Sunday, August 27, 2006

Real Wages and Growth

Uh oh:

With the economy beginning to slow, the current expansion has a chance to become the first sustained period of economic growth since World War II that fails to offer a prolonged increase in real wages for most workers.

That situation is adding to fears among Republicans that the economy will hurt vulnerable incumbents in this year’s midterm elections even though overall growth has been healthy for much of the last five years.

I'm not sure what they were expecting, as GOP economic policies have only contributed to this problem. And as far as can tell Republicans are okay with it...until elections roll around.

3 comments:

Nat-Wu said...

I like the quote about there being two economies. It's absolutely true. What Repubs don't seem to get is that a guy just barely making a living doesn't give a crap about the other economy. Nor should he. And yet they speak as if overall economic growth is all that matters. The truth is, we have to have some kind of redistribution of wealth. And yet no matter what system is proposed to do that, you'll have Repubs yelling about the government taking away someone's hard earned money. Never mind that their money comes at the expense of the working poor.

Alexander Wolfe said...

It's certainly true that liberals like us want to take away other poeple's money, whether it's hard-earned or hardly earned. But it's also true that the very wealthy will deprive the middle class and their poor of their money (see regressive tax policies like the flat tax) or their opportunity (see reduced funding for programs for the poor) if given the chance. I wouldn't call that class "warfare" so much as I'd call it class "struggle." That sounds communist, but Marx wasn't wrong to point out that to some extent there is a contest between the wealthy and pretty much the rest of society; it doesn't have to degenerate into revolution, but certainly we don't want one side to "win" over the other either.

Nat-Wu said...

Actually, what always happens is that in the end, the poor folk tear down the rich landowner's castles and kill the rich landowner himself (and usually his family too) in some horrible way such as burning, hanging, stabbing, or beheading.