Posted on 01/17/2020 1:32:33 PM PST by karpov
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In the first place, over the past few years wages for workers toward the bottom of the income stream have been rising faster than wages for those toward the top. If the bosses have the workers by the throat, how can this be happening?
Second, wages are still generally determined by skills and productivity. For example, Edward Lazear of Stanford University finds that between 1989 and 2017, productivity in mostly high-skill industries rose by roughly 34 percent and wages in those industries rose by 26 percent. Productivity in industries with mostly less-skilled workers rose by 20 percent while wages grew by 24 percent.
As Michael Strain of the American Enterprise Institute puts it, capitalism is doing what it’s supposed to do. It’s rewarding productivity with pay, and some people and companies are more productive. If you improve worker bargaining power, that may help a bit, but over the long run people can’t earn what they don’t produce.
Third, and most important, most of the increase in earnings inequality has happened between companies, not within them. As John Van Reenen of M.I.T. has found, all over the world superstar businesses are racing ahead of their competitors. As those companies grow more productive, they earn more profit per employee and pay their workers more. Companies that can’t match that productivity don’t, and their workers lag behind.
A recent Brookings Institution/Chumir Foundation report also notes that there is a growing productivity gap between superstar companies and everybody else. Whether it is in tech, retail, manufacturing, utilities or services, productivity growth at the leading companies in each industry has remained very strong. Those productive businesses are capturing larger and larger market shares. But productivity is not growing fast among the lagging companies. Workers in those businesses suffer.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
And no Virginia in the white house. Or lizzie either.
DC Divide & Control CRIMINAL STATE. A goofball from Central Casting. Keep reading the lines old man.
His point is excellent. He doesn’t like Trump (and doesn’t credit him with the rise in competitivity and wages in the last few years), even though he’s actually on the same page. But otherwise it was an excellent article.
Another thing I liked was the photo of the back of Ol’ Grey Bernie’s head. Marxism is so yesterday, even though our idiot youth seems to believe it’s The Thing.
It appears Brooksie got the memo about kicking Crazy Bernie to the curb.
A massively indebted government needs to borrow cheaply with Federal Reserve help.
Cheap money benefits Wall Street and public companies on a borrowing binge.
Maybe a metaphorical war between the ruling class and the Taxpaying class.
Yes David, there IS a Class War. Class War hasn't been fought by the rich for almost a century. Class War is waged by Socialists, who constantly attack and demonize the rich, attempt to confiscate their wealth, and even call for them to be jailed or executed. It's fought by the lazy malcontents who blame their failures on the success of others. By those who are brainwashed by communist professors that wealth is a zero sum gain, and that every dollar earned by one man, is a dollar stolen from another. It is fought by people who see capitalism as evil.
So, yes, there IS a Class War. It's just not the mythical one perpetuated by Bernie, AOC, Pelosi and the rest of anti-capitalist left wing lunatics.
Didn’t read the article (a Free Republic first), but those without class are certainly waging war against us normals
David Brooks hates Donald Trump and never gives him credit for anything. His main beef with Trump is that Trump is rude, crude, not polite and is not deferential to eastern elites. The last part really gets him.
However, he never bought into the socialist panacea that apparently growing numbers of frustrated and TDS Democrats have swallowed. I think he is worried that the large number of snowflakes combined with the aforementioned Democrats just might tip the nomination to Bernie.
He knows this will be a disaster in November and makes a compelling case.
Class warfare is the ONLY selling point that Communism (Marxism/Socialism) has.
Is Soviet Socialist Sanders also a National Socialist or not?
That graph would fly directly in the face of Brook’s contention.
Yes, that was my point. Anyone who has been paying attention knows that wages have failed to keep pace with inflation for decades. There are many reasons for this: mechanization, outsourcing, illegal immigration, etc. Lack of worker productivity ain’t one of them.
Sorry, but the power of the cheap-labor express shows there IS a class war.
When billioinaire political donors are united in pushing for opens borders, trying to drive down middle- and lower-middle class wages by bringing in endless numbers of low-skilled immigrants, that’s a CLASS WAR. A war against the middle and lower classes.
“The Bernie Sanders Fallacy. No, Virginia, there is no class war.”
Yes there is a class war. Bernie once understood what it was all about - the big-money cheap labor express pushing for endless low-skilled immigration, to under cut the wages of the poor and middle class. Bernie once called the amnesty proposals a “Koch proposal” or words to that effect - i.e., a proposal by billionaires to keep their labor costs rock-bottom.
Today, he has “moved beyond” his defense of workers against illegal immigration, but the class war that he used to recognize is still going strong. Trump has tried to fight on behalf of the victims - the middle class and the poor - but he has been stymied by politicians of both parties who are beholden to wealthy donors.
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