital Homesteading

Capital Homesteading will have an immediate effect on the economy. This is because the new capital goods, as Harold Moulton pointed out in The Formation of Capital, are only capital goods to the purchaser — they are consumption goods to the seller. Thus, the immediate effect on the economy in the first year of Capital Homesteading would be a per capita increase in effective demand of approximately $7,000, despite the fact that the Capital Homestead borrower will only get a few dollars, if that, at the end of the year in the first year.

If the government continues to create money backed only by future tax revenues to finance its deficits, we would expect to see moderate-to-high inflation, but the Capital Homesteading program includes cutting off the government from access to the Federal Reserve. What should happen is that the cash that companies have accumulated to finance new capital formation will be distributed as dividends, and treated as tax deductible at the corporate level.

These dividends will, in justice, be paid to the currently wealthy with their virtual monopoly on individual share ownership, and on which they will pay taxes as on regular income. If the rich spend their dividend income, this will generate the consumer demand that drives the demand for capital goods, thereby creating jobs.

If the rich do not spend their dividends, they will have to locate some investment to "park" their surplus . . . yet the capital needs of private sector companies are, presumably, being met completely by Capital Homestead financing. Dividend recipients will either have to find some speculative start-up — or a "safe" investment.

Given that the government will not be able to monetize its deficits, it will be very hungry for funds, and will very likely be the largest borrower of the initial unconsumed dividend payouts that go to the currently wealthy after being taxed as regular income. By draining this "excess effective demand" out of the economy by borrowing and taxing, the government should prevent inflation, even cause a lowering of the price level through a temporary deflation. This will benefit people on fixed incomes, as many of them have invested in government securities as the "safest" investment around. The government will not be able to set the market interest rates any more through its control of the Federal Reserve, and thus retiree income should increase at the same time that the decrease in the price level makes their money go further.

Once private sector companies can discount their paper backed by existing inventories either among themselves ("B2B") or at a commercial bank or even, through legitimate open market operations — as originally intended under the Federal Reserve Act of 1913; it wasn't for government securities — at the Federal Reserve, there will be no question of a permanent deflation, or lack of an adequate money supply. Private companies will simply take advantage of what the Federal Reserve was set up to do in the first place: monetize existing inventories of marketable goods and services through rediscounting and open market operations in privately issued paper, not government bills, thereby providing an "elastic" currency that expands and contracts with the amount of existing marketable goods and services in the economy.

Consistent with Say's Law, private companies that can produce in the near future or have on hand existing supplies of marketable goods and services will, in a sense, create their own money by drawing short-term (90-day) bills (issuing private promissory notes) and either discounting and rediscounting among themselves in high denominations (the lowest denomination of such commercial paper is typically $100,000; $1 million or more is not unusual, there is also a classification for paper denominated in billions now, or, to create money in a form that can be used in day-to-day transactions, discount the paper at a commercial bank in exchange for banknotes (rare, these days) or a demand deposit. Since this type of paper would be based on existing inventories that are already owned and not on future new capital formation that does not yet have an owner, as well as being short-term, the commercial banks should be able to rediscount the paper at the Federal Reserve without the expanded ownership requirement.

Moulton's proposal in the 1930s was not to limit central bank rediscounting and open market operations to monetizing existing inventories, but to finance future new capital formation — financed at the present value of future marketable goods and services to be produced by the new capital — the same way: by rediscounting qualified paper for capital investment for terms of up to five years, not just short-term (90-day) commercial paper backed by existing inventories or the general credit-worthiness of the issuer. Kelso and Adler improved on this by adding that the new capital financed in this way must be broadly owned by people who currently own little or nothing in the way of capital, and adjust the term of the note to make the capital purchase financially feasible.

The bottom line is that, fueled by "interest free money" that does not depend on existing accumulations of savings (past savings) financing the acquisition of capital by people who currently own nothing, the global economy could conceivably be well on its way to recovery within three months of the passage of the Capital Homestead Act, and make a full recovery within 18 months. Within three to seven years it should be possible to reach the unattainable Keynesian goal of "full employment" — not of labor alone, but of all resources and productive capacity, including labor.

by Michael D. Greaney, and CPCH

Will you help by joining others;

Citizens Advancing the America Dream

-or-

The Coalition to Pass Capital Homesteading by 2012.

Does America have a Future? Part I

2010-10-13T15:32:00.000-07:00

Does America have a future? Part I

We the people's money, past present and future!

A lot of attention has been focused on China these days. The Wall Street Journal has been making the right kind of noises that something must be done other than currency manipulation. Of course, what must be done, both to recover economically and to make the economy strong again, as Dr. Harold Moulton pointed out approximately seventy or so years ago [the past], is to focus on present production, employment and future capital formation. Instead, what the Wall Street Journal (other MSM) is advocating is increasing the rate of present savings and ignoring the potential of future savings, all the while selling the investment consumer (saver) that their idea of capital formation is the only way. Frankly, nobody on the economic, or political, or moral horizons is talking about the future of American -caput'- or the world. Sure all kinds of warnings are flying from most media sources but no solutions. Except one - You. And with great concern you should be, for out of one many- E Pluribus Unum.

This may be too off the wall, but, what the heck, give it some thought:

From the 'Household/Homestead' perspective; "Saving" is inevitably yet incorrectly defined as cutting consumption, i.e., "savings" consists of existing accumulations of unconsumed income in money form. From a business or an accounting point of view, however, the best way to save is not only to cut costs, but to increase revenue (future earnings), this being primary. The latter is the main stay for our central Government. The problem for the homesteader/household is lack of control and ownership, and how to do that when you either, at present, cannot get a (better) job that you do not own, or lack the means to acquire future income-generating capital, again that you do not own.

