Tag: Productivity

Inequality is a momentous question for socialism. It’s like peering into the Grand Canyon, and wondering how people get down there, and how they get back up. So much of the human experience, from ancient times until now, is bound up in poverty and inequality. How can we do justice to all that?

If we accept inequality, then do we accept that there are degrees of human dignity?

If we reject inequality, then are we rejecting the conditions of life? Are we tilting at windmills?

Goethe wrote that the only way to accept the clear superiority of another is through love. But what is the other, the fortunate object of this love, supposed to feel? Does this love lead to a stronger society?

I would say this: the capitalist view of society (and inequality) is instrumental; society and its inequalities exist to support capitalism. What if, instead, we saw society as a home for the life of the spirit? What sort of society would we build? How would we think about inequality?

So, given the above considerations, what do socialists do about inequality? How should we approach this problem? What exactly do we mean by “inequality”? And what have the people who came before done about it?

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There are two broad approaches to reducing inequality: redistribution and increased productivity.

Redistribution is often popular because it offers immediate relief. And in places like Latin America where the rich are mostly descended from conquerors, the poor see redistribution as simple justice—their ancestors were robbed, and they want to right that wrong. In Latin America (and in Russia), it’s hard to argue that property isn’t theft.

And redistribution is a common—we might even say normal—activity of governments. All governments redistribute wealth. Public education and veterans’ benefits couldn’t exist without it.

Redistribution often transfers wealth to the wealthy, who ceaselessly lobby for tax cuts, direct subsidies, and other benefits. Since 1980 in America, redistributed wealth has flowed almost entirely upward.

But for socialist movements redistribution has its hazards. The process may seem chaotic—may in fact be chaotic—and the benefits are often only temporary. To take one example, the Labour Party’s policy of decentralized “unofficial” strikes in the ‘70s and ‘80s was a piecemeal redistributive program, but the ensuing inflationary spiral eventually turned public opinion against the trade unions and Labour itself. (The trade unions didn’t cause the inflation, but their strategy made it worse.)

On the other hand, increasing productivity is slower than redistribution but less chaotic and usually more sustainable. Sometimes this takes the form of infrastructure changes, like the REA or TVA during the New Deal, other times job training and education are the main approach. The meticulous training of industrial workers in Germany, promoted by the SPD, has been highly successful and is the foundation of Germany’s economy.

From a political standpoint, productivity improvements are less polarizing than redistribution, at least under industrial capitalism, because everyone can see the benefit of having skilled workers. On the other hand, redistribution can have dramatic short-term benefits which build political support.

To choose the right policies to address inequality, we must clearly specify what we mean by “inequality.” There is wage inequality, however we define that, and there is wealth inequality, a particular problem in the Americas.

Also, there’s “equality of opportunity,” a term that includes (at least) access to capital and good education or job training. This form of inequality, and policies to reduce it, are my main subjects in what follows.

Media discussions of “equality of opportunity” are seldom adequate to the scope of the problem—this is not merely a matter of a few hundred poor or minority youths getting into elite universities every year; if the quality of K-12 education wasn’t so “variable” then the  number of disadvantaged youths at elite universities would take care of itself, assuming the right financial aid.

And by “variable” I mean that some of our K-12 schools should be shut down, while the AP programs at the better public high schools match up well with the best private schools in the country. But this isn’t just a matter of school districts because the children of well-educated people seem to do well everywhere.

And when I talk about schools being shut down, I don’t just mean schools in the poorest areas. Even the schools in working class neighborhoods and rural areas are often far from adequate. Evidence for that includes our low adult literacy rate:

https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2019/2019179/index.asp

The functionally illiterate are about 20% of the adult population. Innumeracy is also a widely discussed problem, but it appears no one has quantified it. As a society, are we are so innumerate that we can’t estimate our own innumeracy?

In theory, we should reform the public schools from top to bottom to provide all American schoolchildren with the best education in the world. We wouldn’t see the full effects of that reform for 10-20 years, and where is the constituency for that change? Poorly educated parents no doubt want better for their children, but they cannot understand the scope of the problem or envision what good public schools would look like. Innumeracy is the best example—how are parents who struggle with fractions supposed to evaluate their children’s mathematical knowledge? Almost the worst thing about ignorance is having no way to understand how ignorant you are, or how ignorant your children are. Without a sense of the scale of the problem, is a solution possible? A blind child can imagine seeing his mother’s face or the food he eats, but he can’t imagine the vastness of space, or a bird in flight. The parents, and even the teachers, can only picture incremental improvements over what they already know, but America’s need is greater than that.

