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by Animats
3996 days ago
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That's more or less correct. The problem is real (we don't need that many people to make all the stuff) but the proposed solutions are no good. He's into co-ops and "local", which just don't do much in the developed world because the big guys are not inefficient. (You're not going to beat WalMart on price with your local grocery co-op.) Then there's some Marxist analysis, which doesn't help; Marx wrote when companies needed huge labor forces. Bernie Sanders, the presidential candidate, makes an interesting point. He questions the whole idea of economic growth as a national goal. “Unchecked growth – especially when 99 percent of all new income goes to the top 1 percent – is absurd. Where we’ve got to move is not growth for the sake of growth, but we’ve got to move to a society that provides a high quality of life for all of our people."[1] There's something to be said for that. You get what you measure and optimize for, and US policy has been to optimize for GDP. Maybe we should be optimizing for median per capita real income per hour worked, or "how much does an hour of work buy for most people". That's a number you never used to see in the press, but it shows up more now. [1] http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/07/13/w... |
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Re the Bernie Sanders quote, it's actually not true (http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/apr/...).
For start it omits taxes and wealth transfers - and secondly it measures 2009-2013.
2009 was the year right after the crash when 1% experienced a sharp decline in income.
Thirdly, the huge increase in healthcare (hence insurance) costs is largely carried by employers. That's one of the main reasons for stagnant wages of late - total compensation has been increasing but the increase is flowing into benefits - thus flat income.
I have been thinking myself about the issue of inequality and think it's being obfuscated by the language used (whereby it's discussed in terms of rich vs poor instead of US poor vs foreign poor).
Ie - how are the wages for the top 1% (lawyers, doctors, bankers, etc) affecting the wages for the bottom 50%? If anything I think that immigration has been a much larger factor (for the low skilled / paid sector of the economy).