Reinventing America: The Dawning of the Age of Economus

Repeatedly, the American economy has suffered through periodic booms and busts. These cycles are growing more frequent, and disastrous to any quest for economic stability to which a grounded economic power--which we claim to be--must aspire.

The model is broken. Incentive capitalism, with no cap imposed on breakaway greed and with irregular, inconsistent regulation, has become an irresponsible economic model for most of us. Our "middle class," BTW, is much poorer than it has ever been relative to the very few super-rich among us.

With the auto industry sliding out of sight, the banking system no longer bankable, and vital credit markets frozen, we need to face reality: we are being forced to reinvent an America rooted since its inception in freedom to profit (i.e., make as much money as you can and the hell with everybody else). 

Digitization, spurred by the drive toward maximizing efficiency, is to blame. A friction-free economy--written about here December 31, 2007--is a digital vortex that sucks all economic processes into itself, a black hole from which is heard an alluring siren song: come, come, an ideal economy is possible! Jupiter will align with Mars! It is the Age of Economus!! 

The downside is...the whole dang economic model will have to be rethought and reinvented. Here are a few inevitabilities for you to think about:

• Everyone will be obligated to contribute, somehow. If you cannot contribute, for physical or psychological reasons, you will be provided enough to live comfortably. The minimum wage will be sufficient to live on.
• The maximum wage will also be in place and firmly regulated. The age of The Gunslinger--as "Adam Smith" (George J.W.  Goodman) termed the testosterone-fueled Wall Street finance managers of the 1960s--is long gone. We must settle on what is Enough Per Year, and that will become the salary cap, period. Those Lords of Finance who maintain a luxurious lifestyle will have five years to prepare to live like human beings, not like emperors.
  
• The death penalty is dismissed. It is abhorrent in a civilized society, which we claim to be. Rehabilitation in prison will prove to be successful when it is actually instituted. Anyone can be rehabilitated unless psychological damage is irreversible. Look here: we need all the human resources we can muster. All oars must be in the water, everybody rowing.
  
• Health care is available to all citizens. Period. Likewise, quality education. Likewise, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Hate crimes are punishable by imprisonment until rehabilitation is clearly demonstrated. 
• Medical system leaders, education chiefs, government honchos and business heads are at the top of the food chain in salary. They all make highest salaries possible, and exactly the same. Everyone else scales down from there. No more chubby bonuses, fat boy. 
• Bipartisanship in politics is, well, absolutely necessary. A pipe dream? Well, so was The United States of America, in the beginning. 
• The most efficient system is...a Single Data Network (SDN). This network will capture everyone's historical, educational, vocational and medical data. This network is a cluster of databases which includes a financial system, a database of all citizen records, a tracking system for visitors to the U.S., and a continually updated record of people's job functions. If you're on the planet and in the U.S., you're in the SDN. We'll all have proper electronic ID cards. And the SDN will be backed up every night on a little hard drive in my home office :). 

This final item--the SDN--is the kicker. What happens to competition when everyone is on the same network? If Safeway, Albertson's, and Walmart are no longer competing with lower prices and better service, well, why should people work harder?

Because it's the right thing to do. Slackers need not apply. In fact, slackers will need to be remotivated. 

If all this sounds like a totalitarian nightmare with everyone trudging along, tied to the oars, rowing, rowing--well, we're already there. We're just not getting paid like Bill Gates and Michael Bloomberg. It's time we started to work for each other, to take care of each other, like an evolved tribe of people. One day we will. After we finish reinventing America.  But first, we will have to deal with a rapidly contracting economy which will spin off job functions like drops of water sailing off a bicycle tire in the rain. 

As the pundits and the President remind us, we are not anywhere near the bottom, the turnaround, yet.

One final suggestion as we power down capitalism: study the successful economies which have a working form of socialism, e.g., Canada, Sweden, Syria, others. Reverse-engineer their economies in a way that is most palatable to a failed capitalistic nation (that would be us). Sell the solution to a public which may be at 25% unemployment by that point. We are not there yet. But just wait. Keep your day job as long as you can.