Time was before planning for the automobile. With the automobile-based development, or sprawl, came the demise of the mom-and-pop stores upon which the entire structure of capitalism was based. Hardly anybody walks from their house to the store anymore and, if you tried to sell anything from your house today, you would be cited for a zoning violation. Your neighbors deserted the local stores when the national stores started opening up branches “convenient” to the highway. Some of the national chains moved into the vacated storefronts, got the town to knock down some other houses with storefronts, and to seize the backyards by eminent domain so they could put up a parking lot to “serve” Main Street. The local manufacturing companies got fewer orders, none from the national retail chains, of course. As those companies failed, the remaining local stores started stocking fewer local items, until you couldn’t tell the difference between the mom-and-pops and the chains. The only real difference was the mom-and-pops were less convenient to the automobile driver. The mom-and-pops become denigrated even as they try to conform to sprawl. People actually talk about a new chain store opening up as if that was something to be proud of. At that point, capitalism is dead in their town. To be certain, there are, here and there, some vestiges of capitalism left, though they may strike us as unremarkable. It was always misleading to characterize capitalism as a road to unfathomable riches. People confuse it with debt and global mercantilism, with the creditor sultans oppressing their people, which is very much in evidence.

The Localsville Canned Beans company was bought up by investors from out-of-town using borrowed money — it was purchased in a leveraged buyout by General Foods — and General Foods now grows and cans the Localsville Canned Beans in South America. The plant is closed and the people in Localsville, those who are left, now work and shop in the Walmart down Highway 666. They had to cancel the parade this year. They didn’t choose a Localsville Canned Beans Queen, either.

Copyright © 2011 by C. P. Klapper

The Popular Capitalist View

A key part of the Popular Capitalist program is to reduce the cost of living.  A lower cost of providing the necessities puts the rudimentary task of paying the cost of sovereignty more easily within the reach of the political economies of regions with modest resources.  This allows those political economies and thus most political economies to offer its citizens opportunities to reach beyond mere survival and build capital that will benefit their communities for years to come.  Also, a lower cost of the living beyond survival makes those efforts at building capital more attainable.

Many authors throughout the ages have touted the solitary life and its cheapness as a model for sustainability and meaning, yet much purpose is lost in spending so much of the day in mundane tasks.  The economies of the hermit’s survival mode are not as great as the efficient production of goods in factories.  Nor can that life be as fulfilling as one where knowledge, wisdom and art are shared among members of a community.  For that, people and material must get together in one place on a fairly regular basis and finished goods distributed as frequently.  This is accomplished by some system of transportation, which should be made as affordable as possible to accommodate survival and a simple but civilized life while keeping it inexpensive for more ambitious tasks.  But what is needed to make sure that people use the transportation system enough to accomplish these goals?

It is often said in real estate that there are three important things: location, location and location.  The reason why we often quote it and accept it is that it expresses a fundamental truth about that business: all of the other important things in real estate are either dependent upon location or part of achieving goodness in that area.  This does not mean, however, that hopes, expectations or even a plan for good location are important.  Just because a location should be a good location does not mean that it is.  There can be some factor that is missed by the seller that is picked up by a prospective buyer and which causes him to either not bid on a property or to realize a great bargain.  Conversely there can be something that the seller does not reveal to the buyer that dupes a buyer.  Eventually, the fools with money become harder to find.  Eventually, the truth will out and a market that knows the true goodness of a location will be based on location.

We can go through the other factors.  Is price important? Yes, but the price will be driven by demand and demand is driven by location.  Is the quality of building important?  Yes, but only if it is useful and usefulness is driven by location.  Is the presence of good jobs or stores important?  Yes, but that is part of what makes a location.  Is the absence of natural hazards, such as floods or earthquakes, important?  Yes, but again that is part of what makes a good location.  A property can be had for practically nothing and have a gorgeous building solidly built, but if it is located far from anywhere people would want to be, it will languish on the market with no buyers.

A similar dictum applies in transportation: the three most important things in transportation are frequency, frequency and frequency.  Whatever else is important in transportation is either driven by it or is part of achieving goodness in that area.  As with real estate and location, hopes, expectations or schedules showing good frequency are not important.  It is the actuality of good frequency that is important, not the opinion of officials that frequency should be good or, even worse, is good enough.  The public, or some portion of it, can be duped for a time by promises of frequent service.  Eventually, though, the truth will out and the personal horror stories will travel quickly through the offices and school functions.  Then the public will make their next decision of where to work or where to live or just how to get from one to the other based on the true goodness of frequency of a transportation service.

What then is good frequency?  We need to be clear about this so that we know exactly what we should be achieving.  Here we part company with real estate.  The goodness of location can be changed and whatever is good now is most important; the sins of the past are forgiven.  This not so with transportation.  Because transportation is most memorable when it is needed most urgently, the sins of the past present a danger for the future.  It is the worst frequency that is remembered, while the best is forgotten.  Similarly, it is the most unusual need and circumstance that is used to judge transportation.  The early-morning rush to deliver an important project is a more important transportation need than the daily commute.  What this comes down to is this: the frequency of a transportation system is the longest time between a person’s intended departure time and the next departure time of the transportation system for a trip in which the user reaches his destination.

Is speed important? Yes, but the rider is only concerned about the total time from when he needs to leave to when he arrives.  The total time is driven by frequency. The fastest train in the world that runs once a day is of no use to him.  Conversely, very slow train makes frequency difficult by tying up too many engines and cars.  A stopped train makes frequency impossible since it can not be said to be providing service at all.  Is location important? Yes, but frequent transportation creates its own demand.  Once business owners feel assured that their workers, or their prospective replacements, can get to a new location in time, they will see that location as viable for their workforce.  Similarly, if they are convinced that the location has frequent service for freight, they will find the location viable for acquiring raw materials and shipping the finished product.

Note that frequency of service is important for both passenger and freight transportation.  A promise to ship a package by 10 am if it is presented by 5pm or even 9pm the previous day is of no use to a contractor with a deliverable ready by 4am for a government client expecting it by 8 am.  Alternatives are used, such as a weary contractor driving their car in the wee hours of the morning and hand-delivering the computer tape.  I know because I have been that contractor and I use overnight shippers sparingly as a result.  But if there was a shipper who I could bring a package to at any time of the day and be assured that within a half hour my package would be on its way, reach its destination a little faster than with me driving the distance and be delivered to the client no more than a half hour after reaching the depot, well then I would use that shipper over not only the once-a-night shipper but also over making an early morning trek in an automobile.  The reason is frequency.

We should not forget, however, that there are other types of transportation besides the powered kind.  Most of us are blessed with the ability to move our bodies from one place to another without the assistance of a motor and without the trappings of a conveyance.  The pedestrian mode of transportation we have in walking is the least expensive and most frequent form of transportation available.  It is also the most convenient for short distances, requiring only a walkway.  Other forms of transportation require more space for their conveyances to move from point to point, roads for vehicles and waterways for ferries, barges, boats and ships.  This additional space and its use by these conveyances can and often does interfere with pedestrian traffic, making it less efficient than it would be without the roads and canals in the walkers’ path.  Therefore our goal above to not let the transportation for more ambitious travels make our simple, civilized and necessary transportation more costly implies that all vehicular traffic be kept to the borders of our pedestrian communities and that those communities have no roads but only walkways.  Any space should be used to enhance the quality of life in that community, namely with parks, squares and open air markets.  Further, every opportunity should be given to allow pedestrians to access other communities without burdening them with a vehicle for which there is neither space nor purpose at home.  Thus, rail and other forms of public transportation with easy access at the borders of the pedestrian neighborhood is preferred, as long as the railroad or roadway does not present a hazard to the people in that community.  So subways, contained elevated rails or monorails would be acceptable whereas rails at pedestrian grade, especially those crossing pedestrian paths, would not.