And reforming the schools would do nothing to fix the education and training deficits of today’s work force. It won’t fix adult illiteracy and innumeracy; it won’t turn fast-food workers into diesel mechanics or home builders or software engineers.

What follows is my proposal for increasing productivity. To set the stage, I want to make two points. First, as I present the proposal, the reader may reasonably question whether America can afford it. But as Keynes said, “anything we can actually do, we can afford.” That is, if we can produce something, we can afford to finance it—although Keynes is careful to point out that time is always a factor: “We can have almost anything we like, given time.”

https://www.bradford-delong.com/2020/05/john-maynard-keynes-how-much-does-finance-matter.html

Another way to state this is: the productive power (including services) of society is usually tightly correlated with its financial power. Absent a banking crisis or some other unusual event, we can ordinarily buy everything we produce, and if we can’t buy it with cash, we can borrow the money we need, and re-pay the debt without much risk of default.

In the case of my proposal, we have to ask ourselves, could we afford to dedicate more labor and resources to education, particularly if this resulted in a more productive workforce and greater economic growth? Of course we could! We can spend as much as we choose on education. If this sounds inappropriately optimistic, it’s because most people think about the impact of education on their household budgets, especially college costs, which often seem  overwhelming.

However, if you look at the problem of educational costs at the macro level, we see that education is an industry; through collective effort we produce education and when we put it to use it improves the overall productivity of the economy—like electricity or the internet. The way we finance education is currently a burden to most of the population, so people are naturally wary of spending more, but the financing model can and should change.

The only real problem in increased spending is if there’s little need or demand for more education. We don’t see much of this today—educational supply and demand seem fairly well matched. But if we expanded our educational capacity, would demand follow? If we build it, will they come?

This demand (if it materializes) would be among adults, including prospective college students, since children already have to go to school. Expanding access for adults is absolutely critical for several reasons: the high rates of adult illiteracy and innumeracy; the low level of social mobility, especially among adults with a high school education or less; low levels of productivity growth; the widespread effect of burnout, which probably indicates that people are stuck in the same job or profession too long. And the K-12 system can only benefit from having better-educated parents.

But with adults, cost is a crucial concern. Also, adults will need to choose, of their own free will, additional education or job training.

This choice allows us to match educational supply with demand. Even if every adult receives an educational grant, not all will use it. People with satisfactory jobs may decide to focus all their energy on work and leave the grant unused. Using census and income data, we should be able to estimate how many of the grants will be used, and polling data should give us an idea of what sorts of education people would want. In other words, we should be able to estimate educational demand under this scheme, which would allow us to manage the costs.

That is the big picture on whether we can afford this plan, although there will be complexities. Still, it’s worth keeping in mind Keynes’ advice: “anything we can actually do, we can afford.”

The second general point I need to make is that this essay is something like a thought-experiment. This is a proposal, but it’s also an effort to get people to think big about repairing the damage that’s been done to the American people by Billionaire Capitalism. The details of the proposal are important, but the objectives are more important.

The objectives are as follows:

• To create the most skilled and productive work force in the world. Without a thriving economy and an expanding middle class, we cannot stabilize our politics and defeat Billionaire Capitalism. And without a prosperous and stable America, democracy (outside Europe) may not survive. With this program, we should see significant productivity improvements in five years or less, and in eight to ten years we should lead the world in worker productivity. Higher wages will follow.

• To reduce the underclass drastically or even eliminate it entirely. A corollary of this is to eliminate or greatly reduce class and racial disparities in education.

• To revitalize the working class. As it stands now, there is little social mobility for people who only complete high school. This must change; there has to be a path forward for everyone in America.

• To take pressure off families who plan to send their children to college or to an expensive trade school. This will help stabilize middle- and working-class families.

• To solve the student loan problem. People who have already graduated from college will be able to pay off their student loans using grants.

• To create seed capital for new businesses and farms; this is a program to improve productivity in general, not solely through education. People can use these grants to start new businesses or expand existing ones, and that most definitely includes farmers. Much of America’s economic dynamism comes from small businesses, and yet they often struggle, partly because large businesses, especially banks, deny them access to capital. These grants would help fix that problem. And yes, small ◊businesses could (in many cases) use these grants to pay off existing debt.

