A Big Problem
by digby
Typical US family makes less than typical family 15 yrs ago, for first time since Depression http://t.co/ALSX6bwrOx pic.twitter.com/yB604eajAU
— Conrad Hackett (@conradhackett) November 16, 2014
When a Washington Post editorial frets over weak wage growth is is a bit like ISIS wondering why foreign reporters don’t seek their leaders out for interviews. Come on folks, are you serious?
We’ve had three and half decades in which we have maintained much higher unemployment rates than in the Golden Age (1947-1973) when workers shared in the gains of productivity growth. As Jared Bernstein and I show in our book, wage growth at the middle and the bottom of the wage ladder is directly related to the level of unemployment. Of course the Washington Post has endorsed most of the high unemployment policies in the form of the Fed’s anti-inflation policy, a high dollar policy that gave us large trade deficits, and reducing budget deficits and thereby depriving the economy of much needed demand.
But the Post’s attack on wages goes well beyond these macroeconomic policies. It has supported trade deals that are designed to put downward pressure on the wages of large segments of the labor force by placing them in direct competition with low-paid workers in the developing world. Yet, it will not even consider policies that would allow consumers to gain by subjecting doctors, lawyers, and other highly paid professionals to the same sort of competition.
Mostly the Washington Post issues a smug assessment that “Nothing in the last four decades refutes the basic case for flexible, innovative, American-style capitalism” but then immediately negates this conclusion by saying “if the system doesn’t work for the middle class, it really isn’t working at all.” If, in fact, the economy is not working for most everybody then perhaps it is worth challenging the way the economy operates, including many of the ways the Post advocates it should operate!
I’m going to guess that the Villagers all believe that the Invisible Hand of the market God will fix this with a few more tax cuts and some elbow grease. Questioning the basic assumptions about our economy is far too disquieting to people with money. They just don’t want to hear it. Why would they?
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