(09-27-2016, 09:38 AM)Warren Dew Wrote: Living standards improved in the 1920s, if not as fast as productivity. It was in the 1930s that wealth inequalities really started skyrocketing. Even then, unionization was about protecting what the unionized workers had by keeping the nonunionized workers down.
Here is a link to a chart of measures of economic inequality in America. Economic inequality mostly had peaks late in the 1920s (the Great Depression corrected that -- harshly) and in very recent years, when the political climate established policies intended largely to enrich and pamper those already rich.
http://www.chartbookofeconomicinequality...untry/usa/
I see some patterns:
1. Economic inequality peaked just before the economic meltdowns beginning in 1929 and 2007.
2. The strengthening of unions in the 1930s apparently reduced much of the economic inequality of the time.
3. World War II may have equalized economic conditions at the least among white ethnic groups, with Polish-Americans, Italian-Americans, and Irish-Americans becoming as well-off as WASP groups after having generally been poor people. Military service of such groups gave many of them opportunities to prove themselves capable of more than servile or raw labor. After World War II many entered the middle class. Such was less so with blacks and Hispanics.
4. 3Ts are times of maximal inequality. The times promote speculation that eventually gets stupid. Recent years suggest a concerted effort by elites to prevent any reduction in economic inequality and even to enhance it (especially by eviscerating the labor unions). Of course, one can see a difference between the Missionary Generation (many of which were genuine reformers) and Boomers (elites of which seem to operate on the belief that no human suffering is in excess so long as it turns, enforces, or pampers elites). The worst exploiters in history treat people badly yet demand that others see their exploiters as benefactors (think of planters in the Old South).
PREDICTION:
The intense inequality of recent years will probably become less severe as X adults replace Boomers in executive roles. Reactive adults might be much more greedy and materialistic than other generations, but that does not mean that their elites are as successful as Idealists in creating convincing rationales for their enrichment and indulgence. They will not get away with greed (unless they have truly created wealth) as other generations. X is much more entrepreneurial than other generations, and its entrepreneurs are likely to succeed at far lower levels than even the executive elites who grab much of the income in America for treating others badly. Add to this -- Millennial adults are practically socialists and can be expected to so vote.
More entrepreneurialism implies lower -- not higher -- profit margins and less concentration of wealth and income than otherwise.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.