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Old 06-07-2019, 02:38 PM   #1
Pete F.
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Why Elizabeth Warren Matters

She is, by far, the most important Democrat running for president.
by RICHARD NORTH PATTERSON JUNE 6, 2019 4:32 AM

The contrast between Elizabeth Warren and Joe Biden is stark: Biden is comfort food; Warren is food for thought with, to some tastes, a dollop of spinach.

Warren stands virtually alone in the field by offering comprehensive, and specific, proposals for reanimating American democracy by reforming capitalism to reconcile its long-term interests with the needs of Americans writ large. She is, in substantive terms, by far the most important Democrat seeking the presidency.

Whether one tends right or left, Warren’s importance to the political dialogue transcends the eventual fate of her campaign. That’s because she is asking an essential question: Can we repair our deepening economic and social fissures by making large corporations more responsive participants in a revitalized democracy which expands economic opportunity, reinvigorates competition, and redefines corporate citizenship. Her candidacy is an attempt to rescue contemporary capitalism from its potentially fatal excesses.

To attempt this, Warren takes two broad pathways. The first reimagines the traditional Democrats’ curative of aggressive federal spending to equalize opportunity by lowering the barriers to advancement facing average Americans. The second would recast Warren as Teddy Roosevelt reincarnate: a rigorous regulator who would make the marketplace more accessible, and democracy more inclusive, by curbing the accretion of corporate power.

In contrast to the array of candidates who propose to banish Donald Trump by channeling outrage or inspiring hope—or, in the case of Bernie Sanders, conjuring a fantastical “political revolution”—Warren offers specific proposals to define our future. Says David Brooks: “I might agree or disagree with some of Elizabeth Warren’s zillions of policy proposals, but at least they’re proposals. At least they are attempts to ground our politics in real situations with actual plans, not just overwrought bellowing about the monster in the closet.”

By her own account, Warren’s worldview derives from her own experiences. “I want to fix the systems in this country,” she says, “so they work for Americans, not just for giant corporations or Big Pharma or the Goldman Sachs guys. That’s not just my political career. That’s my whole life.”

Now you don't have to agree with her, in whole (I don't) or in part (I do), but she is worth reading about or you can whine about some baloney you read about Warren, call her names, insist she's stupid (though if you do that think of where you are and where she is)

You can read the whole article here:


https://thebulwark.com/why-elizabeth-warren-matters/

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Old 06-07-2019, 04:26 PM   #2
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She will polorize this country just as Trump has. No thanks. Pass. Give me the vanilla white male
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Old 06-07-2019, 08:01 PM   #3
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She doesn't
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Old 06-07-2019, 09:54 PM   #4
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Bridge too far for me - no thanks.

UNtil a Dem comes to the middle - I;'m done

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Old 06-08-2019, 08:52 AM   #5
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i actually agree with Lie-awathas economic
message, that maybe letting corporations and banks do almost anything to improve the bottom line, might
not be the best way. is it in the national best interests to make it so easy for a
large company to ship huge numbers of jobs to china, to improve the bottom line? it’s worth having the conversation. Warren is a disgusting, unprincipled liar, but she strikes a chord with me on this one issue. i wish companies could be a little
more economically patriotic. not to the point of bankrupting themselves, but just a little bit.
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Old 06-08-2019, 08:55 AM   #6
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Jim in CT View Post
i actually agree with Lie-awathas economic
message, that maybe letting corporations and banks do almost anything to improve the bottom line, might
not be the best way. is it in the national best interests to make it so easy for a
large company to ship huge numbers of jobs to china, to improve the bottom line? it’s worth having the conversation. Warren is a disgusting, unprincipled liar, but she strikes a chord with me on this one issue. i wish companies could be a little
more economically patriotic. not to the point of bankrupting themselves, but just a little bit.
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I think I need some smelling salts. I just fainted
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Old 06-08-2019, 09:24 AM   #7
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i wish companies could be a little
more economically patriotic. not to the point of bankrupting themselves, but just a little bit.
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Economic patriotism. That sounds like a notion which could lead a free market down the rabbit hole of fascism/socialism/communism/totalitarianism.

