Economic Vision: AFFORDABILITY

If the US economy were truly a competitive economic economy, the US economy would not have major affordability problems, requiring consumers to borrow excessive amounts of money from the private sector and depend excessively on government subsidies to pay for basic life needs like housing, education, healthcare, transportation, child care, insurance and retirement. In America today and increasingly over the past 40 years, the bottom 80% of Americans are borrowing way beyond their means and approaching bankruptcy, just to pay for basic living expenditure. Many are going without quality healthcare, housing, education, transportation, insurance and retirement because they cannot afford it and they do not qualify for additional credit or loans to fund their expenditures for just basic living conditions.

Higher wages for workers would help, but the level of wage increases alone required to solve the consumer affordability problem would give Wall Street a Stroke and a Heart Attack, like the world has never seen. US worker wages are among the highest in the world and in addition to competing with lower wage countries, American workers are increasingly having to compete against lower wage cost alternatives for businesses such as robotics and artificial intelligence, which now has the ability to perform office and white collar worker tasks such as accounting, analytics, reporting, legal, human resources, etc….

Given the real economic impediments and economically competitive substitutes to US worker wages, the alternative to higher wages is lower and affordable prices for housing, healthcare, education, transportation, childcare, insurance and retirement for all consumers while still providing robust returns for business.

Making it right the economics of the 100% has determined that market prices for these products and services across America are catastrophically too high and recommends technology and policy fixes that will make the consumer product and services markets much more competitive, bringing market prices down to levels affordable for all consumers without the need for excessive private sector borrowing or government subsidies to support this market correction over the long term.

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