12-30-2019, 11:37 AM
(This post was last modified: 12-30-2019, 11:58 AM by Bob Butler 54.)
We can trivially control retirement age and hours per week. Productivity is way up from the progressive era (New Deal through Great Society). We can measure incomes for the elite, the middle class, and the poor, and roughly change them through taxes.
The progressive approach would be to use the increase in income due to productivity to maintain or somewhat increase what the poor and middle class receive. During the conservative era (Nixon through at least Trump), they instead increased income to the elites, thus increasing the division of wealth. Working class income crashed, and the elites got an ever increasing piece of the pie.
In the progressive era, we were willing to change things like retirement age, hours per week and minimum wage. They seem to have frozen these half way through the progressive era, allowing only minor changes to minimum wage. The average amount of labor done over a lifetime of work should make the income of the poor and middle classes sufficient or somewhat more than sufficient. The increase in productivity is more than sufficient that with the variables we can control things will be more than sufficient.
A large part of the problem is that labor is no longer a rare resource, jacked in price by the laws of supply and demand. It would have to be artificially increase in value by government action. The greedy people have called this socialism.
I don’t mind the elites taking the surplus. It is just that most of us should be allowed a healthy income rate. There would be more than enough to go around if the elites weren’t greedy, controlling the government, and grabbing all the income for themselves. They insist on a system that is not working on a large scale and in the long term. That doesn’t matter if you are looking only at yourself, and only in the short term.
We have to radically adjust the basic numbers we do control. Even the supposedly radical ‘socialist’ Democrats worship too deeply retirement at 65, and the 40 hour work week. To fix the economy, they will have to be open minded about things that have long been frozen.
The progressive approach would be to use the increase in income due to productivity to maintain or somewhat increase what the poor and middle class receive. During the conservative era (Nixon through at least Trump), they instead increased income to the elites, thus increasing the division of wealth. Working class income crashed, and the elites got an ever increasing piece of the pie.
In the progressive era, we were willing to change things like retirement age, hours per week and minimum wage. They seem to have frozen these half way through the progressive era, allowing only minor changes to minimum wage. The average amount of labor done over a lifetime of work should make the income of the poor and middle classes sufficient or somewhat more than sufficient. The increase in productivity is more than sufficient that with the variables we can control things will be more than sufficient.
A large part of the problem is that labor is no longer a rare resource, jacked in price by the laws of supply and demand. It would have to be artificially increase in value by government action. The greedy people have called this socialism.
I don’t mind the elites taking the surplus. It is just that most of us should be allowed a healthy income rate. There would be more than enough to go around if the elites weren’t greedy, controlling the government, and grabbing all the income for themselves. They insist on a system that is not working on a large scale and in the long term. That doesn’t matter if you are looking only at yourself, and only in the short term.
We have to radically adjust the basic numbers we do control. Even the supposedly radical ‘socialist’ Democrats worship too deeply retirement at 65, and the 40 hour work week. To fix the economy, they will have to be open minded about things that have long been frozen.
That this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.