Bob Herbert's column today, and the multi-part NY Times series on class in America, is pretty depresing stuff. But Jesse over at Pandagon said something in response that ought to be emphasized:
There's no problem with the people who run the company earning more money. There's a problem when we set up an economy where they reap all the benefits for the company they run, as if everyone under them is simply a token functionary who adds nothing to the company's success.
There's a larger point to be made here about the whole issue of how the work world has changed in the past few decades but I'm strugling with the words for it.
Comments (1)
Plus ca change.
Amazing how Marx's descriptions of late 19th Century capitalism seem to be a precise fit for early 21st Century capitalism, too.
Power--especially economic power--tends to concentrate. The middle class is squeezed out. The very highest class gets astronomically richer. And the poorest class grows hugely in number and in poverty.
We are seeing the Third-World-ization of the US.
The US economy increasingly comes to resemble the neo-feudal economies of the banana republics, in which 1% of the people own everything and do no work, and 99% own nothing and do all the work.
In the US, in the past, this was tempered in reality by the sanctions that had been gained against the richest class by labor unions; it was tempered in mythology by the Rags to Riches stories you see in The Enquirer--people who win the lottery, or become Bill Gates, or American Idol, etc.
But the labor unions have been decimated; and how many people win the lottery or are Bill Gates?
Since wealth is the result of common effort, I don't see any reason why the laws (which are theoretically the will of the majority) can't simply prescribe a ceiling and a floor on income--a ceiling and a floor that are not too far apart.
Some may object that this will destroy incentive; but the hyper-rich, with their unbridgeable gulf of wealth, have already destroyed it.
Posted by paul schumacher | June 7, 2005 12:35 PM