Our Founders Understood Shared Prosperity Builds America's Future

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PICK A FIGHT WITH OUR FOUNDERS VISION OF SHARED PROSPERITY? NO, THANK YOU.

     Our Founders, the original Patriots of the 1770s, were practical people who clearly understood what brought them economic prosperity in America over the prior 150 years since the first of them had landed in the Mayflower at Plymouth Rock in 1620. Their prosperity didn’t come from a King commanding their lives from on high – they preferred to take the initiative themselves and, as religious refugees, to thank their God in their own way. It wasn’t the King and His commanded monopolies and protectionism which He handed to His cronies as favors with piled on tariffs which brought them prosperity. That brought them higher prices – they replied with the Boston Tea Party in 1773. 

     It wasn’t His 1774 retaliations, putting His armies on the streets of America, entering their homes, farms, and businesses at will, seizing and closing news and book presses, closing harbors and preventing fishermen from pursuing their catch with blockades, that brought them prosperity and unity – the Patriots replied to retaliations with resistance. It wasn’t the King’s insistence that only British ships could ply the oceans and that all international trade must be carried by companies to which He assigned the monopoly privilege – the Patriots replied by breaking these blockades where they could. It wasn’t His rump courts dispensing favorable treatment to some while punishing others for pursuing their own way to build better lives – the Patriots insisted their own elected representatives push back against invalid assertions of royal authority. 

     The Patriots knew the King’s commands - which suppressed the American economy; which oppressed citizens on their farms, in their towns, on their ships; and which attempted to subvert America’s free expression in newspapers, almanacs, taverns, churches, and colleges - weren’t the way to shared prosperity in America. In fact, it was the King, then America’s unitary executive and chief decider of policies and law, who was strangling and sabotaging their vision of shared prosperity – their radical ideas about individual liberty, freedom of religion and expression for every individual, and their "unalienable rights" to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”  The King was strangling American patriotism itself.

     That was the role of the King’s government as the feudal unitary executive – dispensing privilege to some, assigning penury and exploitation to others - which the Patriots fought to banish from America. So, they replied in 1776 – with the Declaration of Independence. Tariffs, royal trade monopolies dispensed as privilege, harbor blockades which cut off commerce, anti-immigrant policies which denied entry of people needed to develop America, and rump courts for the privileged, were among the 27 specific causes of the Revolutionary War. The Patriots succeeded in achieving independence, albeit imperfectly, in 1781, when the King withdrew from America.

     But even today there are some who prefer that colonial vision of kingly control, a unitary executive, and government driven dependencies created by dispensing favors to some while penalizing their fellow citizens, and by passing or preventing enforcement of laws, so as to aid and abet some in their exploitation of others. They prefer their privilege and their ability to control others over the distinctly American vision of individual liberty, individual initiative, and shared prosperity. They prefer to manipulate, control, and reap the vast benefits of the labors of the many by assigning them as favors or to themselves alone.

     Freedom was not free in the 1770s. It still isn’t today. It requires vigilance to avoid being trampled by selfish interests of a privileged few over the broad common interests of the People.....

OUR FIGHT FOR PROSPERITY begins here....

A. WE HAVE FORGOTTEN HOW WE BECAME PROSPEROUS….

The Current Economic Challenges We Face In Our Fight For Prosperity

    The modern economic policies of our elected National Political Class don’t even pretend to comprehend the most basic economic lessons - Demand for stuff drives some effort to Supply that stuff, which drives Investment in the means of production to make that stuff. Making stuff and delivering services to those who buy and use stuff – consumers like you and me - drives Jobs for people and drives Job Growth as those employed need other products and services. This is the virtuous cycle of the job multiplier effect, see section D. Economics 102 below. All those people and businesses pay the taxes which allow governments to deliver other things we need in common like equal justice, a common defense, and roads, bridges, airports, parks, and schools. 