Well, I suppose since we're halfway there, might as well finish the trip.

But shouldn't it be the other way around? I mean, shouldn't government power in a presumably free society be used to protect its presumably free market rather than to coerce it into allegiance to its regulatory, anti-competitive control? Shouldn't patriotism in a free society be to the people and their institutions rather than to the central government?

How about the government not regulating and taxing business to the point it becomes more than just a little bit onerous vis a vis opportunities elsewhere? Relatively higher costs can be more attractive in a free and friendly environment than lower costs in a communist regime with unlimited power to demand how, when, where, and under what conditions, including control of who actually runs the business along with access to its intellectual and technical property.
.
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Old 06-08-2019, 01:56 PM   #8
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I think I need some smelling salts. I just fainted
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why? i’m not close to a thoughtless drone, i’m
i’m favor of gay marriage, i’m opposed
to the death penalty, i’m all
about fairness and wanting everyone to thrive.

i’m. it saying i want laws
banning companies
from pursuing efficiencies, but maybe we’ve
gone too far. when i
see how many hours people
work, how few families have someone staying home with little
kids, how much harder it is to
be middle class in manufacturing, I get sad. it’s worth a conversation in my opinion.

that said, she’s
bonkers and would
be a horrible president.
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Old 06-08-2019, 01:59 PM   #9
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Originally Posted by detbuch View Post
Economic patriotism. That sounds like a notion which could lead a free market down the rabbit hole of fascism/socialism/communism/totalitarianism.

Well, I suppose since we're halfway there, might as well finish the trip.

But shouldn't it be the other way around? I mean, shouldn't government power in a presumably free society be used to protect its presumably free market rather than to coerce it into allegiance to its regulatory, anti-competitive control? Shouldn't patriotism in a free society be to the people and their institutions rather than to the central government?


.
it might lead to socialism, if you assume that everything ends up
at one extreme or
the other. I see just
about everything, ending up between the two extremes.
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Old 06-08-2019, 10:08 PM   #10
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it might lead to socialism, if you assume that everything ends up
at one extreme or
the other. I see just
about everything, ending up between the two extremes.
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Why do you say that socialism is an extreme? For many worldwide, more and more so, probably more than those who believe in a free market, socialism is the norm.

A linear scale of ideologies with a middle and extremes on both sides is a fiction. Ideologies are not mathematically nor spatially quantifiable. They are defined by a distinct ideological foundation. Any change in the foundation creates a new ideology. That there may be partial similarities does not create a middle ground. The entirety, the whole, is unique.

In a Democrat/Republican political realm, for instance, There is no Blue Dog Democrat party to vote for. There is only the choice between the lesser of two evils, or between the greater of two goods. But there is no actual middle ground, there is just a preference, a choice, that Blue Dogs have to make because of some distinct and preferred difference in each platform or candidate--not because there is a middle ground. All the parties that do exist are foundationally different. They are not middle grounds between each other.

When we refer to a fictional "middle," we are actually speaking of policies and principles that we consider to be the best. Middle, a word that connotes consensus, agreeable coming together, is used as a metaphor for good or the best "place" in a realm that is not spatial or mathematical. It is meant to have the solid characteristic of something that exists on a measurable, therefor verifiable, scale of right and wrong or good and evil. But, unlike verifiable middles in mathematical or geographic models, right and wrong, or good and evil, have no verifiable "middle" between the extremes. They have only preference or belief based on emotional desires or logical conclusions derived form philosophical, moral, or religious principles.

So if "middle" is the good "place," the right "place," then all parties and groups would consider themselves to be "the middle." So your seeing everything ending up between two extremes is a meaningless statement based on a fictional notion of what are the extremes. And that there is a good "place" between them.