Because of this paradigm of savings (haves and have-nots); you (we the people) didn't own in the past, you don't own in the present, and you sure as heck aren't going to own in the future. That is unless you are a 'banker or financer' and have access to other people's money and usually at a huge discount, or have an inheritance of past savings, or have an old homestead to sell. (Did your rich Uncle Sam die? - It's just a bad dream)

You’ve likely heard the adage, “it takes money to make money"(past savings). And who can forget this age old saying to the poor man "Just, get a job!" (present wage/salary earner). There is an answer other than Milton Friedman's Other People's Money - and begging for a 'job'! *(28)

Lift the barriers to Pure Capital Credit for a future productive good for all. (see: The Virginia's Declaration of rights; ...with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety).

The Past;

Nearly two centuries ago William Cobbett ran for parliament. He failed to get elected, but the series of pamphlets he wrote was collected and published as The Poor Man's Friend. In the pamphlets he carefully explained why he was running for office:

How there came to be so much poverty and misery in England? This is a very interesting question; for, though it is the doom of man, that he shall never be certain of any thing, and that he shall never be beyond the reach of calamity; though there always has been, and always will be, poor people in every nation; though this circumstance of poverty is inseparable from the means which uphold communities of men; though, without poverty, there could be no charity*, and none of those feelings, those offices, those acts, and those relationships, which are connected with charity, and which form a considerable portion of the cement of civil society: yet, notwithstanding these things, there are bounds, beyond which, the poverty of a people cannot go, without becoming a thing to complain of, and to trace to the Government as a fault. Those bounds have been passed, in England, long and long ago. (The Poor Man's Friend, 1829, § 90)- [The Past: Maimonides eight levels of Charity/tzedakah*].

His answer? Lack of widespread direct ownership of the means of production. As he made clear in another book he published the next year in a time purporting to give advice to young people starting out in life,

What is a slave? For, let us not be amused by a name; but look well into the matter. A slave is, in the first place, a man who has no property; and property means something that he has, and that nobody can take from him without his leave, or consent. (Advice to Young Men, and 'Incidentally' to Young Women, 1830, § 344) [Wage/salary slaves, Tax slaves, and Debt slaves].

In 1935, again, Dr. Harold Moulton, president of the Brookings Institution from 1916 to 1952 wrote The Formation of Capital to counter the Keynesian New Deal. He explained that, contrary to the Keynesian definition of savings, saving can take place in the future rather than the past or present. Consistent with classic banking theory, you do this by "monetizing" the present value of future marketable goods and services in which you have a private property stake - you own the future. This is the way that most corporate finance has been carried out for over 200 years. Corporations do it every day, but sadly not we the people,...! There is a barrier called, 'access' to financing, and collateral-credit [capital formation].

In 1961 in The New [Future] Capitalists, Louis Kelso and Mortimer Adler expanded on Moulton's work and developed a way that wage workers and other ordinary citizens could use the techniques described by Moulton to become future owners of capital without reducing present levels of consumption and without risking any existing accumulations of past savings they might have. The subtitle of their short book is significant: "A Proposal to Free Economic Growth from the Slavery of [Past] Savings." [-another hint of future capital formation-]

Louis Kelso's next book from 1967 was also very significant: 'How to turn Eighty Million Workers into [future] Capitalists on Borrowed Money". The title was changed to "The Two-Factor Theory", which prompted others to expand on this theory, now known as 'Binary Economics'. The introduction of the book now on the dust cover of history, had this to say:

"Suppose you could walk into a bank, borrow $20,000 on an insured, non-recourse loan and invest the money in blue-chip stocks that would pay their cost out of their earnings (rather than out of your present earnings) -- and thereafter [in the future] could have an income of $80 a week for life and provide with an estate to pass on to your heirs?

Fantastic? Not according to this remarkable book by a brilliant, self-made and successful corporation lawyer who has made new capital owners out of hundreds of workers and farmers in private enterprise, and who believes the time has come to expand that same opportunity to every American citizen -- including you." - [ providing the same every year, from cradle to grave - Posterity.]

In 2004, The Center for Economic and Social Justice ("CESJ") published "[Future] Capital Homesteading for Every Citizen" as an application of the principles of Moulton and Kelso and Adler in a proposal to "save" the Social Security System and allow every citizen to accumulate future income-generating assets for retirement, and basically eliminating the need for Social Security all together -or- 'Future liquidation' as Danny Devito would say (below). And basically creating a 'job' of owning your own capital for the future, by utilizing the future common wealth of We the people's money [future capital-credit for a productive and common good].

The Present;

What 'we the people',.. ought to advocate is access to the financial system — capital credit — by means of which we can create our own money by turning the present value of existing and future marketable goods and services into a form by means of which we can carry out economic transactions, i.e., finance new capital formation, in ways that create future -new owners- of as-yet non-existing capital. And thereby lifting the barriers of future capital growth. The best example of the success of this approach is Lincoln's Homestead Act of 1862, and Louis Kelso's Employee Stock Ownership Plans otherwise known as ESOP's. On a much bigger scale "Capital Homesteading for Every Citizen" is a possible alternative to the 'monolithic' economic system of the past and present (today) for a better American future, and dare I say our greatest export of a revolutionary idea. One of our biggest selling points is that the rich of the past and present can keep their money. We don't need it, except to provide the initial capital credit insurance and reinsurance pool — an investment for them, not a redistribution of their wealth to us, that may or may-not even exist tomorrow-future.

Still not convinced, try listening to this parity of the age old conflict between capital and labor, between haves and have-nots. Pay close attention to this speech by Mr. Larry Garfield in Other People's Money [played by Danny DeVito], and what he said to the question "Does America have a future?" (paraphrasing)

"Amen Amen and Amen, you forgot to say, Amen! That is what you usually say after a prayer, and especially after a prayer for the dead. Who cares liquidate it all, collect the insurance, sell the assets off to the highest bidder and put some money in your pockets. That is what the 'Estate Executor in Charge' is suppose to do after a death, liquidate it all. As for the employees and the citizens; "Who cares!" what have they ever done for you." That is why they call me 'Larry the Liquidator', and at least, at my funeral you will have a little money in your pocket and that's a funeral you will be glad to say Amen".