     Our ever-practical Founders – who lived and worked most of their lives in the real economy, not on a life-long series of government paychecks – figured this out 250 years ago. They told a heretical King, the unitary executive of a royal colonial government, in no uncertain terms that He and His favored cronies were not their choice to determine their economic fates, nor as their God to determine the course of their personal lives.

     How do Congress and Presidents effect the US national economy? Profoundly, in their lack of common sense, insight, and wisdom. Their deliberate policy choices impose practical consequences on the lives of everyday Americans, comparable to the King who was similarly detached from the daily lives and economic interests of colonial Americans. 

     Congress has passed and a line of Presidents have signed into law the economic policies which have given away 67% higher incomes for all Americans below the 90th percentile of income to the 1%. In recent years, our private sector economy has deteriorated so much under these policies that the annual growth of our federal government’s national debt is greater than the annual growth of our entire economy. 

     Our national debt is now 42 times greater than just 45 years ago. Our economy is about 10 times larger than 45 years ago. You can see the problem easily enough from just those two simple facts. Yet, still more tax cuts favoring the well-off in 2025 led to $1 trillion more debt in less than four months, the fastest accumulation in world history outside of a wartime emergency or pandemic. 

     And there are still more Giant Congressional and Presidential Policy Failures discussed below which have been lined up one after another over the past few decades, effectively wrecking private sector economic growth and making us even more dependent on the whipsaws of arbitrary political types.

     Over the past 45 years, Congressional and Presidential policy choices have sawn one rung after another out of the ladder to our own individually defined American Dream, one grounded in liberty, personal choice, and opportunity for us all. Meanwhile, Congress has also engineered a power grab against private enterprises, particularly smaller businesses https://banbrainhacks.org/police-power-racketeering as well as individual rights, religion, family, and free will. https://banbrainhacks.org/government-as-god%3F

Our Modern American Economy

     First, a few basic economic facts about America - US Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for all goods and services was $29.2 trillion in 2024. That total for the entire US economy includes about 70% ($20 trillion) spending on consumer goods and services, such as for housing, food, energy, other consumables, and durables like cars, furniture, as well as services such as health care, phone bills, airline tickets, and restaurants. The other $9 trillion is mostly private investment such as in facilities, plants, and equipment, along with government spending  which is related to buildings, roads, bridges, airports, and military equipment and facilities. More on economics basics and the American economy in sections C and D, Economics For Regular Folks, below.

The Root Causes Destroying Our Shared American Dream - Congressional And Presidential Policy Failures

     About 90% of us have been left ever farther behind economically since the 1980s by specific, deliberate policy choices of Congress and Presidents. These four key deliberate policy choices are the Root Causes which have left most Americans behind, while benefitting very few among us, mostly the highest 1% of incomes and wealth. 

     Root Cause #1 -  A refusal to raise the minimum wage floor in line with overall economic growth. This has left the lower 90% of income earners with income growth trailing well behind overall economic growth. Those earning in the 90th percentile of individual incomes ($133,000 in 2018) and below are now more than 67% lower on average than they would otherwise be, according to a Rand Corporation study referenced below in Section B under subheading Root Cause #1. This has hurt those among us with the lowest incomes most of all. Lower overall income growth, combined with higher costs for basics such as shelter and health care, has hit consumer spending hard. This has dramatically slowed private sector economic growth, job growth, and the growth of federal income tax revenues from higher personal earnings which would reduce massive annual federal deficits. This Root Cause is otherwise known as greed among a few, see section B - The Details – Root Cause #1 using the link at the bottom of this page.

     Root Cause #2 - A refusal to reform health care has escalated these costs to double those of peer nations with four years typical shorter life spans across America. These excessive costs burden nearly every family and business and made us significantly less competitive globally. These excessive costs have also squeezed state budgets, pushing out other services and moving costs from public goods to private burdens, particularly for advanced educations essential to drive long term innovation for future economic growth. This Root Cause is known as Congressional and Presidential largesse to a few – a cousin of greed, see section B – The Details Root Cause #2 using the link at the bottom of this page.

