- Jun 23, 2004
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America is Regressing into a Developing Nation for Most People
Here is an article that is accurately, in my view, providing context towards the status of the American economy, and the resultant voting blocs and election upsets rising from it. Many partisan people want to play up racism of their opponents for the 2016 upset, while ignoring the plight of the downtrodden. If you think the American people live in a blissful paradise, you haven't been paying attention.
Economic dog whistles on China, Trade, and Jobs played a major role in 2016, and if you don't understand that people are suffering in the first place, then congratulations on being the upper 20%... now let me show you the rest of America, pain and all.
Efficiency. It is the simple nature of Capitalism to concentrate wealth and hire only the cheapest labor possible. Once thriving economies built on good paying jobs, are now hollow shells of their former selves. Prices, the cost of living, rises every year... wages have not kept pace in over 40 years. Productivity Rises, Wages do not. One of countless examples, my father was a Machinist and sees jobs advertised for the same hourly wage they had 30 years ago.
This is predatory, but it's also perfectly natural for our system. What it requires is consumer protection. Today what we have is little to none. What we do have is entirely ineffectual. We spent a lot of tax payer dollars to tread water, and to slowly sink into the abyss of income inequality. Where the poor get poorer. Where the Middle Class is eliminated. And the rich get richer.
When someone speaks of Income Inequality, what they really want is a return to the America of old, where people could make a decent living and find economic security. However, the path to achieve that in today's world is going to look different than in the 1950s and 60s. We cannot rely on an industry that dropped its labor, or shipped overseas. American productivity is higher than ever, but is divesting itself from labor, from its consumers.
This is a disease afflicting Capitalism, where people are left behind. What we need is to patch it up, to fix it by saving it from itself. To keep our consumers, our people, strong and healthy. The only solution I know is to create a strong economic safety net. Wealth will never trickle down, what we need to do is raise taxes and send our money from production straight back into our people. Return to them the value they once enjoyed, when people said America was great.
If you want to Make America Great Again, start by fixing the economy. Start by giving people more. Start with basic income.
In a new book, The Vanishing Middle Class: Prejudice and Power in a Dual Economy, Peter Temin, Professor Emeritus of Economics at MIT, draws a portrait of the new reality in a way that is frighteningly, indelibly clear: America is not one country anymore. It is becoming two, each with vastly different resources, expectations, and fates.
Here is an article that is accurately, in my view, providing context towards the status of the American economy, and the resultant voting blocs and election upsets rising from it. Many partisan people want to play up racism of their opponents for the 2016 upset, while ignoring the plight of the downtrodden. If you think the American people live in a blissful paradise, you haven't been paying attention.
Economic dog whistles on China, Trade, and Jobs played a major role in 2016, and if you don't understand that people are suffering in the first place, then congratulations on being the upper 20%... now let me show you the rest of America, pain and all.
- Is the American dream really dead?
- A Hospital Crisis Is Killing Rural Communities.
- Appalachia: The big white ghetto
- Wealth of people in their 30s has 'halved in a decade'
- Revealed: the 30-year economic betrayal dragging down (millennials') income
Efficiency. It is the simple nature of Capitalism to concentrate wealth and hire only the cheapest labor possible. Once thriving economies built on good paying jobs, are now hollow shells of their former selves. Prices, the cost of living, rises every year... wages have not kept pace in over 40 years. Productivity Rises, Wages do not. One of countless examples, my father was a Machinist and sees jobs advertised for the same hourly wage they had 30 years ago.
This is predatory, but it's also perfectly natural for our system. What it requires is consumer protection. Today what we have is little to none. What we do have is entirely ineffectual. We spent a lot of tax payer dollars to tread water, and to slowly sink into the abyss of income inequality. Where the poor get poorer. Where the Middle Class is eliminated. And the rich get richer.
When someone speaks of Income Inequality, what they really want is a return to the America of old, where people could make a decent living and find economic security. However, the path to achieve that in today's world is going to look different than in the 1950s and 60s. We cannot rely on an industry that dropped its labor, or shipped overseas. American productivity is higher than ever, but is divesting itself from labor, from its consumers.
This is a disease afflicting Capitalism, where people are left behind. What we need is to patch it up, to fix it by saving it from itself. To keep our consumers, our people, strong and healthy. The only solution I know is to create a strong economic safety net. Wealth will never trickle down, what we need to do is raise taxes and send our money from production straight back into our people. Return to them the value they once enjoyed, when people said America was great.
If you want to Make America Great Again, start by fixing the economy. Start by giving people more. Start with basic income.
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