On December 12, 2013, Froma Harrop writes on Nation Of Change:
Americans don’t care much about rising economic inequality, recent surveys suggest. But that’s not quite right.
The public may know that the top 10 percent pulled in about half of pretax income in 2012 — and that income inequality is the widest it’s been since right before the Great Depression. Its brain understands that these trends are not good for the society.
But Americans express far less concern about the U.S. income gap than do the French, Brits and Germans about theirs. Meanwhile, the ratio between the other countries’ top 20 percent and bottom 20 percent is a fraction of ours. How do we explain these findings from a Pew Research Center study?
The numbers are probably solid, but the interpretation of them is tricky. It’s not that most Americans regard growing income disparities as a non-problem. It’s that they are more concerned about the “why” of them than the fact of them.
Ours is a work culture. We respect work. The emphasis on time devoted to the job may come with a price — a less full personal and family life — but it is good for the economy.
Americans look down on those deemed outside the work culture. And most such people are poor. The problem is seen as a broken work ethic rather than a frayed safety net or shifting economy.
Whatever. Our perpetually unemployed population is growing as many able-bodied, willing-to-work people find themselves without salable skills. Often demoralized by the low pay, some stop trying and drift into the world of non-work.
But when struggling workers do get jobs, the American public stands behind them, and incomes become an issue.
This is yet another narrow one-factor labor ONLY viewpoint while acknowledging a shifting economy whereby the non-human factor, which can be categorized under the umbrella of technology and “machines,” is replacing the need for labor, with no hope for job opportunities unless there can be significant economic growth.
Long term private sector job creation in numbers that match the pool of people willing and able to work will continually be eroded by physical productive capital’s ever increasing role. This means that the prospects for the creation of jobs to employ EVERY American seeking employment will become increasingly dimmer.
The reality is that tectonic shifts in the technologies of production will over the long term continue to destroy jobs and devalue the worth of labor. The threats to job security are increasing at an exponential rate and positions that are now considered secure will not be in the future. Yet our political leadership and academia remains oblivious to the necessity to broaden personal OWNERSHIP of wealth-creating, income-producing productive capital simultaneously with the growth of the economy as a necessary source of income for EVERY citizen. As a result, not only will we experience double-digit GDP growth but real jobs will flourish as EVERY American contributes to building a future economy that can support general affluence for ALL.
As long as working people are limited by earning income solely through their labor worker wages, they will be left behind by the continued gravitation of economic bounty toward the top 1 to 5 percent of the people that the system is rigged to benefit. Working people and the middle class will continue to stagnate, resulting in a stagnated consumer economy. More troubling is that this continued stagnation will further dim the economic hopes of America’s youth, no matter what their education level. The result will have profound long-term consequences for the nation’s economic health and further limit equal earning opportunity and spread income inequality. As the need for labor decreases and the power and leverage of productive capital increases, the gap between labor workers and capital owners will increase, which will result in turmoil and upheaval, if not revolution.
There are solutions, which are spelled out in the Agenda of The Just Third Way Movement at http://foreconomicjustice.org/?p=5797 and the Capital Homestead Act at http://www.cesj.org/homestead/index.htm and http://www.cesj.org/homestead/summary-cha.htm. See the full Act at http://cesj.org/homestead/strategies/national/cha-full.pdf.
http://www.nationofchange.org/how-we-really-feel-about-economic-inequality-1386857080