Either your "middle" is an ideological, political, philosophical, moral, or religious foundation that isn't transfigured by constantly shifting arguments and policies swirling around it, and from which all those others diverge, or it's just a temporary preference for some current ideas. But, in any case, it is not actually "the middle" of anything.

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Old 06-09-2019, 05:33 AM   #11
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detbuch, there are already a lot of rules
and regulations to conduct business in the us. if we had a discussion about whether or not it would
help the country if we encouraged businesses to be
more
economically patriotic, i don’t think that makes us Venezuela. You can disagree.
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Old 06-09-2019, 06:49 AM   #12
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Bridge too far for me - no thanks.

UNtil a Dem comes to the middle - I;'m done
YUP! Me also!

No boat, back in the suds.
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Old 06-09-2019, 07:04 AM   #13
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Watched a pretty interesting video yesterday on who is really behind AOC and pulling her strings.
She’s basically an actress.
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Old 06-09-2019, 10:51 AM   #14
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Originally Posted by Jim in CT View Post
detbuch, there are already a lot of rules
and regulations to conduct business in the us. if we had a discussion about whether or not it would
help the country if we encouraged businesses to be
more
economically patriotic, i don’t think that makes us Venezuela. You can disagree.
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Right . . . a discussion will not . . . necessarily . . . make us Venezuela. It would depend on what the discussion was and how much force there was to implement the agreement.

As you said, there are already a lot of rules and regulations. Those are not making business more economically "patriotic." Some, like Warren, would discuss that, therefor, there needs to be more rules and regulations in order for business to comply with the necessary patriotism. That's the rabbit hole to one of the authoritarian "isms."

Now if the discussion led to less rules and regulations, a more business friendly, tax friendly government environment which made American business more globally competitive and internally less onerous enough so that there could be room for business to compete on a smaller scale, the discussion might lead us in a direction that heads out of that portion of the rabbit hole we are already in.

If those in the power net of the central government could roll back the power they have grabbed and PATRIOTICALLY return it to the citizens of this country, that would be an economic patriotism that I like.

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Old 06-10-2019, 03:47 AM   #15
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Economic Patriotism

"In a Democratic field that includes dingbat socialist Bernie Sanders, callow ward heeler Corey Booker, and eternal sophomore-class president Kirsten Gillibrand, it was perhaps inevitable that Elizabeth Warren would come to be known as the smart one. And yet, that reputation turns out to be unearned. She may walk tall with the dwarves, but in the great sprawling zany Disney World of American politics, she still isn’t tall enough to ride Space Mountain.


Every couple of years, the Democratic party goes full national socialist and begins to lecture the nation on “economic patriotism” — creepily fascistic language at the best of times, but worrisome indeed for a party that has drifted into tolerating open anti-Semitism. “Economic patriotism” is what the Democrats talk about when they want to out-Trump Trump. That ridiculous dope Ted Strickland, once the governor of godforsaken Ohio, bellowed on the theme in 2012, giving a Democratic National Convention speech about “economic patriotism” and Mitt Romney’s alleged lack of it. (That was about five minutes after the last Democratic lecture about how questioning the patriotism of our political opponents is a crime against humanity.) Barack Obama, chin tilted up at 60 degrees in his trademark Mussolini pose, delivered a homily about “economic patriotism” in Georgetown in 2014 and was hectoring Americans about the virtues of nationalism just a few years before Democrats began denouncing Donald Trump as a Nazi for using the term.

And now Senator Warren is talking up her “Plan for Economic Patriotism.” That plan consists of . . . a new federal department! And some job-training programs — of which the federal government already maintains, as the senator herself notes, nearly 50 spread out across nine federal agencies. And — here’s the interesting part — a truly massive campaign of new corporate-welfare spending accompanied by a great deal of foot-stamping/first-pumping anti-corporation rhetoric.

