Taking Down "Trickle-Down"

The Solution

Much of this is paraphrasing what is more fully fleshed out in Robert Reich's documentary Inequality For All

See more from Varmit

CITATION

Excerpt: As a percentage of national income, corporate profits stood at 14.2 percent in the third quarter of 2012, the largest share at any time since 1950, while the portion of income that went to employees was 61.7 percent, near its lowest point since 1966. In recent years, the shift has accelerated during the slow recovery that followed the financial crisis and ensuing recession of 2008 and 2009, said Dean Maki, chief United States economist at Barclays. Corporate earnings have risen at an annualized rate of 20.1 percent since the end of 2008, he said, but disposable income inched ahead by 1.4 percent annually over the same period, after adjusting for inflation. "There hasn't been a period in the last 50 years where these trends have been so pronounced," Mr. Maki said.

Excerpt"From 1978 to 2011, CEO compensation increased more than 725 percent, a rise substantially greater than stock market growth and the painfully slow 5.7 percent growth in worker compensation over the same period. In 1978, CEOs took home 26.5 times more than the average worker. They now make roughly 206 times more than workers, [the Economic Policy Institute] found. The pay isn't always tied to the performance of their businesses as ThinkProgress has noted, CEOs at companies like Bank of America often pocket huge pay increases even as the company's stock price plummets and jobs are cut." (Link)

On job creation...

On providing a living...

Excerpt: Income inequality has grown over the last 30 years or more driven by three dynamics: rising inequality of labor income (wages and compensation), rising inequality of capital income, and an increasing share of income going to capital income rather than labor income. As a consequence, examining market-based incomes one finds that "the top 1 percent of households have secured a very large share of all of the gains in income—59.9 percent of the gains from 1979--2007, while the top 0.1 percent seized an even more disproportionate share: 36 percent. In comparison, only 8.6 percent of income gains have gone to the bottom 90 percent" (Mishel and Bivens 2011).

Excerpt: During three decades from 1947 to 1977, the nation implemented what might be called a basic bargain with American workers. Employers paid them enough to buy what they produced. Mass production and mass consumption proved perfect complements. Almost everyone who wanted a job could find one with good wages, or at least wages that were trending upward. During these three decades everyone's wages grew — not just those at or near the top. Government enforced the basic bargain in several ways. It used Keynesian policy to achieve nearly full employment. It gave ordinary workers more bargaining power. It provided social insurance. And it expanded public investment. Consequently, the portion of total income that went to the middle class grew while the portion going to the top declined. But this was no zero-sum game. As the economy grew almost everyone came out ahead, including those at the top.

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Opening Music By Lino Rise

Title: Lino Rise -- Intro Tibet

Source: www.free-intro-music.com

Creative Commons Attribution "CC-BY"