Let’s take a deep breath and re-read the objectives. This proposal will radically change our economy and our class structure for the better. It will unleash the power of our people to create a better future for all.

The proposal is this: every American gets a productivity grant of $250,000 which they can use to further their education or fund their businesses. Education is defined as broadly as possible; it will include trade schools, apprenticeships, remedial adult education, as well as ◊junior college and university education, both undergraduate and graduate.

Is $250,000 far too much money? This needs to be a big number, because we are asking people to achieve things they’ve never before contemplated. And if they fail once or even twice, they will have enough money to start over again.

And the wisdom of our people tells us: “go big or go home.”

There will need to be checks and balances, of course, to avoid fraud or misuse, and the financing will require careful handling. The effect on the money supply and the potential for inflation must both be considered.

But first we must insist on some principles:

• No means testing. We need to establish the precedent that socialist programs ordinarily benefit everyone, just like Social Security and Medicare do. And making the grants available to all strengthens the program politically; even wealthy people with a net worth of a few million would be delighted to have these grants for their children, even if they never use them for themselves.

• These grants are not transferable or inheritable. They are designed to increase the productivity of the entire economy, not to build “family wealth.”

• These grants cannot be revoked except for fraud and sedition. People who attempt to bilk this program can and should have their grants revoked permanently or suspended for a number of years. Those who engage in sedition can and must be excluded from this program, except in the interest of reconciliation. However, people convicted of ordinary crimes should not be excluded; one of the objectives, remember, is to eliminate the underclass or to greatly reduce it in size. The people who have the ability to seize this opportunity should be given every chance, whatever their past missteps.

• This is not a Universal Basic Income (UBI). It’s not to be used for ordinary living expenses, with one important exception. To avoid the perverse incentive of people trying to use up their grants so as not to “lose” them, at age 65 people can draw up to $1000 per month from their unused balance; the average monthly stipend, using reasonable assumptions, would be $691 (see Appendix). So even if they never use any of their grants for education or business, at least they can look forward to a more comfortable retirement.

Having people in classes or trade schools who don’t really want to be there, but who don’t want to “waste” their grants, doesn’t help anyone.

When I say this grant isn’t to be used for ordinary living expenses, obviously there will be gray areas. If a young person in a small town wants to move to a city to find work, then the grant might be used to pay for the move and for the initial costs of renting an apartment, especially if he or she has a job offer in hand. The high cost of housing in this country has reduced the traditional mobility of our work force.

And in the case of the homeless, getting a roof over their heads might be all some of them need to find a job. Obviously if someone goes from being unemployed to having a job—any job—there’s an immediate increase in productivity.

And there are unemployed people who could find a job if they only had reliable transportation. Yes, I believe grant money could be used for a bus pass or the down payment on a used car. There needs to be some limit on these kinds of expenditures, of course.

But we need to be realistic about the situation of the working poor. Absent a sharp increase in the minimum wage, what the working poor will need first from their grants may seem like ordinary living expenses—work clothes, bus fare, help with the gas bill. As long as we don’t lose focus on the overarching goal of increasing productivity, I believe the grants can used for these kinds of expenses, at least temporarily.

But let’s consider the administration of this program more broadly. There will have to be a bureaucracy staffed by people who have the skills of both a loan officer and a guidance counselor. For example, if someone is functionally illiterate, they won’t get grant money to go to junior college—unless the junior college knows the situation and will teach them how to read. Many junior colleges may see that as an opportunity.

Academic prerequisites will have to be met, and small business grants will get the same scrutiny that a bank—or the SBA—would apply to a loan application. People who want money for their businesses will have to write a business plan, and if they can’t write one, they will have to take a class (paid for by grant money) to learn how.

And there will be restrictions on the type of small businesses eligible for grants. The businesses need to be productive; flipping houses will not be eligible for grant money but building houses will be. These grants shouldn’t contribute to inflationary bubbles—you won’t get grant money to invest in the stock market and buying up farmland merely to lease it out won’t qualify either. However, buying land to farm it yourself would qualify—if you know how to farm. But grant money could also be used to learn to farm, by taking courses at an agricultural college or serving an apprenticeship.