Extending this scheme outwards does not require personal automobiles for transportation; such would be relegated to amusements or within the confines of communities which enjoy the smell of petroleum in the morning.  There would also be communities which prefer horses for local travel, probably combined with their use in agriculture, and these would be more sustainable than the motor towns.  Beyond the local environs, each level of government can and should own and operate public transportation which connects the municipalities, counties or states at the next level down.  This is one point on which the United States has failed to properly implement its federal ideal.

A more immediate issue, though, is how we get to there from here.  How do we transform our expensive, wasteful, dangerous and uncivilized transportation system into one which is affordable, efficient, safe and cosmopolitan?  The answer, again, lies in frequency.  By passing development laws favorable to pedestrian communities, such as those favoring mixed-use, infill and vehicle-free development, as well as abolishing all requirements for roads and parking, especially near existing train stations, we can start the process of transforming sprawl into walkable villages.  Next, by using smaller vehicles, such as vans and cars, and running them every fifteen minutes throughout the day and night, we can better establish new lines until the ridership increases enough to move gradually to buses and, eventually, to trains.  Once a solid, federally structured (as in municipality-county-state) transportation system is in place, then we can place more stringent requirements on those who wish to drive automobiles.  Raising the driving age to 21 would no longer be a burden on teenagers needing to get to school or work if they can get there more conveniently and safely by public transportation or walking.  Requiring retesting of all drivers every five years also becomes less onerous for the same reason. It is one of the great absurdities of the United States, and of New Jersey in particular, that we have made it a necessity to drive in most of both.  We can change that in New Jersey.

We can change that in New Jersey and be surprised as our air becomes cleaner, asthma is reduced, obesity declines and prosperity increases.  Or perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised.

Image courtesy of www.freephotosbank.com

The election of the next New Jersey Governor is fast upon us with only one real issue being addressed, that of property taxes and the public education system which it currently funds.  Each of the three major candidates – and by “major” I mean that they are on the ballot and on television – has taken up a predictable strategic position on this issue.

The Democratic incumbent looks at who is inclined or might be convinced to vote for a Democratic candidate and notices that most of them rent.  They do not care about property taxes; that is their landlord’s problem and they are not exactly friends.  Even among the homeowners in the Democratic base, the bigger concern is with their local school, especially if they are depending on their high school seniors getting scholarships to pay for college based on good grades at good schools.  The appeal of the Democrat to these voters that he is “investing in our future” and “has the right priorities” is signaling that he will make sure that the schools will have a great reputation no matter what the cost.  He throws a bone to the stray non-Democrat that he will increase taxes on the “wealthy” — and by “wealthy” he means those with high incomes serving as sacrificial lambs for inherited or previously acquired wealth – rather than increase the property tax, or not too much.  Yes, he will really try this time to keep property taxes under control as he makes the tough choices of how to pay for education.

The Republican challenger looks at who is inclined or might be convinced to vote for a Republican candidate and notices that most of them own their own home, with a good number of those no longer having children in the public schools, if they ever did.  Even if they have school-age children, these voters have been long since disaffected by the incessant Democratic Party propaganda which so many of the teachers engage in, that they have opted out and enrolled their children in private or religious schools.  Overwhelmingly, the Republican base gains no benefit from the public school and sees the property taxes which pay for them as wasted money.  They hear about the “Obama hymn” in Burlington and, though disgusted, they are not surprised: “Typical!” would be their cry.  Thus, the pledge of the Republican to reduce property taxes by reducing spending is signaling that he is going to not only run a tight ship but, if necessary to reduce property taxes to bearable levels, will not be afraid to gut the schools by forcing the districts to make do with austerity budgets.  To the stray non-Republican, he throws the bone of  “charter schools” which are supposed to be an improvement over existing inner-city public schools.  He thus makes his appeal to the parents of children in truly awful high schools and, though he expects this to save a lot of money, he assures them that he is doing this to make the schools better for the kids.  Yes, he will really try not to shortchange education as he makes the tough decisions of how to balance the budget while cutting taxes.

The major independent candidate takes up a middle position of promising voters that they can have their cake and eat it, too.  In all candor, he must admit that the cake is not appetizing, nor much of a prize to hold.  Still, he is hoping that enough Democratic voters are fed up with the corruption and scandals in their party and governor that they will switch to him as a friend to education in some vague, general sense.  With more emphasis, he is pledging to reduce property taxes and even has a plan for that, appealing to Republican voters straight up.  The details show that he is targeting the blue-collar Republican voters because they would rather be taxed on income they don’t have than on the assessed value of the property they do.  The impression is thus left that the major independent is a spoiler for the Democrats, taking away more votes from the Republican than the Democratic candidate.  Insidious allegations are made that he was “entered into” the race for this express purpose.

I would agree with the former statement, but not the latter.  The major independent was, perhaps, overly confident about the number of voters willing to vote for him because he was neither Democrat nor Republican.  Most likely, he still is as he seeks to broaden his appeal beyond that base to other voters most likely to vote against the Democratic incumbent.  However, neither he nor the Republican challenger, who is also courting the disaffected Democrats, seem to recognize that they need to appeal also to the Democrats who are not disaffected in order to win the election.  If the major independent becomes a spoiler, it will because the Republican candidate let him be one by failing to go after the Democratic base.  One or both of these challengers need to advocate and highlight an explicit plan for educational reform that is fundamentally that and believably so.  I am not, however, optimistic that they can do so with about a week before the election.

You will note that I have not mentioned names in this discourse.  That is because from the popular capitalist perspective, the personalities involved in drafting policy are less important to the people than the policy itself.  I will offer up my own, Carl Peter Klapper, as the creator and most interested advocate of the policy I put forward now.  Though you will not see me on the ballot, you can write my name in for Governor of New Jersey.  Or, since we have the new, undefined, yet very public office of Lieutenant Governor, you can write me in for that and confound the parties in the game of unblemished electoral lambs they have been playing by creating this office.  So, without further ado, here is the Popular Capitalist view of and plan for property taxes and educational reform.

