Louis
O. Kelso and Patricia Hetter Kelso estimates of
the relative real inputs to production in the
American economy of Labor (Physical and
Intellectual) and Capital over time assuming
reasonably competitive
markets. So ingrained is the “ethic” of the
“Labor Theory of Value” that they thought it
best to refer to Capital
Owners as “Capital Workers” in keeping with
their understanding that Capital instruments do
“Work” - as surely
as the most diligent human surrogate worker –
and that indeed the observable trend is for
Capital Instruments
to do ever more of the Worlds “Work”. The
reflexive prevalent attitude of equating
“Economic” man with
Essential Human Values including the whole vast
array of values around the “Work Ethic” all
contribute to
camouflage and maintain the fundamental
miss-match between the way goods and services
are produced
and distributed and particularly their trends
projected into the future. Cybernetic
contributions (now almost
exponential) are only adding to the much longer
Historical trend. Represents US Economy but
applies to
World trending. HHC
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Chart of concentration of capital ownership in
the U.S. over time. The same general pattern
applies to
virtually all economies of and the World Economy
as a whole – Plutocratic ownership and control
of the
real means of production. With “The Labor
Theory of Value” it only worsens. HHC - Below
Quotes @
www.kelsoinstitute.org
"Conventional
wisdom says there is only one way to earn a
living, and that's to work. Conventional wisdom
effectively
treats capital
(land, structures, machines, and the like) as
though it were a kind of holy water that,
sprinkled on or about
labor, makes it
more productive. Thus, if you have a thousand
people working in a factory and you increase the
design
and power of the
machinery so that one hundred men can now do
what a thousand did before, conventional wisdom
says, 'Voila! The
productivity of the labor has gone up 900
percent!' I say 'hogwash.' All you've done is
wipe out 90
percent of the
jobs, and even the remaining ten percent are
probably sitting around pushing buttons. What
the
economy needs is a way of
legitimately getting capital ownership into the
hands of the people who now don't have it."
(Louis O. Kelso, Journal Asset Based Finance,
1982)
"The trouble with
today's techniques of finance is that they're
designed to make the rich richer. None are
designed
to make the poor richer.
That's why the poor are poor. Because they're
not rich."
(Louis O. Kelso, San Francisco Examiner &
Chronicle, 1978)
"The Roman arena
was technically a level playing field. But on
one side were the lions with all the weapons,
and on
the other the
Christians with all the blood. That's not a
level playing field. That's a slaughter. And so
is putting people
into the economy
without equipping them with capital, while
equipping a tiny handful of people with hundreds
and
thousands of times more
than they can use."
(Louis O. Kelso, Bill Moyers: A World of Ideas,
1990)
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Charles Handy citing the 1930 reference by Lord
John Maynard Keynes projecting “Technological
Unemployment”
for the future world of his grandchildren. That
would be right about now as technological
advancement not only
provides the possible means for Humanity’s
collective “Transcendence of Scarcity” but poses
the problem to
progressives by their commitment (along with
virtually all economic theorizing) to the “Labor
Theory of Value”
currently informing virtually all National
Economies on Planet Earth & the International
System as well. HHC
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