'America is it to late for prayers?',... the problem of 'old technology', currencies, banking, pensions, unemployment, foreclosures and shrinking markets all lead to one thing- Liquidation. And begs the question; Who owns the American estate? Again this may be to off the wall and I'm just saying; We could all be 'owners' of the "future (technology) energy slaves" and invest in something with a future, if we the people will it.

The Future;

And finally we ask the question of the future; "Who should own America?" -or- "Who should own the 'energy slaves' of tomorrow?" and for that matter, how can 'we the people' create, repair and defend that which we do not own.

The answer provided by those in control economically, politically and morally speaking, harps back the beginning of this post; "China". Is that the answer? Is that the cause of poverty? Is that the answer to "Does America have a Future"- in Chinese? We the people should be addressing the solutions and take responsibility for the problems. Who Owns America? is the question, that the elite in America mainstream economics, political and moral, continue to avoid, and instead dupe us into believing, that 'we the people' are no longer in control. And who owns the Chinese? not 'we the people'.

The answer and solution to; Does America have a future, we believe is found in "Every Citizen an Owner", and "Capital Homesteading Accounts for every citizen." By transferring 'pure future capital-credit' to every citizen from the cradle to the grave, paid for by future profits or earnings. What we the people do with it, sounds like allot of work to me*. But we need to 'Think it through!' and fast, as does every citizen on the planet.

Imagine! what would have happened if back in 2008 and since, had the Federal Reserve transferred as a 'Collateral-credit' shares in General Motors, AIG, and all the Big Banks. What would have happened, had 'we the people' been given shares/certificate equal ownership in the future? I'll tell you what would have happened, we wouldn't be in the currency mess and economic mess, and political mess, we are in today. And people would again be looking to the moral question of civilization itself. "What can we create and build for our posterity with this power, this WILL of a Future American identity?"

America, Want to be a financially independent nation and leader? Then lead the way and this is how;

"Own or be Owned " Why?
Because, it is Our Unalienable Rights of, by and for 'we the people' and our Posterity!' And that is something to give cause for an,...
"Amen! Amen and Amen!"

Be the future, do it NOW
Pass Capital Homesteading!

__________________________________________________

*There are eight levels of tzedaka (righteousness or just), each greater than the next. The greatest level, above which there is no other, is to strengthen the name of another by giving him a present or loan, or making a partnership with him, or finding him a job in order to strengthen his hand until he needs no longer [beg from] people. For it is said, "You shall strengthen the stranger and the dweller in your midst and live with him," {Leviticus XXV:35} that is to say, strengthen him until he needs no longer fall [upon the mercy of the community] or be in need. This is,...

The Just Third Way

_____________________________________

Posted at AIPnews by Guy C. Stevenson; an Independent Financial Planner/Advisor for over 25 years.

The opinions expressed in this post are those of the author alone, and do not 'yet' necessarily reflect the views of America's Independent Party its candidates or affiliates. The posting of this post on AIPNews does not necessarily constitute an endorsement of America's Independent Party by the leadership of the Center for Economic and Social Justice or any other organization.

"If you don't stand for something, you will fall for anything, and that is true with economics; the management of the home-stead."

Additional Resources:
Additional Resources:

"Christonomics"

"The New Slavery; Freedom without Property is Incomplete"

"direct ownership of the means of production"

"Our hopes of change will be more realistically placed in those who will have to pay the full cost of economic mismanagement. To identify them takes no special prescience. They are the ones who must always suffer for defective economic institutions -the propertyless of all ages, but most particularly and immediately, their children.” (Our Posterity) - Louis Kelso; Two-Factor Theory

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2Kg2SvsI8Q

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfL7STmWZ1c

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUvAZmDHweE

The Keynesian Economic Bloodletting

2010-10-01T09:57:00.000-07:00

The Keynesian Economic Bloodletting

(or Quantitative Easing)

October 1, 2010

As predicted over and over again, the remedies being applied to virtually every area affected by the economic crisis are not curing anything. Quite the contrary — what's being done is aggravating the situation even more than previously. It's analogous to the state of medicine in the 18th century, in which Hippocrates's theory of the "four humors" that must be kept in balance, i.e., black bile or "melankholia," yellow bile or "cholera," phlegm or "phlegma," and blood or "sanguis." These were believed to have an effect not only on the physical body, but the mind as well, hence some of our modern terms for a person's temperament: melancholy, choleric, phlegmatic, and sanguine.

These four humors, black bile, yellow bile, phlegm, and blood, corresponded to the four elements of Greek physics, earth, fire, water, and air, respectively. The theory was that when the humors are out of balance, they must be put back in balance by increasing the one that was diminished, or taking out some of any excess. Hence, a physician's stock in trade consisted of drugs and techniques either to get the excess or poisoned humors flowing out of the body, or induce the body to produce more of a healthy humor.

There is actually a good deal of common sense in the theory. Many diseases respond to treatment of a symptom. Cholera, for instance, is not a fatal disease — but the symptoms, chronic diarrhea and vomiting as the body struggles to eject the harmful organism, will dehydrate the body and cause death; in a sense, the body kills itself. There is a cholera vaccine that is mildly effective in preventing the disease, but the prescribed treatment is usually oral or intravenous rehydration — i.e., replace fluid as fast as possible, and keep doing it.

Unfortunately, over the centuries the theory got a little over-simplified. While bloodletting can be an effective treatment in some (very rare) cases, it became virtually the only one used for every imaginable ailment. Of course, there were sometimes complaints about the ineffectiveness of other humor-balancing therapies, such as when incompetent physicians prescribed drugs that made you sick, and emetics that didn't, but, by and large, the most popular treatment was to whip out the knives and drain a little (or a lot) of blood out of the patient, or attach leeches and let them do the dirty work.