     Root Cause #3 - The wrecking of the localized housing finance industry by Congress in the 1980s has given us housing shortages in major employment centers around the US. Savings deposits which had supported localized housing loans flooded out of local communities to Wall Street money management firms, who pedaled fake and fraudulent mortgages and mortgage derivatives which collapsed. Together with balkanized local housing codes, the loss of these localized housing finance deposits used for mortgages has given us a 5-7 million unit housing shortage across virtually every major US employment center, and drives housing (shelter) costs through the roof.  This Root Cause is known as poaching consumer buying power, family formation, and self-funded retirements from American families. See section B – The Details Root Cause #3 using the link at the bottom of this page.

     Root Cause #4 - Reckless federal government finances spiraling year on year. Our federal government spends over $7 trillion each year, about 25% of our total economy, and takes in just over $5.2 trillion in taxes. To make up the difference, it currently borrows an additional $1.8 trillion or more every year from private investors in the US and around the world. Those funds, permanently borrowed by government as they are never repaid, simply rolled over again and again, are not available to loan or invest to private businesses and individuals to power private sector economic growth. This long-term accumulating debt crisis has now spiraled from $0.9 trillion in 1980 to $38 trillion in 2025, with another $1 trillion added in just four recent months late in 2025. See section B – The Details Root Cause #4 using the link at the bottom of this page.

     The first $1 trillion we pay in income taxes, nearly 20% of all our individual and business income taxes put together, pays for interest on those $38 trillion of past borrowings. As citizens and taxpayers, we get exactly nothing for this $1 trillion, no services of any kind, except the ability for our federal government to borrow still more money and pay still more out in interest in the future. 

     Just how much is $1 trillion? If we could build the 48,000 mile interstate highway system – virtually all our freeways nation-wide – in one year, we would have about $300 billion left over.

The Consequences Of These Four Key Root Causes: A Devastated Private Sector Economy And Ever-Growing Government Dependencies

Consequence #1: Lagging Demand Created By Income Inequality And Skyrocketing Costs For Basics Erodes Our Entire Economy

     The incomes of 90% or more of us are 67% less than overall economic growth would suggest if income inequality were simply maintained at its original 1960-70s levels. Prices for housing have risen more than 450% since 1980 for an equivalent residence in major employment centers. Prices for health care are 100% higher, and these rising costs have been passed from employer-paid to employee-paid in many cases. Together, these two basic essentials consume about 43% of average incomes. That 67% erosion of income relative to our economic growth, combined with rising costs for key essentials, has dramatically eroded consumer purchasing power for virtually everything else among most at or below the 90th percentile of American incomes.

     For nearly all the very lowest 25% or so income families, month to month survival is all consuming. These lowest incomes have eroded the most relative to economic growth in our increasingly unequal country, growing only 15% as our economy grew 120% between 1975 and 2018. Any thought of savings or non-emergency spending on anything is continually sacrificed to meet ever rising current costs relative to the shrinking purchasing power of their incomes. So, those with the lowest incomes continue falling behind in our country most rapidly. They are most vulnerable to requiring government support at any time in their lives, in most cases through no fault of their own.

     This national political failure of the 535 in Congress and our line of Presidents to raise the minimum wage has created an ever increasing number of people dependent on government. While income support payments like food and rental assistance are called entitlements by politicians, those entitlements are actually forced dependencies driven by their own prior political and economic policy failures, by ignorance, and by greed. 

     Most Americans would certainly rather be able to earn their own way and maintain their independence than ask for help from anyone, much less government – that is the American ethic nearly all of us share. By avoiding raising the minimum wage, a rate which would simply maintain existing levels of income inequality in line with America’s overall economic growth, these politicians have forced dependencies and given our lowest income earners purchasing power which in 2025 is based upon the real minimum wage of 1955.

