Infrastructure is a curious thing. Capitalism cannot function without it, yet never steps up and offers to pay for it. We the taxpayer cover the cost, but it is unclear whether we actually own it; we certainly have no investment stake in it, or any right to charge businesses for its use. Everything We the People purchase, through our government, turns out to be a sunk cost (money we will never get back) so that business can flourish. The wealthy get to invest; meanwhile, the rest of us are ‘taxed’.
Infrastructure can be defined as all the platforms on which society functions. Our system of Money, and the Banks that create it, constitute our financial infrastructure. Our system of Roads, Rails, Runways, and Waterways make up our transportation infrastructure. Our systems of Energy, Communication, Agriculture, Water / Sewer, Healthcare, Housing, Education – even Government itself – are all platforms that require infrastructure, and therefore require tax money to build. Even our Military and ‘Homeland Security’ can be seen as a kind of Security Infrastructure.
Why are private banks allowed to create government-backed currency, and why does all the interest from creating this money go solely to them? When Amazon uses the transportation, airways, waterways, and communication ‘airwaves’, in order to create its own product-delivery ‘platform’ on top of our infrastructure, why don’t We the Taxpayer get any cut of it? The fact is, We the American Citizen should have a stake in the platforms upon which America runs; we paid for it, we even built it, and we provide the revenue for all the businesses that profit from it. We the People are the thread that runs through every inch of every economic arrangement – the entire economy would unravel if people were not there to prop it up, yet we get nothing for it. Should we count ourselves lucky, to be able to educate ourselves, and work for forty years, in order to purchase basic needs only affordable to the upper 50% of Americans?
The Third Option believes that Americans should get to enjoy the same perks as Capitalists – to own what they purchase, rent it out to others, and profit from the investment. If we establish that Americans own the platforms that they purchase and build, and through a bank, filled with their money, procure loans in order to pay for the construction of these platforms, then whatever payment – for electricity, water, communication bills, apartment rent, driver’s registration, etc. – would be theirs, in order to pay back these loans. In this way, an equal share can truly be established, with ‘dividends’ attached to it, that would not only provide Americans with all their essential needs, it would do so more affordably, while also creating a new more sustainable form of social security, renamed ‘retirement dividends’, emanating from this investment in our nations’ infrastructure.