To sum up, the administration will provide a smooth path for students and entrepreneurs to meet their long-term goals. If an individual lacks a basic skill like literacy or an advanced skill like writing a business plan, then the administrator will arrange for that training before the grantees go forward. Secondly, the administration will ensure that the grants result in higher productivity. Lastly, the grants cannot contribute to inflationary or speculative bubbles.

The grantees will have a great deal of latitude in choosing their goals, but in extreme cases the administrators may refuse funding for hopelessly unrealistic goals. Not everyone is cut out to be a rodeo clown.

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Let’s turn to the cost and related economic issues, such as inflation.

According to the last census, there are 331,449,281 people in the United States. At $250,000 per grant, the program cost comes to $82.9 trillion. Of course, some of the grant money will never be disbursed—people die, they have the perfect job already, and so on. Still, a massive amount of money. We must ensure that the benefits to our people are proportional to this treasure.

This is the total obligation for everyone alive today, but it isn’t the annual cost. When the grant program is enacted, there will probably be a surge of expenditures for the first few years. However, let’s first look at the annual cost at steady state, after things have stabilized.

The calculations are detailed in the Appendix, but, using reasonable assumptions, the steady-state cost would be $996 billion, of which about 35% would be payments to people 65 and older.  

$996 billion is a lot of money, about 3.9% of estimated 2022 GDP; however, for comparison, the M2 money supply increased by $4.16 trillion from Feb. 2020 to Feb. 2021, and $2.14 trillion from Feb. 2021 to Feb. 2022.

Of course, 2020 and 2021 were not normal times, because of the pandemic. But the pandemic years aside, M2 has grown on average about 3.7% of GDP per year.

Recent M2 Growth before the Pandemic

Year	M2 growth, (Billions 2022 dollars)	M2 increase as % of GDP
2019	$1120	4.52%
2018	$598	2.48%
2017	$777	3.30%
2016	$1069	4.63%
2015	$828	3.64%

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2SL

https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_past_and_projected_GDP_(nominal)

Since the annual cost of this program will be roughly equal to the average increase in M2, I propose that we finance this program through the money supply. There is no good reason that increases in the money supply must go through the banks or the bond market, but there’s every reason to use the money supply to improve productivity. This would necessarily change how the Federal Reserve manages the money supply, but it wouldn’t be a change for the worse.

The Fed’s tactics in 2009-2010 really only re-capitalized the banks, without increasing the money supply much; the banks, having had the scare of their lives in 2008, were quite reluctant to loan out the money the Fed had created for them. Regrettably, they were less reluctant to hand out executive bonuses and pay raises, which led to asset inflation in New York real estate, collectible art and possibly even the stock market.

Not a penny of TARP money or the Fed’s increases in money supply went to improving productivity. What a wasted opportunity!

https://seekingalpha.com/article/4384862-money-printing-2020-vs-2008

And the current situation starting is 2020 is similar. The M2 money supply increased by over $6 trillion, and there was nothing in it to further individual productivity. Granted, Biden’s infrastructure package included funds for communication and transportation improvements which will indirectly increase worker productivity. But no one ever got a pay raise because they drove to work over better roads.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrastructure_Investment_and_Jobs_Act

So, when this program reaches steady state it can be largely paid for by normal growth in the money supply. Granted, some of the growth in money supply is driven by the federal deficit, and that money is already spent, so to speak. But the broad point that the growth in money supply doesn’t currently increase productivity is still true. Even if we have to sell bonds to partly finance this program, or raise taxes, the increase in productivity will increase economic growth and tax revenues. “Anything we actually do, we can afford to do,” especially if it results in sustainable economic growth and higher wages.

The reader might ask, what about inflation? First of all, if the money supply isn’t growing any faster than normal, then there shouldn’t be any extra inflation. Instead of funneling money through the banks, with the potential for delay and corruption, increases in the money supply go directly into education, job training and capital for small businesses.

Secondly, the increases in productivity will cancel out any inflationary pressures. In fact, these grants might have a deflationary effect, in the same way that Moore’s Law is effectively deflationary. If a key factor in the economy becomes more productive for the same price (as with integrated circuits) then that reduces the overall inflation rate. And that’s true whether we’re talking about CPUs or labor.

So, the Fed will need to increase the money supply above “normal” to reflect the increased productivity of the labor force. If productivity increases, then the economy grows, and the money supply must grow along with it. And after all, one of the primary goals here is a sustained increase in wages.