1. Abolish property taxes.  Just off them in true Soprano State fashion.  We defer discussion of the education budget and funding until later.  Besides, property taxes have nothing to do with that.  It was always a false connection, a Gordian knot tying property taxes to school budgets.  What smart people like Alexander the Great do with a Gordian knot is to cut it.  And so do we.
2. Put the schools under the jurisdiction of the municipalities, under a municipal education department.  In some cases, schools would be administered at the county level on behalf of municipalities where the school population is too small.  This makes the schools accountable to the people in the town or county where they operate and thus far more accountable to anybody than the cross-jurisdictional school districts are.  Further, this makes all school staff and administrators municipal employees and appointed officials.
3. Standardize position descriptions, the formula for staffing levels and pay scales at the state level.  This would be a decision by the Governor and the executive branch which needs to stay within the budget authorized by the legislature for education as for all other municipal, county and state agencies and departments. The state budget for municipal and county educational staffing will pay for all mandated positions, which I will make almost entirely for teachers. The municipalities and the counties would still be able to fund additional positions through their own revenue.  This reform prevents the featherbedding abuses that are keeping money from being spent on our children.
4. Establish a New Jersey Board of Regents with a charge to create a published course-based curriculum for all public schooling through masters level, design certifying examinations for every course,  frequently administer these exams and establish course requirements for diplomas and degrees. The Board will consist of current presidents of colleges and universities in New Jersey, receiving a small stipend for their time in meetings to set policy and appoint chiefs of each curriculum subject department.  The staff of the board will be led by these chiefs, who are experts in their subjects.  This method of certification and granting diplomas and degrees will allow pupils from a variety of educational settings to proceed independently and receive their high school diplomas when they have mastered the courses required for graduation.  This will be a drastic improvement over the current “social advancement” method which moves students through the schools and graduates them for warming a chair.
5. Allow municipal education departments to offer elective courses for which they may charge a fee.  This would be the preferred way for municipalities to pay for their local educational offerings.  An education department may choose to open some courses to adults.
6. As part of my proposal for establishing municipal medical departments, a medical curriculum will be devised and staff allocated to each municipality to teach courses in medicine leading to certification as doctors and nurses.
7. Change the school calendar to an annual trimester system, with the school day expanded to 8 hours.  In transitioning from the current grade-level system, kindergarten and grades 2, 4, 6 and 8 would be taught in one trimester and grades 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12 would be taught in two trimesters.  This would not only streamline the traditional K-12 education, it would also allow college-level courses to be taught at an earlier age and, because of the independent administration of the Regents exams through masters, allow diligent students in whatever neighborhoods to earn a college or post-graduate degree without leaving their homes or having to pay to go to college.  As an aside, speaking as someone whose family could not afford vacation trips, I would have much rather accelerated through school during the summer vacation months than to try to stay cool in the sweltering heat of July and August.  I expect that this is the view of poor students throughout New Jersey.

It should be clear now why I did not immediately describe how education would be paid for in the absence of a property tax.  The educational reforms I am proposing change the nature and costs of the educational system, as any real reform must.  You can go through my points and see reduced and additional costs, but in the absence of any measure or approximation of the magnitude of those ups and down you would be at a loss to determine whether we spend less or more after the reforms.  However, if you consider which governments pay for this system and which elected body decides what will be paid, the improvement is clear.

Under the current system, property owners pay for the system in their town, even though they might not have had children, let alone children in school now.  This sets up a false conflict between property owners and parents of school-age children.  The property owners are paying through municipal governments for systems administered by separate school districts representing the parents of schoolchildren and the teachers’ union.  But even the school districts do not always determine school expenses.  The state issues unfunded mandates regularly dictating what must be paid.  But whether the state or the school districts decide the school budget, those are different governmental entities representing different constituencies from those who pay the bills.  Consequently, the people can choose neither the quality of schooling nor its expense.  Parents, like myself, who want better public education for their children and are willing to pay for it are forced into austerity budgets by homeowners who don’t, and vice versa.  The teachers’ union, an entity unto itself that controls the state, forces bad schools on the  parents and extravagant budgets on the homeowners.

In my administration, the people, not the parents, nor the homeowners,  nor yet the teacher’s union, would decide what will be spent on instruction and will pay for it themselves.  If the people decide through their state assembly and senators that they are willing to pay x dollars for instruction in the public schools, then x dollars will be paid for by state revenue in the state budget, and the Governor will structure the pay for teachers, principals and other school workers so that the state school budget adequately staffs the schools.  If some teachers or administrators think they can do better outside the state or teaching, nothing is keeping them from leaving and nothing is keeping the municipal education departments from replacing them.  If the pay scale is not realistic in one or more areas, then there will be a shortage which will force the Governor to either increase pay in those areas or reduce staffing requirements until the pay scale and the staffing requirements are consistent with the budget and the labor market.  If the people in a municipality want to expand offerings, they can do so and place the burden on those parents and students who wanted the new classes through course fees.  Further, the students themselves can determine how many classes they need to attend by taking and passing some Regents course exams without instruction.  Students could even earn degrees locally without the expense of college, a great boon for their parents that would more than compensate for the minor cost of the Regents exams for college courses and any state-mandated or locally offered classes their children require.  Lest we forget, this applies to medical education as well, opening up this field to children from poor families without the debilitating med school loans and with a ready opportunity in the many municipal medical departments throughout the state.

So I ask the Democratic voters, particularly, why vote for a Democratic candidate who does not offer you what I have: a public educational system that serves you and the aspirations of your children?  If you agree that I would do a better job, if you share my dream of helping our children fulfill their dreams, then help our cause by spreading the word and writing in Carl Peter Klapper for Governor of New Jersey.

And forget about old what’s his name.

There is a lot of confusion in our business world about what is or is not personal which seems, to this observer, designed to misplace our sympathies.  A deliberate legal fiction that a corporation be treated like a person, so that it gain some benefit thereby, has been accepted as fact. Glib sales talk, intended to make a high price for a house more palatable, is taken as the gospel truth.  But beyond the initial trickery is the molding of our minds and hearts to endorse, in the same breath, compassion for the dear, old corporation in dire straits who may be left out in the proverbial cold without a few, small billions of dollars and callous disregard for real people who will be left out in the real cold because their home is in a house for which some investments have soured.

To be sure, the patent absurdity of both situations becomes briefly apparent to even the talking heads on television.  But then the corporation and the home dweller are colored in the tones of hero and villain, respectively, so that the public compassion, which believes everything it sees and hears on television, can continue to be misplaced.  The corporation is an industrial giant with millions of employees who will lose their jobs and, it is assumed, all chance for future income if it fails.  Or the corporation is a financial conglomerate which will lose the pensions of millions of widows and orphans if their investments sour, of course through no fault of their own.  These true-blue American multinational conglomerates are neighbors in need of our help.  At the other end of the melodramatic chasm lies the evil homeowner who has greedily bought a million dollar home, which we assume is more spacious and luxurious than a two bedroom condo.  This sinister foreigner, whose family illegally entered the country in 1848, does not have the income to support his extravagant lifestyle.  Certainly, he has misrepresented his finances and fabricated documents to support his perjury because the loan officer would not have otherwise extended a mortgage to someone so manifestly unqualified.  So our beloved television news, minions to the financial-political complex, breathe a sigh of relief as trillions of tax dollars are given to personified companies while dehumanized people are victimized by those same companies.

These things ought not to be.  More hopefully, we can make sure that they no longer happen by striking at their hearts with the stake of truth.  Both falsehoods should be stricken down, but I have already addressed the second in a previous article somewhat by advocating Adjustable Equity Mortgages so that the purchase of a house to serve as a home does not become a tool of speculation.  For the rest we will focus on the first fiction.

A corporation is a government, not a person.  Consider the operation of a corporation compared to that of a government on one hand and a person on the other.  A corporation has laws, which they call “bylaws”.  A government has laws, but a person does not.  A corporation is owned by stockholders who vote on various matters and sometimes for leaders, such as board members.  A government is owned by its citizens who vote on various matters and sometimes for leaders, such as members of a legislative council.  Persons are just themselves and if they have to take a vote to decide matters we admit them to a psychiatric hospital.  A corporation has paid servants, who are called “employees” who do the business of the corporation.  A government has civil servants who do the business of government.  A person may hire a domestic, if they are wealthy enough, but the domestic is doing the other stuff that gets in the way of the person doing their business.  A corporation can continue well beyond the life of any one officer, stockholder or employee.  A government can continue well beyond the life of any one officer, citizen or civil servant.  A person continues just as far as their life, no more, no less.  It should be fairly clear from the foregoing that a corporation is indeed a government and not a person.

