09-12-2020, 04:37 PM
(09-12-2020, 08:43 AM)David Horn Wrote:(09-11-2020, 09:10 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:(09-11-2020, 05:43 PM)Warren Dew Wrote: "[P]rogressive redisritibution of wealth" isn't an actual solution, anyway. What's needed is a systemic change from rewarding capital investment to rewarding working. That took 17 years, from 1929 to 1946, last time around. We're party way through that, but we've got at least 5 years to go, and a war to get through first.
That actually underestimates the length of the progressive pro worker time. Strong unions, strong benefit and in general benefits towards the workers continued through LBJ. Reversing that has barely begun.
I agree, and would actually argue that the second half of that period actually mended the ills of the Gilded Age -- and then it ended.
I expect lack of reading comprehension from Bob, but you can do better. I'm citing 1929 to 1946 as the period of change, not the age of organized labor. The age of the industrial barons collapsed with the 1929 crash, and there followed a period of groping for solutions, with socialist and Communist movements opposed by the remnants of the industrial baron culture. After 1946, with the excesses of the 1935 National Labor Relations Act trimmed by the 1947 Taft Hartley Act, there was a period where organized labor was the most powerful force in the economy, and yes, that lasted through not only much LBJ's, but also much of Nixon's administration, until it came crashing down with the oil shock of 1973.
Empowerment of labor was important in 1929, and when its form was stabilized in 1947, it took a form that was useful for decades. However, ossification of the regime in the face of a changing economy, along with the development of Arthur Okun's "invisible handshake", which provided union members with benefits at the cost of nonunionized consumers, caused it to be counterproductive by the 1970s.
This is similar to what happened with the neoliberal regime. Supply side economics was sound, but since it was established in a period of labor surplus with shortages of savings and capital, the implementation ended up focusing on increasing the supply of capital. Ultimately this empowered the owners of that capital - in particular Silents and Boomers with fat retirement accounts - at the expense of workers. By 2008, the neoliberal regime had clearly become counterproductive; there was plenty of savings and capital, but workers had been frozen out of the pie for decades.
Redistribution isn't the solution, since it would just consume the capital without fixing the system. A return to labor unions in their 1950s and 1960s form is likely not the solution either, since work today isn't the one size fits all assembly line activity that characterized the labor union period.
Likely the solution will involve immigration restrictions so that employers can't just import cheap labor, along with, at a minimum, tax mechanisms to distribute more of the benefits of productivity to workers, and less to nonworkers, such as savers, investors, and those on means tested welfare. The details of the solution will likely take another 5-10 years to figure out - or to luck into - though.