It isn't because the United States lacks valuable publicly-held assets. It's because we possess too much publicly-held debt. The good news is that we've made THAT a sort of sovereign wealth fund.
I think you're right that our politics are too dysfunctional to implement it right now. But I've long thought that if you made me dictator for a day, a SWF would be one of the reforms I'd introduce.
(1) Take the existing "social security trust fund" concept and generalize it to a Sovereign Wealth Fund that invests in a bit of everything. Stocks, bonds, even some small slices of higher risk/return stuff. (Like the DoE loan program that was pilloried by dishonest Republicans for having made a bad loan to Solyndra, but actually turned a profit, and among other things saved Tesla from bankruptcy.)
(2) Give everyone a Postal Bank account, tied to an investment account that makes claims on target-date tranches fo the SWF.
(3) End the "401k revolution". Nobody's allowed to put money into those types of accounts anymore, the SWF target date funds are the only game in town. Tweak some tax rules to incentivize rolling stuff out of the private account system, and eventually the brokers will give up on running them, since as the scale declines it won't be profitable to serve the remaining customers.
(4) Do Cory Booker's "Baby Bonds" program. Universal Basic Wealth. Everyone starts out life with a bit of money invested on their behalf, enhanced if their parents were on lower rungs of the economic ladder. Everyone reaches young adulthood with a bit of a nest egg that they can use to help buy a first home, invest in a business, spend on college education, etc.
(5) Start a UBI that drops payments into the Postal Banking account. Set some "automatic stabilizer" guidelines that boost the UBI payment when certain economic indicators get bad, maybe give the Fed some discretion to outright do "helicopter drops" in an emergency, where they can just *poof* add a thousand bucks to every single account.
You could even convert the income tax to a progressive consumption tax, if you want, by requiring all wages to be direct deposited to the Postal Banking / SWF investment system, and then calculate tax liability based on the amount that's taken _out_ of that system -- either spent, or transferred to private investments. (This could be part of the dis-incentivization for the existing private account schemes. Keeping the money within the public investment system defers tax, whereas putting it in a private account doesn't.)
The problem is most people think money is real ,, do people really think Elon Musk is a trillionaire, is a little company that makes a computer graphic card worth trillions .do you think if I told Warren Buffett he made a million dollars yesterday,, would he run out and buy a new car , Warren like a lot of us old geezers know , time is running out , and that's what makes money so interesting,, because we all like money because we think it keeps going on after we're dead , maybe we should print Jesus on the dollar bills , and the Pope wouldn't have to work so hard to sell people on his program , love your fellow man, spend wisely and give to the unfortunate.
It's that what the guy on the dollar bill would tell you , now that would be a real sovereign wealth trust fund .
I think you're right that our politics are too dysfunctional to implement it right now. But I've long thought that if you made me dictator for a day, a SWF would be one of the reforms I'd introduce.
(1) Take the existing "social security trust fund" concept and generalize it to a Sovereign Wealth Fund that invests in a bit of everything. Stocks, bonds, even some small slices of higher risk/return stuff. (Like the DoE loan program that was pilloried by dishonest Republicans for having made a bad loan to Solyndra, but actually turned a profit, and among other things saved Tesla from bankruptcy.)
(2) Give everyone a Postal Bank account, tied to an investment account that makes claims on target-date tranches fo the SWF.
(3) End the "401k revolution". Nobody's allowed to put money into those types of accounts anymore, the SWF target date funds are the only game in town. Tweak some tax rules to incentivize rolling stuff out of the private account system, and eventually the brokers will give up on running them, since as the scale declines it won't be profitable to serve the remaining customers.
(4) Do Cory Booker's "Baby Bonds" program. Universal Basic Wealth. Everyone starts out life with a bit of money invested on their behalf, enhanced if their parents were on lower rungs of the economic ladder. Everyone reaches young adulthood with a bit of a nest egg that they can use to help buy a first home, invest in a business, spend on college education, etc.
(5) Start a UBI that drops payments into the Postal Banking account. Set some "automatic stabilizer" guidelines that boost the UBI payment when certain economic indicators get bad, maybe give the Fed some discretion to outright do "helicopter drops" in an emergency, where they can just *poof* add a thousand bucks to every single account.
You could even convert the income tax to a progressive consumption tax, if you want, by requiring all wages to be direct deposited to the Postal Banking / SWF investment system, and then calculate tax liability based on the amount that's taken _out_ of that system -- either spent, or transferred to private investments. (This could be part of the dis-incentivization for the existing private account schemes. Keeping the money within the public investment system defers tax, whereas putting it in a private account doesn't.)
The problem is most people think money is real ,, do people really think Elon Musk is a trillionaire, is a little company that makes a computer graphic card worth trillions .do you think if I told Warren Buffett he made a million dollars yesterday,, would he run out and buy a new car , Warren like a lot of us old geezers know , time is running out , and that's what makes money so interesting,, because we all like money because we think it keeps going on after we're dead , maybe we should print Jesus on the dollar bills , and the Pope wouldn't have to work so hard to sell people on his program , love your fellow man, spend wisely and give to the unfortunate.
It's that what the guy on the dollar bill would tell you , now that would be a real sovereign wealth trust fund .
Have a great day my friends
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