Since a corporation is a government, it is necessarily in conflict with other governments, both other corporations as well as the governments of the people.  As Adam Smith pointed out in “The Wealth of Nations”, companies should be in conflict with each other:

People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.

— Adam Smith, “The Wealth of Nations”, Book I, Chapter X

However, as a corporation grows in size it engages in such conversations regularly within itself.  And as it grows in scope beyond that of a public government, it is able to implement those conspiracies with impunity.  It must be pointed out that the nature of contrivances is a bit broader than Smith described.  The goal, after all, is profits and the price of the product sold is only half of the equation.  The other half is the price of the resources used to manufacture that product.  It is that other half that has been used by large corporations whose scope extends beyond the jurisdiction of public governments to eliminate competing companies with more limited scope.  For example, cheap labor in another state or another country can be used to drive out local competition with prices that would leave no profit for any company using only local labor.  Because the multi-state company is not under the jurisdiction of a single state, it is able to play one state off of another in offering employment and income to its people and thus become a government more powerful than the governments elected by the people.  As such, they pose a threat to the people and their liberty and power much greater than that posed by their state government.  The popular capitalist, in seeking power to the people first and then, as necessary, to smaller, local governments more under their control, opposes these multi-state corporations as a usurpation of power.

Many have pointed out a similar problem with multinational corporations and have railed against them for decades.  However, their attempts to curb those greater powers have been in vain.  It seems clear to me that their failure is in attempting to control multinational governments with national governments.  Similarly, attempts to control multi-state governments with state governments will come to naught.  The best tactic is not to control them, but to exclude them.  Rather than placing regulations on all companies doing business in the state or require certain benefits or impose additional taxes to ensure that the multi-state corporations are “good citizens” — and thus fall into the personification trap – we should only allow corporations which are registered in the state to operate within the state.  If the products of an out-of-state corporation are so superior or so inexpensive to produce, they will remain so as imports, but they will not be assured of a lack of competition in the state.  And with respect to retailers, whom we used  to call “merchants”, we have no use for out-of-state corporations.  Many a capitalist entrepreneur has started as a merchant who saw an opportunity in a new idea or product.  That is the type of capitalist we would like every citizen to become or ally themselves with as a capitalist investing in their new venture.  Not from the national big-box, but from the local corner store comes the popular capitalists.

There seem to be some persistent and wrong assumptions about policy issues that are used to frame positions and prescriptions such as mine, particularly in the currently volatile subject of medical or health care reform. So, in order to better the understanding and serious consideration of what I have presented here, I have decided to take a step back and place medicine and its reform in an economic context.

Medical care has not always been a market. Because of the pressure of history and long tradition, it is not exactly a real market even today. Doctors still make decisions contrary to cost-benefit analysis but consistent with the Hippocratic Oath. Hospitals still treat indigent patients, though the for-profit hospitals do so because of laws written in memory of the mission of their predecessors: municipal and charity hospitals. We even have federal government programs to pay for the medical expenses of the poor and elderly, not by giving them X dollars to spend in a market where the doctors and patients are bidding and offering, but by giving the doctors a more or less blank check. There was never such a market for healthcare, so there was not a basis and history of market pricing for public or private insurance to go on.

Instead, what has been used by insurers to dispute or challenge the medical fees has been the usual and customary rates (UCRs). This is fundamental to understanding the economics of medicine both with and without insurance. In insuring anything traded on an actual market, current prices and price history on that market for that commodity or service, or a near-substitute, would be used to appraise the value of a commodity insured or of the need for a service insured against and thus the payout for loss or need, respectively. UCRs are an admission that this is not the case in medicine and that something quite different applies, namely a rate schedule. Such a schedule is arbitrary in the particular, leading to fees which are in whole dollars divisible by 5, like $15 or $20 rather than $17.43. If he has too many of one kind of case to his liking and there is another doctor in town he can push some of those cases to, he can raise the rate for that service. At least, he could do that before the insurers took over. Now he has to remove the bunion and take the UCR, or refer all of the cases to a podiatrist. The UCR, however, is based on an a la carte view of medicine which misinterprets the rate schedule as particular charges for each service and thus considers the portion of the fee which incorporates general physician preferences or distastes as actual costs.

A more serious criticism of UCRs as a measure of cost pertains to the aspect of the rate schedule which is less arbitrary. The array of doctor’s fees are, in the aggregate, more finely tuned to what the typical patient in his community can afford, than any particular fee to actual cost or even affordability. This is how doctors’ fees in the larger towns would generally increase or decrease as a group for all doctors in the town. When the townsfolk are more prosperous, or inflation has set in, the fees for the typical patient would go up. When the iron mill closes and half the town is out of work, the fees would go down. Sometimes there was a divide between the rich and the rest, so that affordability was worked out through a sliding scale. In that case, there is no one UCR schedule, even for a single community, but one for each wealth group. With their basis in affordability, the general level of the community rate schedules bore no relationship whatsoever to costs.

When insurance comes into the equation, the fees are not entirely paid directly by the patients, as they had been in the past. Instead, the insurer pays a portion of each fee and the patient pays the rest. Thus, the schedule of rates to the patient is a fraction of the schedule of rates to the insurer. Doctors know, then, that they can charge higher fees to the insurer without any change in the affordability to the patient. For example, if the patient pays 20% and the insurer pays 80%, the doctors can charge five times their pre-insurance fees without a change in the affordability of their rate schedule to the patient. This provides an inexorable opportunity which the insurer’s adoption of a formalized process of determining a uniform UCR schedule can only delay but not prevent. The higher rates in wealthy urban and sprawl communities supplant the cheaper ones in rural and poor communities. Further, new procedures and new services can be introduced at already inflated rates as uncontested UCRs.

This, then, is how insurance causes an escalation of medical fees. Note that the nature of the insurer is immaterial. This happens with both private and public insurers. Among the private insurers, it happens with both non-profit and for-private companies. It is a logically inevitable, mechanical outcome to the imposition of insurance onto an affordability-based fee schedule. Thus, the high price of medicine under insurance is not caused by greed. In fact, the causality is in the opposite direction.

Doctors, by creed and long tradition, are concerned only about their patients. They do not care about insurers or whether they can save them a dime. Thus, they have no qualms about overcharging insurers as long as their patients are not hurt. With employers providing health insurance as a benefit, indeed being considered a “good” employer on the basis of that benefit alone, even the higher premiums resulting from the inflated fees did not hurt the patients, as long as they remained employed by an employer who remained “good”. And so the doctors overcharged, took payments from the insurers and thereby got the taste of money themselves. Then, just as they were getting greedy from the windfall that insurance produced, other more traditionally greedy groups saw an opportunity to grab a little bit of the action for themselves. Private educational institutions, with their sanctimonious greed for grander buildings and facilities in the advancement of learning and their own research interests, saw an alliance with a fledgling professional association as an opportunity to advance their development plans and offer a lengthier medical program with exorbitant tuitions which the new doctors could pay back with the inflated fees. Greedy trial lawyers saw a new class of people to sue on the flimsiest of grounds and tried to appear sanctimonious as they brought malpractice suits against medical teams for not saving one life out of a hundred in peril. Private companies bought hospitals and ran them like businesses, with hefty salaries for management and huge returns for the investors. The insurers, led by sleezy businessmen or corrupt government officials, feeling left out, started going for-profit, for-graft or for-power, and saw how they could pocket some of this wealth in higher salaries, lavish office complexes and innumerable employees to lord over. All they had to do was deny claims on technicalities, force doctors to prescribe from the formulary of cheaper but less effective or inappropriate medicines and increase deductibles and co-pays, in short, create “bean counter medicine”. In every part of the new medical establishment, insurance has introduced greed and fostered corruption.

