I love a good graph, and an excellent one has been making the rounds lately. I traced the source to David Frum's Incredible Shrinking Worker's Income. I also love it when people don't have the first clue about what they're looking at. This is a case in point.
Workers’ share of U.S, national income is collapsing.
Two questions for the Republican presidential candidates:
1) Is this a problem?
2) If yes, what can be done about it?
What does Frum mean is collapsing? Talking Point Memo (TPM) gives us a closer look, which I marked up a bit.
Workers share of national income began a precipitous decline from which it never recovered in the early 1980s, which perhaps just coincidentally happens to be when I date the beginning of the Empire's decline. Specifically, the workers share fell off a cliff in 1983 during The Gipper's first term. And now David Frum asks Republican candidates whether it's a problem, and if it is, what can be done about it. Are those the very same Republicans who have done so much to redistribute the income and how it is generated over these last 30 years?
Writing for Yahoo News, Zachary Roth wants to know why the workers share of national income fell off a cliff and keeps falling.
Why are workers taking home such a reduced share of the pie? Opinions differ, but many experts think that the trend has to do with a number of factors, including a decline in the bargaining power of labor, and increased competition from foreign workers. Similarly, over the last year or so, U.S. companies have made record profits, while unemployment has stayed high and wages have barely risen.
The chart jibes with other data, which show that since the 1980s, income for the richest 1 percent of Americans has exploded, while hardly budging at all for everyone else.
Still, there's little sense that either the Obama administration or Congress plan to do much about this growing inequality. Indeed, any serious action to boost the economy and cut unemployment now seems to be off the table.
There is "little sense that either the Obama administration or Congress plan to do much about this growing inequality" because those in the White House and on Capitol Hill serve the interests of those responsible for bringing this sad situation about. Having successfully implemented the financialization of the economy, and the necessity for debt-based growth, which impoverishes those paying interest on debt but enriches those collecting it, the owners of this country have grabbed a greater and greater share of the income.
It is thus no surprise that this trend continues unabated today. More and more of the national income comes from debt-based securities, derivatives (e.g. credit default or currency swaps), trading in equities (stocks), commodities trading, capital investments in emerging markets, and other forms of gambling investment. Those who indulge in these activities—those with most of the money—make more and more of the income. The share of working people shrinks. This isn't rocket science. A glance at the latest household assets data from the Fed's Flow Of Funds report should make this abundantly clear.
Only housing wealth is declining. Source
David Frum alerts Republicans to the problem. Zachary Roth notes that Obama and the Democrats have no plans to do anything about it.
C'mon people, get a clue! I keep waiting for Americans to figure out what's going on—what has been going on for 30 years—but they never do.
No doubt I'll be waiting forever.
"No doubt I'll be waiting forever."
No doubt. Mass media has demonstrated you can, in fact, fool most of the people all of the time. Joe Bageant tried to explain to us why Americans vote, routinely, against their own interests. He did so in a very long book riddle with sentimentality. But it can all be boiled down to this: People prefer the pain of ignorance to the freedom of knowledge as the latter places the onus upon them to become informed and act.
Posted by: Distant Observer | 06/16/2011 at 09:58 AM