Once, the middle class grew richer each year, grew more comfortable, enjoyed a higher living standard. It was real progress in material terms.From there, he concludes that the bursting of the bubble, which "destroyed" a Really Big Number of "wealth," has doomed the "middle class," because pretty much all of their assets were in real estate, which has depreciated pretty massively in the past few years.
Lower class wages went up as unions grew; they have fallen as unions shrink. States which have strong anti-union cultures continue to have lower wages and lower living standards. Anti-unionism is correlated with inequality.Whether or not that's true--big claims with no numbers are hard to argue against--the position essentially amounts to saying that manual labor should be paid more than the value it produces, and by implication other labor should be paid less... just because? Because it's indispensable? Because it's the Right Thing to Do? I don't exactly know, to be honest. Unionization certainly makes labor more powerful, but what's missing from the argument is any suggestion that unionization actually makes labor more valuable.
So why do so many Americans fear that the Chinese are eating our lunch?posted by grouse at 6:11 PM on July 11, 2011 [1 favorite]
Part of the reason is that fewer Americans work in factories. Millions of industrial jobs have vanished in recent decades, and there is no denying the hardship and stress that has meant for many families. But factory employment has declined because factory productivity has so dramatically skyrocketed: Revolutions in technology enable an American worker today to produce far more than his counterpart did a generation ago. Consequently, even as America’s manufacturing sector out-produces every other country on earth, millions of young Americans can aspire to become not factory hands or assembly workers, but doctors and lawyers, architects and engineers.
Perceptions also feed the gloom and doom. In its story on Americans’ economic anxiety, National Journal quotes a Florida teacher who says, “It seems like everything I pick up says ‘Made in China’ on it.’’ To someone shopping for toys, shoes, or sporting equipment, it often can seem that way. But that’s because Chinese factories tend to specialize in low-tech, labor-intensive goods — items that typically don’t require the more advanced and sophisticated manufacturing capabilities of modern American plants.
“The decline, demise, and death of America’s manufacturing sector has been greatly exaggerated,’’ says economist Mark Perry, a visiting scholar at the *American Enterprise Institute* in Washington. “America still makes a ton of stuff, and we make more of it now than ever before in history.’’But the statistic doesn't say we make more, it just says the total value of what has been produced is higher. But I think the problems are best illustrated by noting that Aircraft (i.e. Boeing) and Pharamceuticals are the two biggest components of that manufacturing number (both heavily subsidized by the federal government).
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The "brass ring" is not about spending. It's about accumulating wealth. The middle class destroys itself all the time because it would rather spend money than accumulate wealth.
posted by The World Famous at 10:25 AM on July 11, 2011 [17 favorites]