Therefore, there cannot be any medical reform without the elimination of insurance from all facets of medicine. Nor can there be any reduction in medical fees without ending the insurance windfall. It does not matter whether there is one insurer rather than ten, single-payer or public option or the same cast of sorry characters. None of these represents real change because none removes insurance from medicine. To use a self-referential metaphor, insurance is the disease which is killing medicine. And there is no homeopathic response here, insurance being like a cancer. There is no cure but to remove it.

That is why I am so insistent on direct and free provision of medical services. If your local medical department sends a doctor on a house call to see your sick child, there would be no payment, just as there would be no payment for the fire department to send a truck to put out the fire in your house. With no payment, there would be no cost to insure against and thus no need or avenue for insurance. The medical department would pay the doctor a salary, like the fire departments, other than the volunteer ones, pay their firefighters. Of course, doctors would be paid more than firefighters. They may even find themselves earning more than they do now, if municipal workers are exempted from civil lawsuits. Not having to pay malpractice insurance would be a huge savings for the doctors. It would also be a huge savings for the public since many malpractice-inspired and medically unnecessary tests would no longer be performed. In these and so many other ways that municipal medical departments supplant insurance, they show that they are the only true cure for the ills of our medical system, the only true health care reform.

]]> http://johnsonvillepress.com/economics-of-medicine-carl-peter-klapper/feed/ 4 http://johnsonvillepress.com/fatherly-governance-carl-peter-klapper/ http://johnsonvillepress.com/fatherly-governance-carl-peter-klapper/#comments Mon, 06 Jul 2009 05:24:44 +0000 Alex G http://johnsonvillepress.com/?p=414 Read more »]]> The Popular Capitalist View

“Like as a father pities his children”, says the Psalmist, “so the Lord has mercy on those that fear him.” In this scripture and other sacred texts from a variety of faiths, we have a favorable image of fatherly governance as represented in a fatherly image of God. Yet with that image comes a distortion of its fatherliness. The omnipotence of God offers the potential of escape from every calamity Man can contrive and thus the prospect of remaining forever immature. An earthly and far less powerful father cannot offer this same assurance of relief from distress or even relief from any distress past his limited lifetime, so he must instead guide his children towards independence and maturity. Of course, there are still dangers not of his children’s doing that a father will shield them from, and nurturing care that a father will provide so that his children can grow up to be healthy and strong as well as mature. But the earthly father’s role is primarily leading his children to greater responsibility.

What then are we to make of definitions of fatherly governance, of paternalism, such as that provided by Answers.com: “A policy or practice of treating or governing people in a fatherly manner, especially by providing for their needs without giving them rights or responsibilities.” Clearly, the father model in this definition is rooted in the immature image of the deity as I described; even the Psalmist’s caveat of “fearing”, or respecting, the Lord is ignored. In a government, this translates into the promotion of immaturity and the enabling of destructive behaviors by its citizens. By contrast, a truly paternal government would give more rights and responsibilities to citizens in accordance to their mature handling of lesser rights and responsibilities. It is only after your son or daughter show that they can weed and prune and can carefully handle lesser power tools that you let them mow the lawn with a power lawnmower.

Popular capitalism takes this earthly father role as its inspiration for its own version of paternalistic government. The needs and dangers that might afflict a peaceful, innocent and responsible citizen would be warded off by a protective, popular capitalist government. However, the failure of business ventures, which any mature business owner would recognize as their own responsibility, would be allowed to proceed by a paternalistic popular capitalist government in its role as disciplinarian. “Spare the rod, spoil the child”, as it is written in Proverbs. Our current government has certainly spared the rod and kept big business from the discipline of the market so that now our economy is spoiled rotten. A popular capitalist administration would, on the contrary, have led us to maturity in business, with greater freedom in that arena for the successful and less freedom for the failures. By these incentives, popular capitalism encourages actions which increase freedom. As Independence Day follows Father’s Day, greater liberty follows the true paternal governance of popular capitalism.

All this is, I hope, fairly straightforward. However, there seems to be much confusion in the application of these concepts of fatherly governance—protection and discipline—to medical care. In any community, health is a public concern, no less than protection from crime and fire. Since time immemorial, from medicine men and women to the modern emergency rooms at even the most crassly mercenary for-profit hospitals, care has been provided to those who are unable to pay. The private practitioner, in the days before health insurance corrupted the profession, would help heal many patients who couldn’t pay or who paid in produce, livestock or services. Doctors have been, in all but name, civil servants, like the police and firefighters. Yet, the health care debate is peppered with comments about financial incentives to stay well and how this will supposedly reduce the cost of health care. What rubbish! Staying healthy and out of the hospital is incentive enough for most people to live healthy. Almost all of the rest have addictions which no financial incentive could hope to sway them from. Further, this ignores the sweep of infectious diseases and the aftermath of disasters from which a healthy lifestyle provides little protection.

Let us be frank. Health care has no business being a business. Health care is an almost exclusively local emergency and preventative service. To require that it meet business objectives is both absurd and cruel. Yet that is precisely what health insurance has done. Health insurance has subjected doctor’s decisions to review by accountants, overturning sound medical decisions to increase profits for the insurance companies. Worse, the health insurance companies support huge staffs and hordes of high-paid executives housed in large office complexes. The money for this has to come from somewhere and it is not a mystery where: premiums, minus what the insurer pays the doctors and hospitals. All the co-pays, deductibles and other dodges add to the insurance company profits. The amount they stiff the doctors and hospitals by rejecting claims and demanding the so-called “customary and usual” prices force the doctors and hospitals to increase their rates across the board. Every facet of the health insurance involvement in medicine has produced and will continue to produce massive increases in health care costs until we come to our senses and abolish health insurance.

But how can we assure health care for all without health insurance “coverage”? Fatherly governance demands that we protect the people in their health, as it demands that we protect them from crime and fire. So our model for true health care reform is staring us in the face. Medical departments should be created in each municipality to provide round-the-clock medical services, just as police and fire departments provide round-the-clock protection from crime and fire. Indeed, the medical departments would be following the example of their firefighting brethren in another respect; the model of providing firefighting through fire insurance was also a dismal failure. When your neighbor’s house is on fire, it is your problem, too, especially if the neighbor is not covered by insurance.

As I have mentioned elsewhere, the costs of these medical departments can be further reduced, after cutting out the insurance middle-man, by training new medical staff locally through the public schools and by establishing local teaching hospitals and medical schools. Tort reform, exempting municipalities from being sued for accidents occurring within their borders and for any inadequacy of a civil servant would help reduce costs still further. For this point, I would invoke the general rule that regulation produces better, more consistent performance at lower costs than litigation. Finally, eliminating the need for employers to provide health insurance will reduce labor costs drastically and generally, as well as specifically in the labor costs of medical department staff. On the other hand, the need for a job, as opposed to starting your own business, becomes less, so that the excuse of saving jobs becomes less acceptable in the propping up of business failures.

