Think of it like this - You work at a small business making widgets. The boss works right beside you and, being chummy, you know his compensation is higher than yours, but not egregiously so. Plus hes willing to make widgets right beside you as well as manage the business, so you dont begrudge him that higher compensation. You make amazing widgets and as word spreads about them, sales increase. At first, your boss is perfectly happy to share the wealth, increasing your wages based off the higher revenues coming in. Life is good, you can buy a home and raise a family, and even plan for a retirement (the situation that most of our parents grew to workforce Age with in the US in the 50s through the 70s) But now your boss doesnt work beside you, hes set himself up in an office and hes constantly rushing from meeting to meeting with new folks hes hired - various administrative roles that youre not actually sure what they do, including someone to oversee you and your widget making. Profits are still going up and youre working harder than youve ever worked before to produce more widgets, but your wages have stopped increasing. Your boss is sympathetic, but he points to all the new management positions he now has to pay and how the economy could turn on them at any minute, so they need to stay lean. You dont want to the business to go under (hell, you practically built it with your widgets!), so you accept this answer and keep working. Fast forward 30 years. Youre still making widgets, but your wages have stayed right where they were 30 years ago. The business is now huge, with branches and offices across the country. You cant even get a meeting with the boss anymore, since hes hardly ever actually there. Your supervisor tells you that youre *just* a widget maker, so you should be thankful to even have a job making widgets (since his job is to keep you making widgets while keeping costs down - which means your paycheck). Inflation has continued forward these last 30 years as well, so your wages - which were good 30 years ago - now barely keep you housed, fed, and clothed. You dont dream of a house and a family anymore, youre just hoping to someday get out of debt. And thats where we are today. The folks who actually produce the goods and services that generate the profits get a tiny fraction of the profits while bloat at the top captures most of it. What had been an equitable and advantageous agreement between capital (the boss) and labor (you, you widget making machine!) has now become deeply imbalanced and labor has internalized this imbalance as normal, because they cant remember back when it was balanced. And the folks who benefit the most from this imbalance have the money and influence to make sure that any discussion about this imbalance will be buried under a tidal wave of op-ed pieces, chamber of commerce statements, and talking head bullet points. Not all do, but enough to make this issues - which is actually pretty straight forward - seem super complex and hard to grasp.
Posted on: Wed, 04 Jun 2014 04:18:15 +0000
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