Now we get to the point of all this fascinating medical history. In Keynesian economics, the way out of a depression or recession is for the State to create money backed by future tax revenues (not that a Keynesian, Monetarist, or Austrian would put it that way), stimulating demand, and creating jobs.

In the Keynesian reality the amount of debt assumed by the State doesn't matter. All the State does in the Magic Kingdom of Keynesland (both political parties) is redistribute purchasing power, not create new purchasing power by tying new money to the present value of existing and future marketable goods and services.

Unfortunately, the financial system doesn't operate in the Magic Kingdom, but in the real world. Debts must be paid — and paid when due. The State cannot continue to redistribute existing wealth forever and put off the day of reckoning on to future generations; the bloodletting can't go on without a transfusion in the form of new production of marketable goods and services. The alternative is economic death.

The politicians and policymakers seem to realize this at some basic level. As an article in today's Wall Street Journal makes clear, the situation in Éire, Spain, and Portugal is getting out of hand; the fixes a short time ago didn't fix anything. All they did was make the situation worse. ("European Austerity Fuels Tensions," WSJ, 09/30/10, A8.) What is needed is cost cutting and austerity to get things back on course.

Cost-cutting, however, should — at least in a well-managed company or country — be a last resort, not the first. No company or government should ever be spending money it doesn't have to spend, certainly not in an insane effort to foster prosperity by going into non-productive debt. The first recourse of any company or government in trouble is not to cut costs, but to increase revenue, that is, grow economically.

The problem is that, within the Keynesian system, manipulation of monetary and fiscal policy (i.e., going into debt in different ways and taxing a depleted tax base) is the only source of financing for the growth that generates the tax base that provides the money for government to spend. In simple terms, in Keynesian economics you don't dare stop spending, even if you could. If you don't have government debt, you don't have a money supply. But it's debt that's causing the problem. Like the loss of fluid that characterizes cholera, the Keynesian defense mechanism is killing the body politic it is supposed to be preserving.

What's obvious, of course, is that the Keynesian prescription must be wrong — as is the whole Keynesian theory of how the body politic works. No organism, biological, social, or political, can live on itself forever without producing anything, nor can any organism survive in its own waste products. The State cannot redistribute existing wealth forever, anymore than an animal can live off its stored fat without eventually feeding; the State cannot survive being drowned in its own debt, anymore than animals can breathe the carbon dioxide they exhale.

The Just Third Way would solve this problem. First, we need to redefine money and credit so that they bear some resemblance to reality. Forget "M1" and "M2." Money is anything, repeat, anything that can be used in settlement of a debt. Next, restore Say's Law of Markets and the real bills doctrine by reforming the financial system and tying all new money to the present value of existing and future marketable goods and services. At the same time, institute an aggressive program of expanded capital ownership, and reform the tax system.

All of these steps are explained in Moulton's The Formation of Capital and CESJ's Capital Homesteading for Every Citizen. Consider obtaining copies today — and opening the door to a prime mover who has the political savvy to listen to and understand the Just Third Way.

by Michael D. Greaney

Posted at ECON 2.011 by:

"EVERY CITIZEN an OWNER"

Guy Stevenson is Loyal to Life and Liberty and believes; That all men are by nature equally free and independent and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety. [link]

* * *

"The root cause of present injustices is not to be attributed to division of goods, nor even to the inequality of the division, but rather to the fact that the mass of people are practically bereft of ownership. Some means must be devised to admit the proletariat within the proprietory system. Widely distributed property makes for social stability. Any alternative offered lacks the moral discipline of responsible ownership. Perhaps the best summary argument for private property is the impossibility of finding any better general system to take its place." McDonald, the Social Value of Property According to Saint Thomas Acquinas (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1939), pp. 184-5, paragraphs 7 and 8.

Happy New (fiscal) Year !

With still no United States budget.

Tell Congress to just stay home.

It's time for a revolution of idea,..

2010-07-27T13:41:00.000-07:00

Tea parties with 'tea and crumpets' be damned; it's time for a revolution of idea,..

We the People Anthem USA

"How bad do things have to get before you do something? Do they have to take away all your property? Do they have to license every activity that you want to engage in? Do they have to start throwing you on cattle cars before you say “now wait a minute, I don’t think this is a good idea.” How long is it going to be before you finally resist and say “No, I will not comply. Period!” Ask yourself now because sooner or later you are going to come to that line, and when they cross it, you’re going to say well now cross this line; ok now cross that line; ok now cross this line. Pretty soon you’re in a corner. Sooner or later you’ve got to stand your ground whether anybody else does or not. That is what liberty is all about."
-- Michael Badnarik

The Tea Parties are a good idea, but they are mostly a single issue political force, and animated at election time. But who's listening and who cares? Come November 2010 the slate has again already been drawn, and we the people lose (you lose). Why? because it will be the same old, same old -status quo ante- just different faces. With property rights extinguished even more for the citizens -we the people.

The people have only one clear chance to win the war of ideas, and that is for a game changer, a bottom-up approach that will catch all politicians off guard -while they're serving you more tea and crumpets.

"Pass Capital Homesteading Now" it is a revolutionary idea! It allocates to every citizen their rightful due, it amplifies economic justice and economic democracy. It's designed after Lincoln's Homestead Act of 1862. And will do with capital what Lincoln did with raw land, put it into productive use for the homesteaders to own. You do remember that thing that this nation was founded upon, -we the people, with the means of acquiring and possessing property (The Virginia Declarations of Rights. 1776 June)?

Well! does anybody in the Tea party movement remember George Mason, or Adam Smith? We the people (a slower repeat).. with the means of acquiring and possessing property? At the end of that day in November 2010 and 2012, Economic Power will again trump Political Power. (period) The only just question is; Who will hold the Economic Power? Who will wield the Moral Ax?

The scales of justice are slanted to the power of those who own (Sir, What do you have to put on that scale?). We don't mean to suggest, to take from those that have, but instead to lift the barriers of expanded capital ownership. Capital Homesteading Accounts do just that, they lift the barriers for every Citizen, economically, politically and morally.