So the money supply and inflation shouldn’t be problematic once the program reaches steady state. But what about before then?

Once this program is enacted, we could see a situation where 10%-20% of the workforce immediately applies for grants. If most of those are applying for educational and job-training benefits (and not to fund small businesses), then that could be quite difficult. If 10% of the workforce enrolls in full-time classes over the first month or two, then we will have a recession unless we counteract that abrupt loss of productivity.

Counter-measures could include:

• Encourage grantees to keep their jobs and attend night or weekend classes. This might work well for literacy programs, for example. But part-time study won’t be practical in all cases.

• Since our labor force participation rate is rather low (see figure below), we could prioritize grants for people who are out of the labor force but who are otherwise employable. This would definitely blunt the effects of the immediate loss of productivity.

• Bring in foreign workers on temporary visas to make up part of the labor shortfall.

• Prioritize the one-time grants I mentioned earlier: paying moving expenses to find a job, paying for bus passes for the unemployed, etc.

• Give employers incentives to offer part-time work to grantees.

• College students who receive grant money (which would be all that apply) could be encouraged to take part-time and summer jobs.

• Prioritize grants for people who only want short training programs of a few weeks, so they could get back in the workforce quickly. If they want to come back for more training later, then at least the program will be past the ramp-up period.

• Structure the program so that grants are staggered over the first year or two. Those who have to wait should go through the screening process, so they will know that their grants have been approved, effective at some specific date in the future. That way they’ll have a clear path forward, and be able to plan.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CIVPART

But the Fed must be ready to quickly increase the money supply to avert or soften a recession during the first year or so of this program. The ramp-up period will be a challenge, but if we prepare properly, it should go well enough.

I should note that if the ordinary growth in money supply doesn’t cover the cost of the grant program, then short-term bonds can be issued, with the Fed retaining the option to call in the bonds at any time—that is, to repay them early. These bonds would be issued in fairly small denominations to US residents only. The advantage is that the Fed can use these bonds in case Quantitative Easing is required. Instead of buying T-bills from Japanese banks or Saudi billionaires, which has no effect on the domestic money supply, the Fed has a class of bonds it can buy—totally at its own discretion—which will have a much more immediate effect on M2.

The sum up this section: the grants program can be mostly funded through normal increases in money supply. Instead of routing new money through banks and the bond market, it can be directly applied to increasing productivity. The grant program’s annual cost will be approximately the growth of M2 in a normal year. Bonds can be issued to cover any gaps.

Inflation shouldn’t be a problem. Productivity gains should cancel out any inflationary pressures, and no additional money supply will be needed.

The ramp-up of the grants program will require care; if in the first few months too many workers leave the workforce for training then the abrupt loss of productivity will likely cause a recession. There are reasonable counter-measures but the Fed and Congress must be ready if needed to rapidly increase the money supply to avert a recession.

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Let’s look at the effects on the American educational system. Of the $996 billion annual cost for the grants program (see above), about $647 billion would go to education, job training and small-business capital. This is nearly the amount spent on PK-12 education in 2018-2019: $667 billion.

https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=372#PK12-expenditures

The amount spent by states and localities on higher education was $311 billion in 2019.

https://www.urban.org/policy-centers/cross-center-initiatives/state-and-local-finance-initiative/state-and-local-backgrounders/higher-education-expenditures

The total amount spent by 2-year and 4-year public universities and colleges in 2018-2019 is (I believe) $401 billion, although the table in the link below seems to indicate $401 million—but the units are nowhere defined. But if it’s 401 something, it must be $401 billion.

https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d20/tables/dt20_334.10.asp

For private colleges and universities, the number is $219 billion in 2018-2019.

https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d20/tables/dt20_334.30.asp

The point here is that $647 billion per year for adult education, job training and small business capitalization would be revolutionary. It’s slightly less than what we spend on PK-12 education and apparently slightly more than we’re spending on 2-year and 4-year education. (At least in 2018-2019.)

$647 billion per year is an enormous opportunity for our people to better themselves—-and an equally big opportunity for scammers in high places. Here are some potential problems:

• That states and localities will reduce their support for higher education and thereby drain money from the grantees and ultimately from the grant program. We can reasonably suspect that the grant money thus diverted would become tax cuts targeted at the richest citizens.

