I wonder why rich people before 1980 wanted less money and had worse means of getting it.
Easy. It was harder and less acceptable to use international labor then, there were that many fewer college educated people, and that's 36 years behind the current level of automation technology.
This is very true. I know the big US car unions ended up screwing both the employees and employers, but have you ever wondered what would have happened in the 60's or 70's, had the line manager come over and told his assembly line team that they were going to not only be fired next month, but if they wanted a severance, they'd have to train their replacement recently imported from the third world?
I can guarantee you that there is a good chance this mgmt. team would probably end up dead or severely injured soon afterwards.
Today, the same circumstances elicit, at most, a few angry comments on some online media forum.
We've been conditioned well by out masters.
I imagine the reasonable chance that someone snapping figured they could get away with it, particularly in a close knit group that routinely went fishing or hunting together and would say that's exactly where they were at the time something happened; was /much/ higher back then.
Also today everyone knows that someone else will just be hired to do the same thing. Today when some kind of correction does happen it'll either be approved from on high by those seeking to avoid an old-school revolution, or it will be a bloody zerg-rush.
You don't have to like unions to admit they benefited workers. In fact, the money spent on the destruction of unions points to it - why bother if they didn't help workers?
The post-WWII bargain, where productivity growth was split, is gone and not coming back. Whether there's a way to give workers a voice again or not is an interesting question.
Of course, if the class differential gets too big, there's always the pitchfork and torch route, which I don't think anyone (OK, most sane people) wants.
Yes, but we have been told that international free trade benefits us all. Do you disagree?
> there were that many fewer college educated people,
Yes, but we have been told that education is the key to our future, and a more educated workforce should be able to produce more and better goods for us all. Do you disagree?
> that's 36 years behind the current level of automation technology.
Yes, but automation was what dragged us out of the stone age and through the industrial revolution. It has, at times, apparently made us vastly richer. Do you disagree?
I don't say all this to be a dick (well, OK, kind of) and I agree to some extent with each of your points, but I think there is a larger issue at the root: debt.
I find Steve Keens analysis compelling.
If you have 10 jobs paying people $10, and replace them with 50 jobs paying people $1, but keep the prices of the products the same; 10 people now don't have jobs, and 50 people each don't make enough money to buy any products. You've increased productivity 5x and cut costs in half but all of the gains go to shareholders.
> A more educated workforce should be able to produce more and better goods for us all.
Same as above.
> Automation...has, at times, apparently made us vastly richer.
Same as above.
> I think there is a larger issue at the root: debt.
It's the same issue. Debt is just another thing to rent to poor people.
On debt, you really should read Keen. He has the only predictive economic model I've seen that actually works, and debt is the crucial factor.
it is always government. from sucking too much money out of the banking industry to make available for business needs to government trying to pick favorites in new industries and distorting the markets. from playing rate games, backing securities, to inducing lending risk by pressuring banks to lend to those they would prefer not too
Even the ACA damaged the ability of those to earn a living by putting in place that infamous twenty hour rule. That wasn't done to benefit working people, that was done to benefit certain types of employers but more it was done to distort unemployment numbers by artificially raising the number of people needed to do that same amount of work each week. This ain't much different than pleads to make college free, keep able bodied people off the job lines.
Sure many of the rich are getting richer but they only do so because those writing the laws are in constant election and reelection cycles. Where they try to write laws prevent you businesses and such putting money into politics but slip in rules that allow PACs to take 350k from one person; provided "wink wink" its not targeted to a specific politician.
tl;dr. Government is the source of the wage stagflation.
It is never this simple.