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...
On Apr 24, 11:15 am, "Ed Huntress"

What you're describing is the capitalist hell that Marx described. Humans
in
general don't become much more productive with time. Capital equipment
does.
Thus, all growth accrues to capital, and you wind up with a division
between
filthy rich and a relatively declining working class, which eventually
becomes an *absolutely* declining working class.

This descent was broken with the laws of the Progressive era, and again in
the 1930s. It worked until the end of the 1960s.

Progressive taxation is the main tool for fixing this problem, but there
are
others.

--
Ed Huntress

It is not a capitalistic hell. The workers are not doing all that bad
and are certainly better off than they were fifteen or twenty years
ago. Back in the sixties, color tv's were trendy. Now workers all
have cell phones, microwave ovens, and large flat panel TV's. Safer
cars too. It is hard to think of anything that everyone needs that
they do not have.

Security.


But the workers have not gotten more pay as a result of increased
productivity. Because the workers are in general not more
productive. From the thirties to the sixties, the workers did become
more productive. Labor changed from mostly unskilled to skilled.
..Relatively a big change. Being a high school graduate was necessary
for many more jobs. But more recently there has not been a big
change in the skill level necessary to do jobs. At least in the
United States. In third world counties labor is still changing from
unskilled to skilled.
So there is no reason why labor in the U.S. should be reaping the
.benefits of increased productivity.

And progressive taxation is not going to be the answer. The bottom
half of of the people do not pay any income taxes now.

This is not an argument saying this is a good or bad thing. It is
just a statement of how things are. Labor is not scarce, and the law
of supply and demand is working.

Dan

What's "working" is the natural tendency of capital to acquire most of the
benefits from the economy. Surely you've heard that real wages for labor
have been stagnant for decades and that the incomes and assets have been
filtering up to the top. Labor is on the run.

That's Social Darwinism and the natural tendency of capitalism. You either
throttle it, or build a walled compound for yourself. And it's not clear how
long the latter would last.

--
Ed Huntress