     This is an epic national embarrassment to us all - a political failure of huge proportions in the wealthiest nation on earth. It has extremely adverse consequences for the well-being of the lowest earners among us, kept down by the national political choices of people who ignore them while making at least 5 times higher cash incomes and enjoying free health care and other government benefits piled one upon another. It is tied quite simply to the political refusal of these privileged 535 people in Congress and the President to mandate minimum wages which are driven by overall economic growth. 

     Raising the minimum wage floor in line with economic growth would drive wages back toward economic growth rates for nearly all the bottom 90% of incomes over time. Prices would rise somewhat for the most labor intensive services in particular, but broadly rising incomes would also create more buying power and more private sector jobs broadly across our economy. Making this simple policy change would drive the lowest incomes higher and share our nation’s prosperity a bit less unevenly among us. Over time, we could work toward broader prosperity. This simple step would power our national economy more broadly with greater consumer spending, yield still more job creation and with time, could move us toward a systemic cure for much of our nation’s increasing problem of government funded and controlled dependencies which impose burdens on both taxpayers and those Americans forced to rely on dependencies. 

     Together, these decades of failed policies from our Congress and line of Presidents have given the lowest 90% of incomes among Americans the short end of the stick - diminishing real incomes combined with out-of-control costs for two of the most expensive basic essentials of modern life – housing and health care - which together consume 43% of most incomes. The result is less prosperity for everyone, ever more family stress, and community social distress. As these costs for essentials are driven higher by continuing policy failures, our government’s answer is yet another government dependency. 

     Dependencies are a trap which works for the convenience of partisan politicians - who can give and take away at a wave of the hand. Americans fought a Revolutionary War for liberty from tyranny and oppression, from arbitrary acts of government, and for personal independence - that’s what most of us truly want.

The Purchasing Power Of The Top 1% Of Incomes Cannot Replace 90% Of Incomes 

     The top 1% of incomes have grown 300% faster than our economy, while the 9% immediately below them have typically held their own, as the lowest 90% of incomes have fallen farther and farther behind. This is the singular most important and straight-forward reason that private sector economic growth has tanked. 300% income gains for 1% of incomes among us (3.4 million people in all) cannot mathematically make up for the 67% income gains not received by the lower 90% of incomes among us (306 million in all). This reality is simple math and common sense, the result of squeezed family finances.

     This would be true even if real prices had not risen dramatically faster than economic growth for such important basics as housing and health care, which together comprise around 43% of median income. This combination of incredible policy blunders, particularly shelter, health care, and protectionist tariffs to top off these ever rising costs, has exacerbated the problem still more. The economic effects of squeezed family finances for most Americans and massive income growth and wealth concentrated among a few have always been easily foreseeable. 

     Our private economy has been forced to evolve adversely as a result of this sequence of incredible policy blunders. We have industry consolidations to drive pricing power by reducing the number of suppliers of key goods and services, financial engineering to wring money out of companies which are laden with speculative debt and excessive dividends, can’t afford to invest in tomorrow, and eventually go bust. We have speculative bubbles powered by concentrated pools of high income investor funds chasing one fad after another which expand valuations well beyond rational reason, then collapse to damage our entire economy. These economic policy related failures have repeatedly eroded and damaged the entire US economy over the past 45 years, making our industries less competitive here in America and in our trade with the rest of the world.

     Entrenched greed and short-term thinking make matters worse as Congress and our line of Presidents pay attention to gaming the funds needed to get reelected. Those funds come mostly from the 1% and political action committees they fund or control for the campaigns and negative television ads we all share each fall election season. So, Congress and Presidents listen to their contributors and their special purpose lobbyists looking for largesse more than to the concerns of everyday Americans. 

     Congress and our line of Presidents have produced this American economic debacle for their own immediate political benefit. Changing these policies is key to this entire puzzle of reviving private sector economic growth to sustainable and robust levels. 

