Ethics Box - Seeking the life ideal and the Geopolitics behind the issues of our times.

Like most cities, my city's future is not only cloudy but it is bleak
if we just keep talking about "top to bottom" solutions. 20 to 30% of our population who are on the top, have proven they can not deliver in a trickle down fashion.

President Reagan's trickle down economy never worked and President Obama is trying to do the same thing by bailing out big money, merging it with big government in a system that is a proven failure.

President Reagan passed the 15 percent payroll tax at the same time which not only acted as a flat tax on the working poor but also put more of an overhead on everything that is Made in the USA.

70 percent of all workers pay more in payroll taxes than they do in income taxes with only about only 38 percent qualifying for unemployment insurance because most do not make enough money or work long enough to get unemployment insurance, this should tell us the story and the story of recovery should start from there. The Democrats were the first to admit the payroll tax is a real negative when it comes to restoring our economy. In a free trade world, the payroll tax is a heavy anchor on our economy.

In the city where I grew up, they talk about attracting upscale shops to attract the upper class to come in and shop. This isn't working because there are not enough of the upper class to do it and they have already have their favorite places to shop where they live.

Major cities like Cleveland have political and city leaders saying " build it and they will come." They are building a new medical center, a new convention center and opening a large casino in the heart of the city. This where many top companies once had their worldwide corporate offices.

The medical mart center will not do that much because it ultimately is based on tax money to support it inherently. The medical industry is only as good as the amount of tax dollars that can be collected.

The convention center will attract various enterprises but not enough to pay the toll. In our global economy, businesses can only attract so many buyers in a local market especially when so many supporting businesses are gone due to free trade. A company has better places to invest their marketing money than going to a convention center in a middle of a dead economy. The general population does not have enough money to support companies who do come to market their products.

New casinos in the heart of the city may look like a good thing economically for awhile but an economy based on casinos is a take away economy after all is said and done.

Cleveland subsidized the pro sports industry on the concept same concept - build it and they will come. They also did the same with The Rock Hall of Fame and the Great Lakes Science Center. These efforts have been around for years with no real signs of restoring the local economy.

It makes big news when a subsidized bio-tech company comes and employs about a hundred workers but this is minute compared to a time when our city was considered to be a high tech center with thousands of workers supporting these efforts. We lost all this too due to free trade with millions of workers losing their jobs in the computer industry nationwide. Now even
high tech and engineering services are outside the USA too.

We read about small businesses being a solution to fill these voids but
at the same time apply a stigma to small family businesses. In the 1990s, about twenty American Arab business owners were killed during robberies in the inner city. In the past in these areas, there were hundreds of larger family super markets that knitted neighborhoods together.

We read about the need to subsidize research and development but ignore
what happens when the production phase of these endeavors go outside
the USA. In the end workers pay taxes to lose more jobs. Just think if
all the small ventures just got $500 each to upgrade their businesses
what could happen. These businesses because of their numbers could
make a massive change for the good with just a little help.

Who is really on the front lines to impact the general overall economy.
We should concentrated on "bottom to top" solutions as much as we do
the other way. Most workers are just trying to find another $1 or $2
and hour to put in their pockets to spend for their needs. Many just
want a decent full time job. A "top" group made up of a few elite can
not affect much of anything. And they seldom match up with the needs of
the street.

Finally, in all the discussions, nothing is ever said about a value
added economy. We have a model of this approach in our past but all
seem to go out of their way to ignore it. In the past, we had an
economy base on about 5 to 7 levels of added value from raw product to
the finished goods to retail levels. Today, many of these levels are
outside the USA and the a retail level alone can not support an entire
economy.

One of these days, the academics, city planners, federal studies groups
etc. have to sit down with the factory workers, farmers and the real
small business people and ask them what can be done and why do we have
a hybrid Capitalistic system instead of one that comes from real seeds
to seed a real economy. They say to build it and they will come but we
can not win many games when workers do not make enough to come to anything.

I made the equivalent of $15 an hour working in factories while I was
going to college. Today if these jobs were available, we would have
thousands standing in line to get them including many college
graduates. Why did we lose this economy. This should be a model we can
try to copy. we still use most of all the products etc. They have not
become obsolete. The means of production and farming just were moved to
cheaper labor markets outside the USA. Why can't we talk fairs instead
of convention centers or upscale flea markets instead of upscale shops.
What about subsidizing farmers markets. It would not take that much
extra money to do these things. We must start at a point of reality
and not somewhere in the sky. Even the internet is a highway in the
sky leading to nowhere if we do not connect the roads to it. Why not
try to think up some "signature" products we can label Made in
Cleveland and get our heads out of the sky to nowhere.

The private sector union production workers have been virtually gone for years but they still get the blame for the bad economy. It is obvious that we had a much better economy even whey the unions were arrogant. They raised the value of all workers even though they were not in unions.