In the battle of ideas we the people have less than five minutes to articulate the message for all to hear, and all to see; Who owns America, should own we the people. That is the political power paradigm, you can not fight it alone and win.

The solution; become the owners.

Oh sure there will still be those that say; "just give us back a little of what we pay in" -or- "Master Sir, Oh please, may we keep a little more for our families in taxes and we will vote for you", by enacting the FairTax. When are we the people going to wake up? We built this great country and now it is on the Auction block of 'slavery', for the highest bidder. That sounds outrageous, why would you suggest that? Because nobody is able and willing to pay off that huge debt we the people have accumulated. But you just keep on drinking that tea and eating those crumpets.

The thing that most every cattle farmer (homesteader) in Iowa is well aware of - and throughout man's livestock development history- is that taxes are a byproduct of capital/cattle ownership not its creation. Let me repeat that for the simple minded; "Taxes is the 'dung' for which cattle create and it comes at you every day. The political minded love to play in it and more important is that taxes do not create broad based capital ownership." Or if you like or rather I could suggest the story of the homesteader that had a Goose which laid Golden eggs.

We would all be well advised that if we (TEA Parties) take the easy route of proclaiming tax policy for justice, and abandoned economic principles and ownership, than we the people will soon realize that the banks and corporations that huddle around politicians will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fore fathers conquered. Will that be the last line drawn? Will the people finally be in a corner? Will they than awaken from a bad dream, by the cries of their posterity, for freedom. By substituting tax policy for sound economic principles (economic justice), history will repeat itself again, and again, and again, until that fateful day of collapse. Every Citizen an Owner is an American imperative, and as common as a homesteaders apple pie.

The tragedy for America is that there is ready at hand a way out of the mire--a Just Third Way an it is not a 'deus ex machina' but a course that was first laid out in Pope Leo XIII's encyclical, Rerum Novarum in 1891, and affirmed again 40 years later in Quadragesimo Anno (1931) and underscored by Pope John Paul II in his encyclical Centesimus Annus in 1991 marking the 100th anniversary of Rerum Novarum. And is alive and well at the Center for Economic and Social Justice, authors and signers of the 'Declaration of Monetary Justice.'

In Rerum Novrum (of new things), Leo XIII laid out catholic (universal) social principles dealing with capital and labor and in the course of his letter supported the rights of labor to form unions, rejected communism and unrestricted capitalism all the while maintaining the fundamental right to private property , just like George Mason and 'The Virginia Declaration of Rights'.

Interestingly, in paragraph 20 he exhorted we the people;

"...to have nothing to do with men of evil principles, who work upon the people with artful promises of great results, and excite foolish hopes which usually end in useless regrets and grievous loss."

Does this sound familiar? Does any particular politicians, past or present, come to mind or parties? Adolf Hitler promised bread. What will be the new promises of campaign 2012? Perhaps 'guaranteed happiness' or 'vote for me and I will set you free'. Try eating that, or taking it to the bank! Perhaps, just perhaps a few supports of the FairTax will be elected, and lets us just say that the Fair Tax is enacted, will you than go back to sleep and what have we the people gained? Is that then justice?

With unmarked graves throughout the globe holding the bones of millions who attest to the utter failure and lies of communism and the living-dead today who wander through life listlessly under socialist systems, now is the moment, now is the time for the principles set out long ago in Rerum Novarum, and 'The Virginia Declaration of Rights', to be put into effect with the Just Third Way. Then we can get on with civilization itself.

Let us show you how with Capital Homesteading. Join the happy revolution of idea. An idea whose time as come. Let it be your idea, that wins the war of ideas, with expanded capital ownership.

Pass Capital Homesteading Now!
Expand Capital Ownership Now - ECON 1.0

Posted by Publius

Meet me at the entrance of the Federal Reserve on April 15, 2011 and 2012.
Make arrangements to be in Washington D.C. join the revolution of idea,.. it belongs to we the people.

Justice is love serving God only.

* * * * * *

Encyclical Rerum Novarum
the connection between property and justice for the modern world

Other notable quotes:

"We are called to be architects of the future, not its victims. [The challenge is] to make the world work for 100% of humanity in the shortest possible time, with spontaneous cooperation and without ecological damage or disadvantage of anyone. How can we make the world work for 100 percent of humanity in the shortest possible time through spontaneous cooperation without ecological damage or disadvantage to anyone?" --- Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983)

"It isn't that they can't see the solution. It is that they can't see the
problem." -- Gilbert Keith Chesterton

"Big Business and State Socialism are very much alike, especially Big Business." - G.K.'s Weekly, 4/10/26

"[No society can survive the socialist] fallacy that there is an absolutely unlimited number of inspired officials (politicians) and an absolutely unlimited amount of money to pay them. (A Central Bank)" - The Debate with Bertrand Russell, BBC Magazine, 11/27/35

"A citizen can hardly distinguish between a tax and a fine, except that the fine is generally much lighter." - ILN, 5/25/31

"Too much capitalism does not mean too many capitalists, but too few capitalists." - The Uses of Diversity, 1921
　

“We hope that this essay has contributed to an understanding of the cost industrialized countries are incurring through the persistent blindness of their leadership to the rationale of free industrial society, and of the coin in which payment will be exacted. Since the very purpose of an expedient, as opposed to reasoned action in harmony with relevant and sound principles, is to temporize, to gain time, to push the dislocations and problems downstream to those who come afterward, guardians of the status quo will probably escape the consequences of the leadership. They can say with Louis XV, Apre’s moi, le deluge.”

Therefore, it is unlikely, although not impossible, that changes and innovations will initiated by the exponents of the “conventional wisdom.”