Even with the reduced costs, there will be some costs to maintaining minimal standards of care. Since these standards presumably come from the state and federal governments, it is their responsibility to pay for it. This allows the municipalities, themselves, to grow and to prosper without the burden of unfunded mandates.

In summary, popular capitalism protects and prepares the people for successful lives that contribute to the success of their community. In this way, it adopts the fatherly role and becomes representative of a true paternalism.

A frequent derogatory stereotype of the populists, especially of the more prominent ones, is of a demagogue, of someone appealing to the basest forms of popular opinion. In almost all cases, those who make the charge are the ones who are making that appeal. In any event, such allegations display a common confusion between populism and popularity. Populism, as I had defined it before, and consistent with the original aims of such noted populists as Tom Watson, of the Agrarian Populist Movement, and Huey Long, promotes power to the people, individually and without exception. “Popularity”, on the other hand, is the use of popular opinion to gain political power. That “popular opinion” is often fabricated and, at its most successful, consists of a personality cult. In that case, the opinions of the “popular one” automatically become the “popular opinion”. It goes without saying that the “popular opinions” are usually favorable to the organizations pushing them or the “popular one” and against the interests of the ordinary folk who do not lead those organizations, typically political parties. However, the substitution of people with party needs a mechanism, and that is precisely the demagogic process employed by the popular candidates.

For example, a mischaracterization of the Second National Bank and the efforts by Henry Clay to build what we would today call “infrastructure” as being exclusively to the benefit of the rich was used to portray Andrew Jackson as a “man of the people” and vilified Henry Clay as a demagogue who was not to be trusted. From that point on, Andrew Jackson could do or think no wrong, and Henry Clay could do no right in the eyes of “popular opinion”. In actuality, Jackson’s blatant racism, murderous partisanship and corrupt system of patronage show him to be conclusively the worst President of the United States and, with his Vice-President John C. Calhoun, the one most responsible for leading the country towards the Civil War. Henry Clay, on the other hand, did the most of any politician to delay the coming of that conflict and to assure that the forces of freedom were well equipped to win when it finally came. In the political struggle between Clay and Jackson, Clay was the “populist” and Jackson the “Popular Leader”.

The struggle continued throughout our history with different characters. Many times there was no populist of any real prominence or threat, and such as were there being dismissed as “spoilers” in the Popular Leadership battles. Such has been the case more recently, where George W. Bush is the scapegoat of choice to advance the cause of The Great Popular Leader Obama. Obama would never have become President if Bush was not vilified.

It is typical of all popular candidates that, when the weaknesses of their own positions and policies are discovered, the scapegoat is pulled out of the closet to restore their sagging popularity. Popular leaders need that scapegoat as a bogeyman because their political power is based on their relative popularity rather than on serving the public interest. Nixon served that role for Carter and most Democrats for decades afterwards. “Liberals in Congress” served the role for the other Republicans in the Reagan era and afterwards, those who lacked Reagan’s cachet as a Goldwater Republican idealogue. Democrats tried to pin Johnson’s Goldwater label on Reagan – the whole “Ray-Gun” propaganda whereby we were supposed to be afraid of Reagan launching a nuclear holocaust — but then he confounded them by ending the Cold War and giving us a bit of a reprieve from nuclear anxiety. Clinton, a policy person like Reagan, also did not make a suitable bogeyman, so the Republicans had to fall back on “Liberals in Congress”. The Democrats obliged by running liberal Senators against George W. Bush, but then paved the way for a popularity run for his successor by vilifying Bush and his Vice-President Cheney. For Popular Leader Obama, Bush as bogeyman is his ace in the hole at least among his fellow Democrats.

As a populist looking at this, I am immune from such crass manipulation. I never bought into the “Bush is the devil” or “Cheney is the Devil” lines advanced by George Soros aka MoveOn.org. Quite frankly, I am ticked off at Soros for his incitement of violence by the young because it was and is a direct challenge to my parenting. So I am inclined to support any candidate Soros tries to vilify. I imagine that many independents are similarly disgusted by these tactics and that is only their use on the other side by Limbaugh and company that is keeping their wholesale defection from the approval side of Obama’s ratings.

Moving to a more local sphere, we see that Corzine’s attempts to summon the “Bush bogeyman” have fallen flat. Even in a heavily Democratic state, the people are not fooled by Corzine’s popularity tactics and clearly see his abject failure as a Governor. In poll after poll, the people overwhelmingly disapprove of Corzine’s performance in office. The only problem is that Christie is also a popular candidate so if he is elected, he will have to concentrate on playing the role of dragon slayer, rather than address any issues. Like a “fortunately-unfortunately” story, this outcome is not so bad, because New Jersey politics is such that it might take a whole term in office for him to kill those dragons of corruption.

Moving at last to my most local sphere, in the town of Edison, we have replaced one popular candidate with another. Choi got rid of some “good old boys” getting sweetheart deals from the township but brought in some of his own patronage buddies to “consult”. The Democrats returned the “old guard” who objected to Choi’s patronage. The people of the township are not well served by either of these groups. The key issue is the affordability of living in Edison, just as this is the key issue for the people of any locality. Both Democratic candidates, however, have endorsed the same single-use zoning which makes the citizens of Edison heavily dependent on transportation by automobile. Ricigliano had spearheaded and Choi supported the redevelopment of the old Ford Plant by Hartz Mountain into a shopping mall, exacerbating sprawl and automobile dependence. On the other hand, both Ricigliano and Choi rejected the mixed use Edison Train project which would have given Edison a pedestrian enclave with immediate access to mass transit, and which would have thus liberated people living in that development and its vicinity from the burdensome costs of owning, operating and maintaining a motor vehicle. The Democratic candidates for mayor prevented that liberation and left the town chained to the automobile. Clearly, the Democratic Party in Edison favors more sprawl development and the consequent dependence on automobiles and their gasoline fuel. If the Democrats continue to control Edison government, that crippling dependence will be assured. As gasoline prices resume their inevitable escalation, the prospects for Edison will be dire indeed as its citizens take their last trips from homes to which they can no longer afford to return.

Such is the glum fate to which popularity leads us at all levels of government. Issues are neglected in favor of spin and fear of bogeymen. At one time, it was common to say that elections should not be popularity contests. But the political parties and other supporters of popularity say they should be. So as the problems raised and solutions offered by populists and others are ignored by the popular leaders, we are led to a popular doom.

And we will be told that it is all Bush’s fault.

]]> http://johnsonvillepress.com/populism-v-popularity-carl-peter-klapper/feed/ 1 http://johnsonvillepress.com/the-public-interest-carl-peter-klapper/ http://johnsonvillepress.com/the-public-interest-carl-peter-klapper/#comments Mon, 25 May 2009 05:41:32 +0000 Alex G http://johnsonvillepress.com/?p=321 Read more »]]>

The Popular Capitalist View

Recent actions and initiatives, particularly on the federal level, have brought up the issue of how far the public interest extends and what the scope and nature of the public function ought to be in serving that interest. Popular Capitalism addresses this question by applying its core populist philosophy of advancing the cause of the individual against privately or publicly owned collectives, as well as against the predations and intimidations of more powerful individuals.