• That universities would increase tuition, reduce financial aid and then increase their president’s salary and build a new football stadium. The grant administrators can impose requirements on universities that accept grant money, to prevent tuition increases above the rate of inflation. $647 billion a year provides enough leverage to end runaway inflation in tuition. Universities that refuse this requirement will be limited to students who aren’t using grant money.

• Short of malfeasance, there will probably be significant inflation in educational costs. To address this, one idea is a system of National Universities, which will be first-class institutions with Ph.D. programs and research, but also with vocational and technical programs. This isn’t as innovative as it might sound:

https://www.online.colostate.edu/certificates/construction-management/

https://www.online.colostate.edu/certificates/silviculture/

Craft Brewing

But the National Universities would have to offer some standard vocational and technical courses. For now, building trades would be a high priority, because of our severe housing shortage.

There are a number of struggling small colleges that might welcome the opportunity to become National Universities.

To give an idea of the scale, I think we would need at least 100 new universities.

(I will write another essay on the National University idea later.)

Another possibility is to drastically expand the two-year college system.

• Large numbers of for-profit trade schools will spring up. Some of them will be scams, and others will suffer from inexperience and disorganization. Regulation is the only answer here. There will have to be national standards for curricula, although not so tightly defined as to choke off innovation.

All that aside, we may see a flowering of education and culture. When Sequoia developed the Cherokee syllabary, it was adopted with great enthusiasm. There are cases of Cherokees meeting each other on hunting trips, where one band had learned to read and write, and the other hadn’t even heard of the invention. They all sat down on the spot, and the literate ones taught the others, drawing in the dirt with a stick.

I want our people to have the same intoxicating experience of learning. I want their lives to open upward into the light.

People may come up with marvelous new methods of learning; we live in hope.

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I hope my readers appreciate that this proposal will result in sweeping change. This program will make our labor force the most productive in the world, putting our economy on a path of sustained, low-inflation growth. It will transform the class structure and revive the equalitarian spirit of our people.

Readers may also have noted how different this proposal is from the usual policy proposals of the American Left. And why is it so different?

It’s different because we have a coherent ideology—most particularly an analysis of the American class structure in Class and Underclass, but also an understanding of the history of Western Civilization, the Enlightenment and the role of education in the creation of the modern world, as detailed in White Pride and What Our Mind Cannot Grasp.

In the background of this essay on educational grants is also a critique of capitalism and Billionaire Capitalism, as set forth in A Higher Power, Is Billionaire Capitalism a Thing?, and Why is Billionaire Capitalism Bad at Pandemics?

Regrettably, the American Left doesn’t have a critique of capitalism. Bernie Sanders is the most forthright in his opposition to capitalism, but he talks about it mostly using a catchphrase: “casino capitalism.” There’s no analysis, and so there’s no basis for prioritization. And if you can’t prioritize, you can’t govern. But no one takes governing seriously on the Left.

If you want serious progressive policies that will actually work, then you need a critique of capitalism and the class structure.

And to the best of my knowledge, you can only get that here.

Appendix:

There are some qualitative assumptions that need to be made at the beginning, and then there another set of quantitative assumptions to bring the original assumptions into focus.

First, the qualitative assumptions:

Next, the quantitative assumptions:

• On average, people will use 60% of their grants ($150,000) by age 65. This “usage” statistic is important in calculating the annual cost of the program.

We can treat “usage” numbers as a normal distribution. (It may not be a perfectly normal distribution, but we will get some insight unless the real distribution is highly skewed or discontinuous).

• The standard deviation of this normal distribution is .58. I used the tool below and played around with different standard deviations to find a distribution that “looked right. The tool is https://onlinestatbook.com/2/calculators/normal_dist.html

The part of the distribution that’s => 1 corresponds to those who use their entire grant before age 65:

And the area <= 0 corresponds to the people who use none of their grant money before age 65:

So, given that 24.5% of the population uses all their grant money before age 65, and that 15.05% uses none of it, then we can calculate:

• That the people who use only some of their grants before age 65 use on average 58.7%, or about $147K. This implies that almost everyone (85% of the population) will see a substantial increase in their productivity.

• The annual cost of the program, and the proportion of the funds that will go to education and business versus the amount that will go to a retirement stipend.

• The average retirement stipend.