Which is to say, Senator Warren’s “economic patriotism” consists of calling the bosses at the Fortune 500 a**holes and then writing them a check for tens of billions of dollars. I suspect the gentlemen in pinstripes will find a way to endure the insult.

“Economic patriotism” is an old and stupid idea based on the belief that the economic interest of the American people are distinct from the economic interests of . . . the people of America, whose trade and enterprise must be curtailed and managed from Washington by specimens such as Senator Warren, whose idea of a good investment is posing as a Native American and allowing herself to be advertised as a “professor of color” by an institution that paid her a few hundred thousand dollars a year to teach one class.

“Economic patriotism” has been a popular idea in the United States for a century or so, but it is not an idea of American origin. It was a German idea in the 1930s, and an Italian idea during the Fascist era, and a French idea long before that, one generally associated with Jean-Baptiste Colbert, a 17th-century politician who served as an economic and trade adviser to King Louis XIV. Like President Trump, he favored high tariffs and expensive public works, which he believed to have a stimulating effect on the economy. Like Senator Warren, he favored strict regulation of industry (noncomplying business owners were put into stocks; if Senator Warren really wants to lure those Bernie voters . . .) and active management of the labor market. These policies came to be known as dirigisme. They did not do much for France, and other countries that have tried to replicate them, such as India, inflicted catastrophic damage on their peoples and economies.

Senator Warren has taken a new and particular interest in one of Colbert’s favorite hobbyhorses: currency manipulation. She thinks we should be doing a lot more of it: “more actively managing our currency value to promote exports and domestic manufacturing.”

Senator Warren is worried that our currency value is too high — nefarious foreigners, you know, scheming to keep the dollar strong. Senator Warren argues that we should start using monetary policy as an instrument for fortifying employment. That is, as you may have heard, an idea that has occurred to some policymakers in the past: It is one half of the mandate of the Federal Reserve.


Another way of expressing what Senator Warren is talking about here is that she proposes debasing the currency to subsidize a small number of export-oriented businesses at the expense of regular consumers and anybody who has been forward-thinking enough to save money. Yet another way of expressing this is that she intends to imitate the Beijing model and artificially lower the standard of living of ordinary Americans in order to enrich the owners of a few politically sensitive and well-connected businesses.


The smart one?

Maybe compared to Ted Strickland. “Economic patriotism” sounds lovely, if you are naïve and have an IQ right around that of a not-especially-bright schnauzer, but how do these big ideas work out in practice? During Strickland’s governorship, major employers left Ohio in considerable numbers — one of them, National Cash Register, cited Strickland and his administration specifically — and, as the Cincinnati Enquirer put it: “By most economic measures, Ohio was in a worse place when Strickland left office than when he started. The unemployment rate had doubled at one point. The state lost nearly 368,000 jobs. Only two states lost more jobs over the four-year period.”

Senator Warren proposes to impose the same philosophy on the country as a whole.

She argues that the Export-Import Bank — the premier corporate-welfare program in the United States, sometimes known as the “Bank of Boeing” — does not spend enough money subsidizing American businesses. How much more should it spend? Senator Warren does not say, but she does note that the Chinese version of the Export-Import Bank spends about 100 times what its American counterpart does. Should we really be looking to replicate the success of China, a country that, if it does well for the next few years, will achieve a GDP per capita almost as large as Mexico’s? That does not seem to me the most obvious course of action.

What does “economic patriotism” really mean? It means that the owners, managers, and workers of American businesses will not do what they think is best for their businesses but will do what politicians want — or be forced through the power of the state to do what politicians want.

I would be a lot more comfortable with that if Senator Warren were not such an obvious, undeniable, and transparent fool.


And she’s the smart one.

