| > Has the top 1% really become _that_ much more productive over the last few decades relative to the middle class? No, and that's actually the crucial point: High wage earners in the US have remained that much more productive than their competitors around the globe. They don't compete/compare at all with middle- and low-wage earners in the US. The "pie" we're slicing up isn't the US GDP (which would be the zero-sum game you-win-I-lose math assumed in the article), it's global GDP. > It seems to me that you're defending the uppermost social class in the US, and are attempting to place blame on the middle class of the US for not being able to compete on the global stage against the lower classes of third world nations. They aren't necessarily more productive, they're just willing to work for less. A lot less. I'm identifying the correct problem to solve. The goal is to return to income growth distribution closer to that seen in 1980, since there's a host of benefits to a pluralistic democracy when everyone is doing well. In particular it makes social transitions much easier, such as social justice and access to healthcare, because there's less sense of loss for the incumbents, and the costs of the changes can be borne more easily. But if you misidentify the problem as mere existence of difference in income, or worse, that growth in the high-income bracket comes exclusively or even mostly from exploitation ("unfairness"), then you'll never solve the real problem, which is: > They aren't necessarily more productive, they're just willing to work for less. A lot less. Exactly. The same work, at the same quality, is now actually worth less in real dollar terms than it used to be. In the 50s and 60s US middle-income workers were much more productive than their peers in other countries, and could charge more for their labor. Now others in the world have caught up (dramatically improving their own quality of life, it should be noted), and if we want to keep getting paid more than them, we have to increase our productivity again. Alternatively we could put trade barriers in place to tilt the playing field in our favor, but the cost for that is borne by consumers of all income classes (via higher prices). |