     Meanwhile, those same 535 plus 1 politicians inside the DC Beltway like to pretend all is well. They do that with our tax dollars, and by borrowing on our children’s future, the national inheritance we owe our next generations of Americans, in the most reckless and cynical way any generation of politicians has ever operated in American history.

Consequence #2: Our National Debt Grows Far Too Fast, Eroding Government Finances And Services

     Another $1.8 trillion is borrowed and spent every year by our federal government. This annual increase in our national debt makes up over 6% of the total economic activity (GDP) of the entire US. By comparison, growth of the entire private sector economy is only about 2%, about $0.6 trillion. In other words, our federal government debt grows about 3 times faster than our entire national private sector economy, final demand among private purchasers. Even if that 2% private sector growth were taxed at an impossible 100% rate, federal spending and the national debt will eventually swallow the entire US economy. Can our federal government spend more of GDP than what our nation as a whole can grow in GDP, our entire economy, each year forever? 

     NO. Your debts cannot outgrow your ability to pay them indefinitely. Eventually the accumulating minimum payments for interest crowd out your ability to pay for anything else – that’s true for nations who are to provide defense, justice, and other services, just as it is true for families who are to provide food, shelter, and shoes. That spiraling federal debt and slowing private sector growth pattern must be reversed. We accomplished that in the 1960s and 1970s but have been on the wrong track toward decline since the 1980s, as shown in sections E and F Practical Economics For Regular Folks, accessed by using the link at the bottom of this page. 

     We simply cannot continue on this path forever.

Consequence #3: Healthy Financial Management Is Essential - Or Else

     An economic crisis looms if we continue on the current fiscally reckless path set by Congress and the line of modern Presidents. The US economy is large and has been resilient in the past, largely due to the financial flexibility of relatively low national debt levels until the 2000s. Even without large savings, having the ability to borrow funds at reasonable rates when needed provide a financial cushion in difficult moments. This is just as true for a nation as it is for a family. But the reckless fiscal management of Congress and the line of Presidents over the past 45 years has greatly reduced this cushion in ways no past generation ever has outside of wartime – during the American Revolution, the Civil War, and World War II to be specific. 

     We don’t know precisely what will trigger a calamity for our nation’s financial health and American families’ well-being, but the warning signs and financial stresses continue to accumulate from those ill-fated 1980s Congressional and Presidential policy decisions, and their continuing refusal to fix these long-festering problems.

     A return to the healthy financial management of government can’t happen overnight by simply hacking at the federal budget. The October-November 2025 federal government shutdown experience clearly shows that a hack and slash approach to the federal budget wouldn’t work. We can’t solve nation-size problems which have accumulated over 45 years in a few minutes with some grand, sweeping gesture. It takes some years of persistent work and diligence, just as it took to screw things up as badly as our Congress and line of Presidents has managed thus far. 

Consequence #4: Failed Leaders Provide Failing Answers

     As we have seen yet again in our federal government’s October - November 2025 shutdown, government administered dependencies – the payments, credits, and subsidies to people, farms, and businesses - can disappear or be withdrawn at any moment based on the political whims of that moment. Dependent citizens are subjected to the whims of governments and to potential coercion by politicians and government employees who can use it to entrench favoritism toward some and to silence the voices of those who dare to disagree. This type of coercion was exactly what the Patriots protested in our 1776 Declaration as they fought the British King so they could form a government of laws, and killed the Federalist Party when John Adams tried it as our second President. 

     Better to give us laws that insist on a minimal shared standard of well-being, with benefits of an advancing private sector economy more broadly shared as our nation advances. Let individual talent, initiative, and skills be the tools for individuals to better themselves, their families, and their country. There will always be some among us who are unable to do this for the moment or for their lifetimes. We can care for them without creating these broad-based dependencies simply by mandating reasonable minimum compensation for effort which grows as our nation prospers, something which comes to resemble that 67% raise which 90% of us missed over the past 45 years. When everyone has a minimally livable floor for their labors from which we can choose to rise, we need not rely on being “owned” by politicians who create or eliminate dependencies, because we are truly independent of government.