It does this primarily by assuring that government pay the cost of sovereignty for the political economy by directly paying to each independent citizen their cost of survival and to each household, the cost of survival of minor or infirm dependents under their care. This is what I refer to as “the provision of the necessities”. In addition, it requires that government provides to each new or prospective citizen the elementary civics education necessary to acquaint them with their legal rights and responsibilities. Such education must include instruction in the language of the law of the land.

After this assurance of minimal individual power, it curtails collective power that would be gained through the apparatus of the political economy by reserving functions requiring judgment and objectivity to governmental agencies under the control of laws and by reserving functions which would otherwise come under natural monopolistic control or which are necessary for the prevention of and protection from calamity to governmental agencies under the most immediate and local electoral control. Note that so-called “privatization”, whereby public functions are farmed out to private interests and thus establishes state mandated monopolies and oligoplies with little to no electoral control, is directly contrary to what is proposed here. For this reason, Popular Capitalism is firmly opposed to governments contracting out work, regardless of the bidding scheme employed.

While dealing with the threat of collective power and thus that of its functionaries, Popular Capitalism does not reject well-established public functions to deal with other types of threats. It firmly supports limits on the power of an individual against their fellow citizens. And besides these public functions for threats from within, Popular Capitalism assigns to the highest federal level the public functions for eliminating, limiting or protecting from threats to the body politic from without.

Lastly, Popular Capitalism recognizes that these public functions have operational requirements, though these should be met without compromising the main objective of power to the people, individually and without exception. Thus, Popular Capitalism would provide for a skilled government work force by establishing the certification process for the various skills demanded of government workers at an intermediate level of government that balances electoral control and adherence to reasonable minimal standards. This allows people to gain those skills independently from the certification. Only in those cases where on-the-job training is required for a job that is not or should not be privately performed, e.g. being a soldier, should government training be required in addition to the certification.

With this abstract setting, we can present some typically radical popular capitalist views on recent issues:

1. National Health Insurance. This is a bad idea on several levels. First, insurance should never have been involved in health care in the first place. It is neither care nor caring. To save a few bucks, it demands that doctors prescribe the wrong drugs. It increases the amount that doctors and hospitals can charge while maintaining the same out-of-pocket expense for the patient. The list goes on, but this is enough to show that insurance should be firmly booted out of our health care system and not further institutionalized in a federal system. Secondly, the scope is too broad to serve the people. The same remoteness and unwillingness to consider the specific needs of specific patients that have beleagured other national health care systems will plague a national health insurance system. Thirdly, municipal health care staffed by state medical workers provides an alternative that eliminates the insurance middleman, responds to individual needs, limits medical expenses through a set government pay scale and provides an avenue for innovation at the local level.

2. Same-Sex Marriage. That is up to the participants and their faith. Marriage is a deeply personal matter as well as being a religious institution, so intrusion is this area is an assault on personal freedoms and in violation of the “establishment of religion” clause of First Amendment. Government should have no involvement with this or any kind of marriage. There should be no registration of marriage and no laws with respect to such registration. Similarly, there should be no laws with respect to divorce. Arguments for governmental involvement in this area based on employment benefits are mooted by the provision of the necessities and municipal health care.

3. Government-Owned Corporations. Popular capitalism opposes these. If there are necessary public functions which these corporations perform, then those functions should be performed by government agencies staffed entirely by government workers on a government pay scale and adhering to civil service regulations. That way, the the work is kept to the public purpose. Arguments to take over companies based on preservation of jobs are mooted by the provision of necessities. While we are on the subject…

4. Preservation of Jobs or Job Growth as a Justification for Anything. This nonsense is based entirely on the false assumption that employers should be responsible for the cost of survival of their employees. The core argument of Popular Capitalism is that that responsibility belongs to government. Passing it on to employers increases their labor costs and decreases the size of their optimal work force. Preservation of jobs or increasing jobs beyond what would have occurred through market forces in this setting is simply a roundabout way of trying to undue the bad effects of bad policies without eliminating the bad policies themselves. The popular capitalist prescription with respect to jobs is to provide for the necessities and let the market determine the number of jobs and their compensation.

5. Gun Control. This is where we catch flack from the “libertarians” in asserting the right of municipal governments to restrict or prohibit the private ownership of firearms. Jefferson, brilliant though he was, was only one of the “Founding Fathers” and, even with his prominent role, his opinions are not as important as the words of the Constitution. It is the Constitution that was ratified, not the collected sayings of Thomas Jefferson. In that Constitution, the primary basis of the ratification is the Preamble in that it gives the intent and overriding purpose for which everything else is just the detail to achieve that purpose. The key purposes for this question are “establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense”. Private gun ownership is often an impediment to establishing justice, indeed in establishing injustice if not committing outright crimes. The same applies to domestic tranquility. These two purposes strike at the very heart of the essential reason for establishing a body politic: replacing the expense, stress and barbarism of individual defense with a common defense. Thus, private gun ownership, by refusing to relinguish the individual defense, also works against the purpose of providing a common defense. The Second Amendment addresses this issue head on by qualifying the “right of the people to keep and bear arms” only for the task of creating a “well regulated militia” in fulfilling the purpose of the “security of a free state”, i.e. the common defense. The regulations would be established by each State, but the militia units could be established by each municipality or community within the State. The degree of private gun ownership allowed, if any, under the regulations for miltias is thus the province of the States. Within this Constitutional context, and with the purpose of reducing the cost of survival for each individual while also protecting them from others who own guns or have access to them, the popular capitalist view would be in favor of the abolition of private gun ownership, the storage of guns in armories for the use of the militias under strict regulations, militia border control by the state and the disarming of the police force.

I know I have covered a lot of ground here, but I can provide a simple summation. The public interest is in preserving the public, by serving all of the people and maintaining the civility amongst them which makes them a public.

The Popular Capitalist View

With the recent announcement of the retirement of Justice Souter from the Supreme Court and the new and awkward position of Lieutenant Governor for the State of New Jersey, it seems a good time to consider issues of representation and balance of powers. These had taken shape in my own mind over two years ago as a proposed Amendment to the U. S. Constitution, but there are clear implications for New Jersey that will also, hopefully, materialize as a New Jersey Constitutional Amendment.

In both the State and Federal arenas, we have weak sub-executive positions and judicial arms which are or will become subservient to the party in power. The Federal position is, perhaps, slightly stronger than the State’s in design, by virtue of the Presidency of the Senate being held by the Vice-President, while there is no such provision for the Lieutenant Governor. This stronger Federal provision doubtless resulted from the Vice President’s original role as the “loyal opposition”–the runnerup in the Presidential election. It is that role which I seek to restore and to further with its use by introducing a greater countervailing power into the judicial branch of government. A similar approach in New Jersey would give a usefulness and purpose to the Lieutenant Governor post. In addition, both the federal and state judiciaries would gain a greater independence from the chief executive, increasing the longer the same person holds that office and their chief rival holds the sub-executive slot.

The interest to the populist, and hence the popular capitalist, in all of this is to both limit the power of government over individuals and to maximize the enfranchisement and representation of all people within that government. A strong sub-executive representing the chief political minority and an independent judiciary which protects minority interests from the incursions of the politically dominant groups, these both extend enfranchisement and representation far beyond the majority or plurality which would otherwise rule a democracy. The other provisions extend representation even further, to the residents of the District of Columbia and the youth, and limit the taxation of military service from being imposed on those who have not been represented in the policies that require their active service.