Our hopes of change will be more realistically placed in those who will have to pay the full cost of economic mismanagement. To identify them takes no special prescience. They are the ones who must always suffer for defective economic institutions -the propertyless of all ages, but most particularly and immediately, their children.” - Louis Kelso

Support the Just Third Way Generation.
Pass Capital Homesteading Now!
Meet me at the entrance of the Federal Reserve on April 15, 2011 and 2012.
Make arrangement to be there now,
bring your TEA Party Citizens.

Guy C. Stevenson

* * *

"Declaration of Monetary Justice"

Own The Fed. Rally April 15, 2011 - 2012

2010-03-24T15:34:00.000-07:00

The Real Citizen "Tea Party" - Restoration of Property Ownership"

2010-03-04T10:01:00.000-08:00

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A Citizen's Invitation

Restoration of Property Ownership

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On “TAX-Slavery Day” a Rally at the Federal Reserve Bank

Washington D.C.

Subject: Join Us for Three Days of Events — “Every Citizen an Owner: Capital Homesteading by 2012”

Dear "Citizen' Leader ; 'Every Citizen a Just Leader'

On behalf of the Center for Economic and Social Justice and the Coalition for Capital Homesteading, I invite you to join us for three days aimed at the goal of “Every Citizen an Owner: Capital Homesteading by 2012!”

On Thursday, April 15, 2010, we’ll meet at Lafayette Park in front of the White House and march to the Federal Reserve Building for a noontime “Own the Fed” rally at the Federal Reserve. On Friday, April 16, we will hold the Second Social Justice Collaborative on “Getting to Capital Homesteading by 2012” to convene community leaders and members to chart the road map to our goal: the enactment of the Capital Homestead Act of 2012 (the 150th anniversary of the Homestead Act). On Saturday, April 17, CESJ will hold its annual meeting and celebrate our 26th Anniversary with a special luncheon prepared by Chef Chris O’Connor.

I know you share with me great concern over the future of the American economy and the global market system. Many of us recognize that there is a cancer – a flawed and power-concentrating system of money and credit – that threatens the very survival of peace, prosperity and freedom in America and throughout the world. There is a growing public awareness that the Federal Reserve System — and how the Fed uses its power over the creation of money and credit — holds the key to curing the cancer or causing the death of the American Dream.

Unlike the growing popular movements of angry Americans who want to end the Fed or have it controlled by Washington politicians and bureaucrats, the “Coalition for Capital Homesteading” wants every citizen to “Own the Fed.”

This new Coalition was formed in 2009 to mobilize, transform and democratize the Fed and its money-creating powers, in order to save the free enterprise system and create a more just and participatory market economy. We will offer a comprehensive “Just Third Way” strategy for sustainable development we call “Capital Homesteading.” (go to http://www.cesj.org/ for summary.)

The Fed is now privately owned by member banks. Our plan is to make the Federal Reserve System with its twelve regional Feds into a “fourth branch of Government,” but owned by and accountable to all the citizens they serve. The reorganized Fed, as described in more detail at www.ownthefed.org, would monetize through local commercial banks a new national strategy for building a “green growth” economy, eliminating government deficits, and “making every citizen an owner” by lifting artificial barriers to more equal future ownership opportunities.

Please distribute widely this letter and its attachments throughout your network and mobilize as many as you can to join us at this rally. Your presence will be a contribution to positive change that can benefit all Americans, and all people around the world. Participate with CESJ and the Coalition for Capital Homesteading as we rally, plan and celebrate on April 15, 16, and 17.

Every Citizen an Owner,

Norman G. Kurland
President

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Audio interview with Norm Kurland: ECON 101 or 1.01 - Norm Kurland 12/19/2009

"Every Citizen an Owner" ?

2010-02-20T06:26:00.000-08:00

"EVERY CITIZEN AN OWNER"

For the restoration of property and before 'we the people' can regenerate ‘our’ economy, we as a United States most refocus our attention on the need to reform the institutions that govern the manner in which people can acquire and possess private property in the means of production — one of the primary "inherent" (that is, absolute or natural) rights possessed by every human being, as George Mason of Gunston Hall pointed out in the first paragraph of the Virginia Declaration of Rights. We refer, of course, to Mason’s original language in the first paragraph was as follows:

That all men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights, of which they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.

In a modern advanced economy, money and credit are in large measure controlled by the commercial banking system and the central bank of a country. In the United States, the central bank — actually a network of a dozen regional development banks — is the Federal Reserve System.

That being the case, we need to focus attention on reform of the Federal Reserve System. It's popular right now (and has been, with varying degrees of intensity, since the Crash of 1929) to characterize the Federal Reserve as some kind of anti-American plot, and to demand that it be abolished or, at the very least, prevented from doing the very job that it was designed to do: provide adequate liquidity to the private sector for industrial, commercial, and agricultural development by supplying the country with a "flexible currency" that would expand and shrink directly with the needs of business, thereby avoiding both inflation and deflation, as well as concentrated control of the money power in private hands or the State. (How the Federal Reserve was diverted from its primary mission is a long and tedious story that we hope to relate in a future series of postings.)

In order to focus on the Federal Reserve and encourage people to show up at the peaceful demonstration outside the Federal Reserve building in Washington, DC on April 15, 2010, we need a slogan or two to grab people's attention. The following is one possibility that (at least in CESJ’s opinion) seems to do the job:

"EVERY CITIZEN AN OWNER"

Dawn K. Brohawn and CESJ

• "Every Citizen an Owner" states the economic counterpart to "One Person, One Vote". Whereas citizenship is an expression of political empowerment, ownership is an expression of economic empowerment.

• "Every Citizen an Owner" is the economic goal of "Capital Homesteading by 2012". The Capital Homestead Act would enable every person in society to become an owner of productive capital.

• This slogan gives us a starting point for explaining how Capital Homesteading would benefit every person. ("A capital homestead would provide you, as an owner, a second income." "Ownership through capital homesteading gives you and every other citizen a personal stake in the green growth frontier.")

• Citizenship and ownership are the twin ("binary") components of human sovereignty, which is essential to justice, democracy and freedom. "Every Citizen an Owner" expresses what binary economics and the Just Third Way means to each person, in terms of power. ("Own or be Owned.")

