As many economic pundits will tell you
today, our current economic crisis was a long time in the making. Some point to over-consumption, others
to the accumulation of debt, and still others point at a broken regulatory
system, government spending, and political gridlock. However, the fundamental issue is none of these things,
although each is a symptom of, or a by-product of, the real issue: the decapitalization
of wealth.
The
value of capital is the utility that can be realized from it. Economists generally define utility as
the measure of ‘need satisfaction’ realized by a consumer in the consumption of
a good or service. Extending this
concept to capital, the utility of capital is the measure of economic goods and
services created through its deployment.
Wealth deployed as capital that produces economic goods and services
creates healthy economies with low debt, low inflation, and low unemployment. Unfortunately, much of the wealth
created over the last twenty-five years or so has flowed to low capital utility
venues. This process has
accelerated over the last decade.
So
what are these low capital utility venues? Wealth deployed for war making is a classic example. Anyone who has taken an introductory
course in economics can probably remember the guns vs. butter analysis. Money invested in death and destruction
is obviously not a creator of economic goods, and the US has spent more than $2
trillion in this manner since 2003.[1] Financial bailouts also have low
utility. As we have seen, we may
have stabilized the financial system with the massive bailout of
too-big-to-fail banks, but we have not created economic goods in the process,
and the bailout funds are now trapped in the balance sheets of banks; idle
dollars producing little to no utility.
Our tax system, which is at least partly to blame for the inordinate
concentration of wealth in the top 1% of our citizens, is also responsible for
decapitalization. Wealth
concentrated among the few means that capital has flowed to idle reserves – in
low risk, low velocity trust funds.
Dusty money is not happy money.
Speculation and financial ‘engineering’ is also responsible for
decapitalization. Currency
manipulation, which amounts to more than $3 trillion in transactions per day
worldwide, does not produce economic goods. Nor do the billions of dollars invested
in credit default swaps that produce no more capital utility than dollars
dropped into slot machines on the Vegas Strip. Another classic example is government spending and
investment. When the Pentagon
spends $6,000 on a coffee pot or the White House blows $500 million on
Solyndra, it is clear that government bureaucrats make lousy purchase and
investment decisions, regardless of party affiliation. Debt service payments and sovereign
debt bailout funds are other examples.
By now you get the idea: most of the places our money ends up today are venues
of decapitalization. That must
change.
In
a recent article by the Washington Bureau Chief of The New York Times, David Leonhardt, argued that our current crisis might actually prove
to be worse than the Great Depression due to one central difference: during the
Depression, invention, production, and investment in public infrastructure continued
at high levels. Leonhardt
suggests, “The most worrisome aspect about our current slump is that it
combines obvious short-term problems – from the financial crisis – with less
obvious long-term problems. Those
long-term problems include a decade-long slowdown in new-business formation,
the stagnation of educational gains and rapid growth of industries with mixed
blessings, including finance and health care.”[2] “Mixed blessings” here means finance
and health care are relatively low capital utility investments. When we see job growth in these
private, and almost any public sector categories, we must refrain from patting
ourselves on the back. They
produce little more than single-round economic effects.
Correcting
this problem is not easy, but it is doable. As you can see from the above list, one may even argue that
decapitalization accelerates in an insidious manner, spawning more and larger
venues of low utility. We need
look no further than our own economic history to see that many of these venues,
except war making, are relatively new developments in our economic system. Fiscal policy and, to a lesser extent
and effect, monetary policy should both be oriented to direct wealth away from
these venues. Financial system
regulations and tax policy can also be changed to affect this. Education, research and development,
small business development, and yes, liberal trade and immigration policies can
also help stem the tide of decapitalization.
Creating
wealth requires a relentless focus on capital utility. When capital works, it produces
economic goods; when idled or addled, it leads to dire economic effects. Decapitalization is the overarching
problem. Until we recognize this
we have little hope of pulling our economy out of the ditch.
[1] This excludes the $600 to $700 billion the US spends
annually as a baseline expenditure for national defense.
[2] David Leonhardt, “The Depression: If Only
Things Were That Good,” October 8, 2011,The New York Times, www.nytimes.com.