So, without further ado, here is my proposed Amendment to the United States Constitution on the subject of Representation:

1. The twelfth article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States is hereby repealed.

2. The people of the District constituting the seat of Government of the United States shall elect a number of Representatives in Congress to which the District would be entitled if it were a State, by an at-large election where the top vote-getters are chosen to serve as Representatives, and also one Senator elected at-large.

3. The General Election Day will be a holiday in the United States.

4. The election of President and Vice-President is amended as follows:

1. For purposes of nominating a field of candidates for President of the United States:

i. Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, two Nominators;

ii. The people of the District constituting the seat of Government of the United States shall elect Nominators in the same number and manner as their election of Representatives and Senator; and

iii. The people of each House District in the States shall elect a Nominator for their district.

iv. No Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed or elected a Nominator.

v. The election of the Nominators shall be held on the second Tuesday of May in the year prior to the start of the next Presidential term. This day shall be a holiday in the United States.

vi. On the second Tuesday of July of that same year, the Nominators shall meet in general assembly in the District constituting the seat of Government of the United States to nominate and then select from those nominations a field of five candidates for President of the United States.

1. The Proceedings of the Nominator College are presided over by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

2. At the start of this assembly, each nominator will nominate a distinct and eligible candidate for President.

3. Successive ballots will be taken, with each Nominator casting only one vote per Ballot, until the first ballot where the top five vote-getters have together received at least ninety percent of the votes of the Nominators.

4. Those top five vote-getters constitute the field of five candidates for President of the United States.

2. The people of the United States shall elect the President, from among the five candidates nominated by the Nominator College, in a popular election to be held on the second Tuesday in September of that same year. This day shall be a holiday in the United States.

3. The top two vote-getters of the September Presidential Election will become the candidates for a run-off Presidential Election to be held with the general election on the second Tuesday in November.

4. The candidate getting the most votes will become President-elect and the runnerup will become Vice-President-elect.

5. There shall be nine justices of the Supreme Court, each serving a term of nine years, with nine classes at one year intervals. They shall be appointed by the Vice-President serving at the time of vacancy created, either by completion of a term or by mid-term vacancies, with the advice and consent of the Senate. The Justice serving the last year of his term will be the Chief Justice for that year.

1. Existing Justices as of passage of this amendment will be placed in the nine classes based on seniority, the Justice with the greatest seniority being in the class with the most recently expiring term and the Justice with the least seniority being in the class with the term set to expire last.

6. The right of citizens of the United States, who are thirteen years of age or older, to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State or District on account of age.

7. No Person shall be a Representative who shall not have attained to the Age of twenty Years, and been seven Years a Citizen of the United States, and been for two Years an Inhabitant of that State or District in which he shall be chosen.

8. No person shall be a Senator who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty Years, and been twelve Years a Citizen of the United States, and been for seven years an Inhabitant of that State or District for which he shall be chosen.

9. No Person shall be compelled or allowed to serve in the military of the United States or of any State who shall not have attained to the Age of twenty five Years, and been seven Years a Citizen of the United States.

10. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

]]> http://johnsonvillepress.com/representation-amendment-carl-peter-klapper/feed/ 8 http://johnsonvillepress.com/the-popular-capitalist-view-carl-peter-klapper-4/ http://johnsonvillepress.com/the-popular-capitalist-view-carl-peter-klapper-4/#comments Mon, 20 Apr 2009 07:41:18 +0000 Alex G http://johnsonvillepress.com/?p=250 Read more »]]> Being also a poet of some accomplishment, I have on occasion used verse to express my political and economic views. The following is one such poem, with which I decry the maximization of the return on equity. I first encountered this goal when Stan O’Neal was brought in as the new President of Merrill Lynch, back in 2001, and I objected to it as a corporate goal then, as now, vociferously but not effectively. More recently, in preparing for an interview with Goldman Sachs, I was reading and viewing videos about that company’s history when I came upon a short video on Jon S. Corzine’s tenure as senior partner. In that segment, the only goal and accomplishment mentioned was showing earnings, or a return, of $50 billion, presumably difficult to “achieve” with their current corporate equity. So the current Governor of the State of New Jersey was, with O’Neal and several others, a member of the Return-on-Equity Gang which took over Wall Street during the 1990′s and 2000′s, milked it until it was dry and have more recently come, with campaign contribution receipts in hand, to not-so-humbly ask for bailouts. Curious thing that this same Jon S. Corzine, as Senator, spent his tenure there to hook the ROE Gang up with the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Yet, this is the same Jon S. Corzine who pleads ignorance of the collapse of the financial markets. If we are to believe Jon S. Corzine on this score, perhaps this poem may serve as an education to lift his veil of ignorance and bring him to contrition for the pivotal role he played in bringing us to our current calamity.

Return on Equity

An Economic Travesty in Three Way-To-Tear-Us-Aparts

Prologue

It sounds so reasonable and so benign

To get from equity the greatest return

But look with me behind this vague angelic mask

And you will see the devil in the details

Apart Once

When we take a trip in place or in money

When do we say that we have returned

When have we drawn the last benefit of our journey

When do we say it was worth it and close our books

Our answers question ourselves

Are you just so much impatient flesh

Or are you more, a soulful person

Are you a passing moment or a monument for the ages

So the flesh of decisions now

Reckon only the current return

Rendered with bright but fading paints

Obscuring the future profit and loss

The contestants knowing the judges

Trade their somber sober oils

For the brighter but riskier shades

The prize today is tomorrow an empty canvas

Apart Twice

Equity is the stable stone

On which each company is built

But it is also the value below the line

In the Return on Equity equation

Who cannot notice this easy way

To get more return for the equity

By reducing the equity itself

By skimping on the foundation

Who cares if the building comes crashing down

With its unsupported weight

Return on Equity has approved the plans

So that must have been the goal

Equity the much maligned and despised Overhead

Weep outside at the damage wrought

By relying on shaky outsourced deals

And spurning the stability of their faithful service

Intermission

Return on Equity allows only brief intermissions

Where you might not think of the long-term costs

Of its short-term take-I-mean-earnings

Or where that money might be going

Apart Thrice

What of that money in the vaunted return

We figure the company has received the cash

That it is now a swollen bundle

But shouldn’t it be handed over to the ones we have been serving

The investors should receive our sacrifice

To repay the moneyed trust they placed in us

We may have been reckless and bet the store

But it was, was it not, for their reward

What’s that you say Return on Equity

They saw no dividends but the stock price is up

Because the returns have been kept safely “retained”

Except for the bonuses for the executives

So the investor gets nothing unless he sells

The return to the no longer investor

The faithless are amply rewarded

The faithful must wait until they are not

Epilogue

After all of this brutal tearing apart

How can we put our economy back together

I suggest we bring this conclusion

By joining in reverse order as we showed here torn apart

First the investor faithful and true

Who stayed with his company through thick and thin

Should receive every day for shares owned when it began

A set percentage of the average volume-adjusted traded price as his dividend

Second that each publicly traded company

Shall report their equity at the open

And, until the close, the price shall be no more

Or less than by half that equity per every share

Third that the stated and lauded goal

Of every public company

Shall be stability and consistency

Steady in changing times

Then the investor will favor and be rewarded by

The surely growing company that finds its optimal size

While speculation and wild surmise

They will shun and let vain promises lie

Copyright © 2009 by C. P. Klapper

]]> http://johnsonvillepress.com/the-popular-capitalist-view-carl-peter-klapper-4/feed/ 1