Example of Success Story: A Rational Response to Homelessness
(I talk about how a government should fund itself in my 2nd blog entry. So, bear that in mind before reading this 5th entry and assuming that we can't afford to talk about something like this.)
The goal of any successful country's government should be from the start: to guarantee that everyone will be provided the basic needs of food and shelter, unconditionally. (there are other supplemental needs such as: utilities, manufactured home supplies, transportation, internet access, minimal health care, etc. but those first 2 are the most important).
There should be government-run grocery stores and government-run homeless shelters. Instead, what we have are government assistance programs. The key problem with this is that you always have to be employed (or in a work training program where you're forced to accept any shitty job) in order to qualify.
Every grocery store should be a government-run grocery store, so that decent, healthy food is no longer a living expense for anyone. Not all homes should be government-run micro apartments, but there should be enough of them so that if a person chooses to live in one, he/she should have the option of doing that (as a service provided for free by the government).
Instead, America is a country with an economy that is completely dependent on a demand for high employment rates. This will eventually be hopelessly unsustainable. An investment banking driven economy can't sustain such a high employment rate without eventually making progress in ways that use only a few jobs to make many jobs obsolete. (for example: the small kickstarter company that manufactures the video game console 'OUYA' could potentially cause major companies like Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony to significantly downsize their employee count).
This is especially disastrous when the government tries to create government jobs that aren't a reliable investment (such as education, when 50% of college graduates are massively underemployed while saddled with humongous student loans that they can't pay back). In general, most government spending does not really go toward negating living expenses (creates financial dependence). What's worse is: there's talk of trying to cut government spending by ~90% (see Romney-Ryan budget proposal). So, it's often a choice between a delusional democratic economic world-view and a brutally unforgiving republican/libertarian world-view.
A country with an economy where citizens have virtually no living expenses is almost completely immune to any deceleration of growth. The only jobs that are needed are the government jobs that provide these basic necessities, and also you need jobs that motivate the government employees to actually want to earn and spend money. For instance: one person works on a government farm supplying a government grocery store that gives everyone free food, while another person is a professional movie director/actor/producer. Both types of employment are necessary for the functioning of society, so it's reasonable to assume that both would pay handsomely and that these people would enjoy being wealthy.
However, what is not necessary are shitty slave labor jobs like scrubbing toilets and mopping floors (unless of course someone has a good reason to pay well for this, like a hospital that needs a clean room or a mansion that needs a well-paid maid). Just put a toilet brush next to each toilet, and if you're using the toilet, and you want it clean, give it a quick brushing. It's the same with the dirty floor: just leave a mop out and if the floor is bothering you so much, just spend 5 minutes to make it tolerable. There's a point where if something is just a shitty meaningless job, a country's economy is better off without it. This sets a high standard for a minimum wage and a minimum quality of life.
This is important because freedom from labor guarantees that a country can survive the point where its economic growth is eclipsed by the demand to hoard savings. Economic opportunity can't just go forever into infinity. Eventually, some people/companies have to go completely bankrupt (hopefully without dying in the streets from hunger), while others have to continually upgrade their large business to be more and more exclusive (marketing products more exclusively to the very wealthy). This dual class dichotomy between the bankrupt and the ultra-wealthy is an inevitable consequence of the eventual limits of the reality of investment banking.
It's not that investment banking is flawed. It's just that, eventually, not investing has a better opportunity cost than investing. Otherwise, an economy could pretend to have more investment momentum than it actually has and cause a massive financial bubble to pop. Regardless, an economy has to decide what does it actually want. No economy is going to place more value in a huge amount of poor people than in a small amount of extremely rich people. The only way to guarantee the rights of acquisition of the poor is through governing the responsibilities of the ultra-wealthy establishment.