Relatively speaking."
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Old 06-10-2019, 08:30 AM   #16
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scott i’m not a democrat, i’m not trying to subvert trump. i am saying that a conversation can be had about whether or
not the nation would
be better off, if these private companies who use
american resources and take advantage of american tax laws, put a little more emphasis on patriotism when making decisions. i don’t think that makes me the equivalent of bernie sanders. maybe, just maybe, we can do more to bring more good
manufacturing jobs back, without seriously hurting profitability? we can’t discuss the pros and cons?

the middle class is hurting and shrinking. I’d love to give it a boost if we can do it without turning our backs on our principles.

Warren is a wretched woman. this particular soap box of hers, strikes a chord with me.

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Old 06-10-2019, 08:42 AM   #17
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Originally Posted by Jim in CT View Post
scott i’m not a democrat, i’m not trying to subvert trump. i am saying that a conversation can be had about whether or
not the nation would
be better off, if these private companies who use
american resources and take advantage of american tax laws, put a little more emphasis on patriotism when making decisions. i don’t think that makes me the equivalent of bernie sanders. maybe, just maybe, we can do more to bring more good
manufacturing jobs back, without seriously hurting profitability? we can’t discuss the pros and cons?

the middle class is hurting and shrinking. I’d love to give it a boost if we can do it without turning our backs on our principles.

Warren is a wretched woman. this particular soap box of hers, strikes a chord with me.

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Look at what Walmart does. The family who owns Walmart is one of the richest families in the US, yet they pay their employees such low wages that most are on food assistance or welfare. We, the taxpayer get to pick up the tab. In other words, we are subsidizing the way that family has become so rich.
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Old 06-10-2019, 08:52 AM   #18
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scott i’m not a democrat,

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I'd never insult you like that ...just thought it was an interesting, relevant article
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Old 06-10-2019, 08:54 AM   #19
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Look at what Walmart does. The family who owns Walmart is one of the richest families in the US, yet they pay their employees such low wages that most are on food assistance or welfare. We, the taxpayer get to pick up the tab. In other words, we are subsidizing the way that family has become so rich.
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did you see this on a bumper sticker?
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Old 06-10-2019, 09:56 AM   #20
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scott i’m not a democrat, i’m not trying to subvert trump. i am saying that a conversation can be had

So start it!

about whether or not the nation would be better off, if these private companies who use american resources

They ARE American resources. We are all American resources. We use each other every day. We can freely do so, or we can be directed on how, when, and where we do so by people like Warren.

and take advantage of american tax laws,

what's the difference between "taking advantage" of American tax laws and "obeying" American tax laws--other than one putting a negative spin on the use of the tax system.

put a little more emphasis on patriotism when making decisions.

Practicing free market capitalism is the highest form of American economic patriotism.

i don’t think that makes me the equivalent of bernie sanders. maybe, just maybe, we can do more to bring more good
manufacturing jobs back, without seriously hurting profitability? we can’t discuss the pros and cons?

So do it. Stop asking the question and begin to answer it.

the middle class is hurting and shrinking. I’d love to give it a boost if we can do it without turning our backs on our principles.

Tell us how to do that. Start the discussion. We can do that here. I would trust your motives more than those of politicians wrangling to maintain or gain power.

Warren is a wretched woman. this particular soap box of hers, strikes a chord with me.

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She is politically wretched. The chord she strikes with me is a sort of logical and political dystonia.
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Old 06-10-2019, 10:01 AM   #21
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"Whenever i talk with my wealthy friends about the dangers of rising economic inequality, those who don’t stare down at their shoes invariably push back with something about the woeful state of our public schools. This belief is so entrenched among the philanthropic elite that of America’s 50 largest family foundations—a clique that manages $144 billion in tax-exempt charitable assets—40 declare education as a key issue. Only one mentions anything about the plight of working people, economic inequality, or wages. And because the richest Americans are so politically powerful, the consequences of their beliefs go far beyond philanthropy.

