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This is not a result of technology; it is a result of trade and employment policies that reward employers to offshore American jobs. If there were tariffs and taxes enacted by the government to level the playing field for American workers it would save millions of jobs. Unfortunately the politicians no longer work for the American people; instead they are for sale to the highest bidder. They are willing to sell out their own country and citizens to fill their campaign war chests and sell themselves to corporations regardless of nationality or intent. Until the American people wake up and demand campaign finance reform, we will see a deterioration of America, and a continuation of the gap between rich and poor.
Not a result of technology? In the 90's when the PC network took hold every company had at least one high paid IT network technician that not only took care of the server, but the user work stations as well. Now through technology innovation, one person located anywhere in the world can take care of any server or work station over the internet. This eliminated millions of jobs.
So, what if we humans are genetically wired for a feudal system?
Anthropologists would argue no. After all we've existed as a species for at least 200,000 years as hunter-gatherers, and hunter-gatherer groups are usually very egalitarian by nature. 5-10,000 years is too short a time to evolve to be the social opposite... or is it?
Not a result of technology? In the 90's when the PC network took hold every company had at least one high paid IT network technician that not only took care of the server, but the user work stations as well. Now through technology innovation, one person located anywhere in the world can take care of any server or work station over the internet. This eliminated millions of jobs.
Heard it before: "Wah wah, the Indian kid stole my job."
For every job that is "destroyed", another better domestic job is created.
If all these "millions of jobs" have been eliminated by outsourcing, then you would expect a permanent increase in unemployment. There hasn't been. And the latest recession has nothing to do with outsourcing. It was brought on primarily by a gigantic housing bubble.
The desired reduction of the middle class in the US is about government control.
In recent years, the middle class was A) the majority, B) independent of government for survival, and C) could vote freely.
The goal of the socialist (80 of which are in Washington) is to decrease decrease the middle class majority. Why? In order to remove B) and C) above - they want people to depend on government. And their hope is that the dependency would lead in people voting for leaders who sustains the stipends from the government.
Look at BP and the moratorium. The government is OK with the oil rigs leaving the country and people losing their jobs. The government is OK with people receiving money from BP through government fiat. So what happens when its time to vote. The incumbent will say that he took care of you during the oil spill - the other guy won't do that. Who will vote against getting government money?
In other countries, at times their economy may do well - such as Brazil. But what usually happens is government will slow the economic growth because they do not want the middle class to grow beyond their control. So there is always the gap between the few rich and everyone else - which is why the OP thinks this is natural - and why this country has been so special.
This thread kind of died for the time being(which is sad IMO because it's an important topic), but the most interesting thing, to me anyhow, was the difference between the "concrete" thinkers and those who were able to see the bigger, more abstract, picture. Hmmmm.
The desired reduction of the middle class in the US is about government control.
I think that you got it, but you missed on an important aspect that can't be overlooked. If there is a very small middle class, they will control very little of the purchasing power in the economy, which would mean that all the purchasing power would go to the "ultra" rich, and the "ultra" poor. By definition, the richer half have more purchasing power that the poorer half.
Now imagine if the we had an extremely bimodal distribution of assets. Say 90% of the wealth was controlled by 5% of the population, and the other 10% by the bottom 5%. This makes top 10% a very easy target, after all, the only votes that you need are from the poor now. You can easily argue that Socialism is order by playing this tiny class against the massive lower class.
Class warfare has been going strong since the progressive and populist movements in the 1870s, but it reached a fever pitch in the 1930s. By whittling down the middle class, and forcing them to the lower echelon, you can add to this, and create another near-revolution, which is no doubt what the Socialists want...
Class warfare has been going strong since the progressive and populist movements in the 1870s, but it reached a fever pitch in the 1930s. By whittling down the middle class, and forcing them to the lower echelon, you can add to this, and create another near-revolution, which is no doubt what the Socialists want...
Where did you go to school???
I had no idea that History started so far after the French Revolution.
I would like to see a well-designed study showing how much wealth and "legacy wealth" (the legacy of investments made in earlier times) resulted from the 1940's to the early 1970's manual labor shortage in America.
Basically, in that particular era, manual labor was in high demand, and companies "bid up" the value of laborers via "extra" benefits such as pensions and health plans and so on.
Many of those corporate pensions are still paying out today. Money invested from salaries back then is still producing income today, and some may have been transferred over into other areas of income generation, such as rental properties, small businesses, and so on.
These opportunities are simply not available anymore. It is simply not possible for a mediocre highschool grad to walk into the hiring office of the local steel foundry and walk out with a benefit-laden job.
But a lot of people don't seem able or willing to recognize the implications of this fact. What it means is that if you want to enjoy a job with a similar upside as those old manual labor jobs, you will require not only a lot more schooling (often fueled by debt...) but also, the right kind of schooling.
So if you dumped $150K on a liberal arts degree, you're screwed.
If you dumped $30K into an underwater welding program, you might be doing well. Of course, not everyone has the physical capacity to do this, but if you did, then congrats.
Anyhow, as the barriers to good-paying middle-class incomes with good benefits are raised, you would certainly expect to see wealth begin to really bimodalize in America.
People with wealth will work extremely hard to make sure their children are promoted ahead of striver upstarts, and folks without many resources to begin with will probably remain mired in their current situation.
Sure; we can hector them and chastise them for "not working hard enough" or whatever else, but remember - the average IQ is 100, and people in the past were not expected to be cagey and forward-seeing in order to set themselves down the "correct" life-course.
This also feeds back into the generational gap that seems to be developing. Those who came of age after the 70's and 80's seem to have a far more jaundiced view of how things work in America, and of notions of "fairness" with respect to the economy.
Anthropologists would argue no. After all we've existed as a species for at least 200,000 years as hunter-gatherers, and hunter-gatherer groups are usually very egalitarian by nature. 5-10,000 years is too short a time to evolve to be the social opposite... or is it?
There's always the obvious narrow view that humans somehow have evolved to this imbalance of wealth in a kind of natural way, it has served the status quo for a long time. Truth is that we as a species have a much longer history as a sharing animal than what we are today in the industrial paradigm. Some of our best thinkers have characterized the last five thousand years as a social experiment gone wrong, Im inclined to agree.
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I plan to continue trying to make things better for everyone.