• "Every Citizen an Owner" is another way of expressing equality of access, equality of opportunity and equality of status.

• We can relate this idea to Lincoln's vision and the Homestead Act as a national economic agenda for unifying and developing America. It expresses Lincoln's belief that we don't have to make the rich man poor in order to make the poor man rich. Our economic plan for the 21st Century can unify all members of society.

• If every citizen were able to acquire a capital homestead (financed through Fed-created money and interest-free credit for broadly owned private-sector growth), we could have "full production, full employment, full ownership and full empowerment."

• It reinforces the idea that political democracy can't function without economic democracy. Power must start with each citizen.

• We can relate this slogan to the idea of "Own the Fed" as well as "Own a Share of the Growth Frontier"

• "Every Citizen an Owner" offers a new foreign policy objective for America and global vision for peace, prosperity and justice. It provides a completely new direction for establishing just and growing economies in places like Haiti, Afghanistan, Iraq, etc.

Since we were looking for a "hook phrase" to accompany our rally's call for "Capital Homesteading by 2012!", I would like to get the support from our group to use this phrase in marketing our April Events. I think it helps pull together the objectives and themes of the three April gatherings, and I believe it offers a useful launch point for an elevator speech on Capital Homesteading and why we're rallying at the Federal Reserve.

Many thanks to a great group of independent yet united thinkers.

If we want to work peacefully to reform our institutions, we have to understand and articulate the reason why we think those institutions need reforming. The slogan, "Every Citizen an Owner," while it doesn't "say it all" (what slogan could?) does convey the essence of what we hope to accomplish — especially by 2012, the sesquicentennial of Abraham Lincoln's Homestead Act of 1862.

Posted by Michael D. Greaney

Expanded Capital Ownership Now!

2010-02-17T08:07:00.000-08:00

Democracy is when the indigent, and not the men of property, are the rulers. ~Aristotle

The Bottom-Up Approach

To solve today’s so called “Economic Crisis”; 'We the people' should address the failed Keynesian approach and then offer a historically better way. The bottom-up 'Paradigm changer', will be the founders vision* from a "Citizens-Ownership" perspective and approach.

"The marvelous success story of the Keynesian (forever trickle and Top Down) new economics is built upon the suppression and obscuring of the distinction between economic employment and non-economic employment. It measures economic performance by the degree to which the economy achieves undifferentiated full employment and annual increase...The increase may represent goods and services that are utterly useless to man; they may even consist of goods and services intended to do nothing but to kill, cripple and to squander precious natural resources in the process." ~ Louis Kelso, 1967 – Full Employment Act is “full toil and waste for all forever”

Kelso and others knew this before the Vietnam War and the war on life (Roe v. Wade of 1973); that Keynes was flawed! Keynes is forever a top-down perspective.

And so it has come to pass, today the year 2010.

With an economy largely built on ‘killing - crippling - and squandering the most precious resources’,.. We the people have, Our posterity!

That is why We Urgently Call to,.. Pass Capital Homesteading Now!

Problems of social and cultural equality, although important, cannot be solved until the urgent economic problem is successfully disposed of, and the paradigm changed. Only now are some of the ‘Tea Party Leaders’ beginning to realize the priority of the urgent, and how much of the present so-called “Economic Crisis” has grown directly from neglect of our posterity, by both the Republican and Democrat establishment.

Mindful of their ever present special interest groups –Corporatocracy, Foundations and Trusts - the bureaucracy continues to offer failed Keynesian approaches and continued neglect. Similarly it took many minority-group leaders of the “civil rights era”, to face directly the sense of neglect, of the urgency of a future. In a statement issued November 3, 1966, at the Statue of Liberty, the National Committee of Negro Churchmen declared:

"…The Slaves were freed in 1863, but the nation refused to give them land to make that emancipation meaningful. Simultaneously, the nation was giving away millions of acres in the Midwest and West – a gift marked ‘for whites only’ (Lincoln’s Homestead Act). Thus, an economic floor was placed under the new peasants from Europe, but America’s oldest peasantry was provided only an abstract freedom. In the words of Frederick Douglas, emancipation made the slaves ‘free to hunger; free to the winter and rains of heaven.. Free without roofs to cover them or bread to eat or land to cultivate.. We gave them freedom and famine at the same time. The marvel is that they still live."[1]

The need is urgent for our posterity 'if they live', and then only to be crippled by neglect and hungry for a place to call their own, a homestead. We the people, peasantry or propertyless are hungering for property - for a secure, permanent and independent link with spaceship earth that ownership represents and which only ownership can create, protect or defend. It is humiliating to possess nothing, to own nothing and hence to produce nothing and to count for nothing.[2]

You cannot blame the propertyless when a hand-out is offered, they accept it as charity. For freedom and life without Property is incomplete. A free people don't plan to fail they simply fail to plan. Slaves of old, could not accept any 'Plantation mentality' solutions and neither should we; not until ownership is the prerequisite can a people plan from the Bottom-up, or they and we, will unknowably accept to fail, and remain in servitude to another. The Keynesian economic model has taught us that.

“Father forgive them for they no not what they do,..” In the belief that man’s most critical problem in the modern, highly technological world is economic (management of the homestead), and that unless he solves the urgent he will never have the chance to confront the inherently important social and cultural issues. Let us see how economic planning might help achieve the goals of the theory of 'Citizen-Ownership’ through the Second American Revolution of idea.

The theory of Binary Economics is built upon ownership of productive capital, and therefore providing a two wage (income) system; of one's own labor and of one's own capital. 'Citizen-Ownership' through Capital Homesteading Accounts (CHAs) helps lift the barriers of capital formation and the slavery of past savings, and is a turnkey bottom-up approach to expand capital ownership. CHA's provide at least a two 'income/dividend' system; it is not a hand-out, but a hand-up, and hand-in future ‘capital formation’ and growth.