     If we start working on these problems now, it will be far less painful than during another giant economic crisis like the 2008 housing bubble, the 2000 dot.com bubble, or whichever bubble you want to choose before that. Practical modern answers echo the pragmatism of our ever-practical Founders, who wanted their own independence and an end to royal favoritism, privilege, and to the stifling of their own initiative by a tyrannical and oppressive King. 

     That’s not so much different than from a bunch of incompetent, self-interested partisan politicians today, some more interested in “redistracting” us with redistricting than in solving any of the real problems they promised us they would solve in those last televised election ads they arranged for someone else to pay for.

THE FIX: Our Long-Term Fate Is Tied To Restoring Balance Which Made Us Prosperous

     Market economies with basic rules to constrain greed and exploitation are the world's most successful economic form over the long term. These successful economies are driven by consumer demand, not by government command. Congressional and our line of Presidents’ epic economic policy failures over the past century have shown us what does and does not work. For a more broadly shared and prosperous solution to our economic challenges, begin with section B – The Details using the link below to the Our Fight For Prosperity II page. The root causes and consequences of policy failures discussed above are dissected to drive toward more detailed solutions to these key challenges.  Crucially, to avoid a repetition of prior errors and accomplish better outcomes for us all, we will need to avoid the one Most Important Giant Congressional and Presidential Policy Mistake which we control.....

GIANT CONGRESSIONAL AND PRESIDENTIAL POLICY MISTAKE: American Voters Reelecting These Same Screw-Ups And Failures To Do It Again

     As American voters, we can put THE FIX in ourselves. But at least until late 2026 for most, 2028 for others in the Senate, and 2030 when the last previously elected Senator will be able to be removed by We, the People voting them from office, we have the politicians in Congress and in the Executive branch run by the President we have - short-sighted and focused on party dogma and theatrical partisan activities in their attempts to distract voter attention away from, rather than solve, real problems. Both parties seem quite interested in manufacturing political spectacles of partisan distraction like unnecessary mid-term redistricting and a national party convention; or trying to blame some other nation for our self-inflicted national economic policy failures, rather than working diligently, even skipping recess on occasion, to get the work we elected them to do done, on time, and to solve the real problems we face as typical American families. 

     The return of private sector economic prosperity which reinforces the financial independence and freedom of American families, rather than the dispensation of largesse to their favored crowd, seldom rates more than a rhetorical mention among most of these partisans. Meanwhile, theatrical political acts are certainly no solution for any real problem of American families.

     We don’t need a Congress whose members reinforce their prior economic policy failures which erode American families, farms, and businesses, and erode personal financial independence; a Congress which has created and reinforces government dependencies among Americans; a Congress which has made government programs into tools which can be used for the partisan coercion of any group of Americans; a Congress which has created and perpetually funds illegal bioweapons to play God in our lives on the whim of a public employee or politician; a Congress which aids and abets racketeering programs run by outlaws with police powers who destroy families, businesses, churches, and lives; a Congress which confirms federal judges and justices and which funds federal courts where those judges and justices refuse to uphold the basic principles found in our Constitution and in Marbury v. Madison (1803), which were intended to deliver us from the arbitrary whims of Kings. Politicians, and other powerful men by preserving our unalienable individual rights as Americans, as is supposed to be guaranteed by our rule of law. 

     We can do better than this. We, the People, might be a little out of practice at helping members of Congress out – of elected office. But we have done the wholesale version of this, THE FIX, before – and it worked. For a few examples of how American voters have reorganized our political system to deliver different results, see A Serious Mess at https://banbrainhacks.org/a-serious-mess

     This discussion, Our Fight For Prosperity continues on the second page Fight For Prosperity II with sections B through F at https://banbrainhacks.org/fight-for-prosperity-ii