it’s a never ending circle though, right? When there is an increase in wages the price of goods/services goes up to cover the increase in the cost of providing them.
Except we had a rapidly expanding middle class in the 50s, 60s into the 70s, with middle class wages rising with inflation etc… We also had INCREDIBLY less wealth disparity, and a very stable economy that everyone benefited from.
What has changed to make inequality as large as it is, and middle class wages stagnant, and the middle class shrinking as more working americans can’t earn enough to keep themselves in the middle?
The world caught up with us. The primary reason we had such prosperity is that we were the only industrialized nation that came out of WWII with our industry intact so we had very little competition.
Good one.
Deadgone Mob… that’s a good post.
Another good one. Except we caught them up.
Well there you go, we got paid to fix everyone up and now that their all fixed up they don’t need us as much.
Good job, except where did the money come from?
Hey I can’t have all the answers.
We gave it to them.
1 Like
I thought socailsim was built on free riders…
Actually that is where you would be wrong.
Free Riders is what makes Socialism fail.
But that is moot since Unions are a gear in the engine of Capitalism.
Yes, you don’t get to sit around on disability in real socialism.
I have been on disability when I fell off a ladder at work and broke my foot.
Went back to work as soon as I could.
Thankful that it was there. I always have plenty of savings in case I go through a stretch of not haveing work… glad I didn’t have to tap into that.
Thankful that my union provides a really good health plan and requires that the productions that employ union labor have a robust disability insurance that they carry.
None of those things were available to me in my non union days even though the risks were the same.
Anyone who scams the system should be punished to the full extent of the law.
But we could have protected the growth of the middle class at the expense of growth at the top end…IOW, the Reagan Revolution didn’t have to happen. We didn’t have to pass the largest tax hike in history that strapped the middle and lower income levels with regressive taxes, and we didn’t have to pass the largest tax cut that conversely benefited the wealthy. We didn’t have to pass laws that undermined the unions, and workers rights and we didn’t have to create corporate personhood…
In the periods following our initial growth after WWII, had we focused on workers rights and middle class growth we would have had a fine economy and better, stronger middle class.
Very true.
The largest sector of “employees” represented by unions today are gov’t sector unions which should be abolished.
That’s a steaming pile. The “rich” for the first time started paying the bulk of all federal income taxes as a result of Reagan’s tax reforms.
47% of the country today has a net tax liability of zero or to the negative.
Wouldn’t that be true even without that law?
How does that compare to historical percentages?