“We do not mean to suggest, that the expanded capital ownership approach is a universally applicable one. However, it illustrates the principles and concepts through which democracy can build a firm social foundation for economic cooperation and growth. Ownership need not be a reality confined to the wealthy few or an all-powerful state. Through the operation of democratic principles, it can become an experience universally shared and understood.” -Alan Keyes, Mexico City 1986 [3]

Whether from Adam Smith’s -The Theory of Moral Sentiments, or Abraham Lincoln’s - Emancipation Proclamation, the vision of urgency toward preserving a balance of power, between the people and its autonomy from the State, must be secured. Many today call it ‘economic empowerment / economic Justice' through ‘Citizen-Ownership’ its meaning; to secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and more importantly, our posterity.

That is why we urgently call,.. for all ‘Tea Parties’. All the humble and tireless masses, Americans of African descent, Native Americans, and for those captive in a dysfunctional single income (welfare/wage/salary) system; ‘Wage slaves'. All those held captive in high interest consumption debt (bad-credit); 'Debt slaves'. All those bound by a punitive and threatening tax system; 'Tax slaves'. All those fearful of the demands made by a burdening and grotesque National Deficit; 'U.S. Debt slaves'. All captives in an economic paradox, 'Keynesian slaves'.

We urgently call to,.. join with us, the “Coalition to Pass Capital Homesteading” and help bring in the Jubilee Initiative for 2012 through ‘full production’ and instillation in 2019.[4] Pass Capital Homesteading Now! is the next Civil Rights / Pro-Life / Pro- American issue and should be placed on the top of the American agenda, for 'We the people' interested in regenerating the America Dream of life, Liberty and Justice for all.

We urgently call for,.. the bottom-up approach, ‘Pass Capital Homesteading Now!’ which must start from those neglected in the past, and the propertyless present, and for the blessing of our posterity the future. Those tired and hungry urgently call for a plan of their own design and with their own hand. The creator God would have it no other way, but that we should be called 'good stewards' of all His creation. Some call it “Citizen-Ownership”.

Lend us your ear, your voice, lend your hands, and help lift up 'We the people', with the Bottom-Up approach, that is the 'JUST' Third Way.

The Bottom–Up Approach = Citizen Ownership

* * * * *
It is axiomatic that those who suffer most from ill-designed economic institutions have the least power to effect change, whereas those having the power are little inclined to correct, or even to question , a system which favors them. All the more credit is therefore due those who do not allow their own personal success to blind them to institutional defects which deny equality of economic opportunity to the majority of their fellow men. Their neighbor, their brothers, their sisters and the citizens of a land they love. –Louis O. Kelso, The Two-Factor Theory: The Economic Reality -Vintage Books- 1967

* * * *
We should be glad and not sorry when a fundamentally wrong notion of which we have been secretly conscious for a long time finally gains a footing in the American Conscience and is proclaimed both loudly and openly. The falseness of it will soon be felt and eventually proclaimed equally loudly and openly. It is as if the stain of cancer has been removed. And then we can get on with civilization itself.
* * *

Leviticus 25:10 - "And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto the inhabitants thereof: it shall be a jubilee unto you; and ye shall return every man unto his possession, and ye shall return every man unto his family." - KJV.

* *

Who owns America?

'Citizen-Ownership'

Own or be Owned

*
footnotes;

[1] Two-Factor Theory: The Economics of Reality - How to Turn Eighty Million Workers into Capitalist on Borrowed Money and Other Proposals ~Louis Kelso and Patricia Hetter (pg 118)

[2] Louis O. Kelso and Patricia Hetter, Washington Post, June 18, 1972 ~ Moral responsibility is born of ownership. Subdue and multiply.

[3] Latin America’s Economic Challenge: The Democratic Response ~Alan Keyes, Mexico City 1986

[4] Lincoln's Homesteading Jubilee is 2012 - Not to be confused with the Global Jubilee Initiative. Lincoln’s Homestead Act 150th anniversary; 400th year anniversary of the first American slaves.

*
As soon as the land of any country has all become private property, the landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed, and demand a rent even for its natural produce.
~Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations

*
“All men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain
inherent rights, of which they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest
their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means
of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining
happiness and safety.”
~ George Mason
(“Father of the American Bill of Rights”)
Article 1 of the Virginia Declaration of Rights,
Adopted June 12, 1776

*
Adam Smith 1759; The Theory of Moral Sentiments
(I,III, 28) Part I, Section III , Chap. III:

Of the corruption of our moral sentiments, which is occasioned by this disposition to admire the rich and the great, and to despise or neglect persons of poor and mean condition

This disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and the powerful, and to despise, or, at least, to neglect persons of poor and mean condition, though necessary both to establish and to maintain the distinction of ranks and the order of society, is, at the same time, the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments. That wealth and greatness are often regarded with the respect and admiration which are due only to wisdom and virtue; and that the contempt, of which vice and folly are the only proper objects, is often most unjustly bestowed upon poverty and weakness, has been the complaint of moralists in all ages.

We desire both to be respectable and to be respected. We dread both to be contemptible and to be contemned. But, upon coming into the world, we soon find that wisdom and virtue are by no means the sole objects of respect; nor vice and folly, of contempt. We frequently see the respectful attentions of the world more strongly directed towards the rich and the great, than towards the wise and the virtuous. We see frequently the vices and follies of the powerful much less despised than the poverty and weakness of the innocent. To deserve, to acquire, and to enjoy the respect and admiration of mankind, are the great objects of ambition and emulation. Two different roads are presented to us, equally leading to the attainment of this so much desired object; the one, by the study of wisdom and the practice of virtue; the other, by the acquisition of wealth and greatness. Two different characters are presented to our emulation; the one, of proud ambition and ostentatious avidity. the other, of humble modesty and equitable justice.

There is a Justice Way
Posted by Guy C. Stevenson

_______________
"Missing the point of empowerment"