A major theme in the educationist narrative involves the “skills gap”—the notion that decades of wage stagnation are largely a consequence of workers not having the education and skills to fill new high-wage jobs. If we improve our public schools, the thinking goes, and we increase the percentage of students attaining higher levels of education, particularly in the STEM subjects—science, technology, engineering, and math—the skills gap will shrink, wages will rise, and income inequality will fall.

The real story is more complicated, and more troubling. Yes, there is a mismatch between the skills of the present and the jobs of the future. In a fast-changing, technologically advanced economy, how could there not be? But this mismatch doesn’t begin to explain the widening inequality of the past 40 years.

In 1970, when the golden age of the American middle class was nearing its peak and inequality was at its nadir, only about half of Americans ages 25 and older had a high-school degree or the equivalent. Today, 90 percent do. Meanwhile, the proportion of Americans attaining a college degree has more than tripled since 1970. But while the American people have never been more highly educated, only the wealthiest have seen large gains in real wages. From 1979 to 2017, as the average real annual wages of the top 1 percent of Americans rose 156 percent (and the top .01 percent’s wages rose by a stunning 343 percent), the purchasing power of the average American’s paycheck did not increase.

Some educationists might argue that the recent gains in educational attainment simply haven’t been enough to keep up with the changing economy—but here, yet again, the truth appears more complicated. While 34 percent of Americans ages 25 and older have a bachelor’s degree or higher, only 26 percent of jobs currently require one. The job categories that are growing fastest, moreover, don’t generally require a college diploma, let alone a STEM degree. According to federal estimates, four of the five occupational categories projected to add the most jobs to the economy over the next five years are among the lowest-paying jobs: “food preparation and serving” ($19,130 in average annual earnings), “personal care and service” ($21,260), “sales and related” ($25,360), and “health-care support” ($26,440). And while the number of jobs that require a postsecondary education is expected to increase slightly faster than the number that don’t, the latter group is expected to dominate the job market for decades to come. In October 2018 there were 1 million more job openings than job seekers in the U.S. Even if all of these unfilled jobs were in STEM professions at the top of the pay scale, they would be little help to most of the 141 million American workers in the bottom nine income deciles.

It’s worth noting that workers with a college degree enjoy a significant wage premium over those without. (Among people over age 25, those with a bachelor’s degree had median annual earnings of $53,882 in 2017, compared with $32,320 for those with only a high-school education.) But even with that advantage, adjusted for inflation, average hourly wages for recent college graduates have barely budged since 2000, while the bottom 60 percent of college graduates earn less than that group did in 2000. A college diploma is no longer a guaranteed passport into the middle class.

Meanwhile, nearly all the benefits of economic growth have been captured by large corporations and their shareholders. After-tax corporate profits have doubled from about 5 percent of GDP in 1970 to about 10 percent, even as wages as a share of GDP have fallen by roughly 8 percent. And the wealthiest 1 percent’s share of pre-tax income has more than doubled, from 9 percent in 1973 to 21 percent today. Taken together, these two trends amount to a shift of more than $2 trillion a year from the middle class to corporations and the super-rich.

The state of the labor market provides further evidence that low-wage workers’ declining fortunes aren’t explained by supply and demand. With the unemployment rate near a 50-year floor, low-wage industries such as accommodations, food service, and retail are struggling to cope with a shortage of job applicants—leading The Wall Street Journal to lament that “low-skilled jobs are becoming increasingly difficult for employers to fill.” If wages were actually set the way our Econ 101 textbooks suggested, workers would be profiting from this dynamic. Yet outside the cities and states that have recently imposed a substantially higher local minimum wage, low-wage workers have seen their real incomes barely budge.

All of which suggests that income inequality has exploded not because of our country’s educational failings but despite its educational progress. Make no mistake: Education is an unalloyed good. We should advocate for more of it, so long as it’s of high quality. But the longer we pretend that education is the answer to economic inequality, the harder it will be to escape our new Gilded Age.

Today, after wealthy elites gobble up our outsize share of national income, the median American family is left with $76,000 a year. Had hourly compensation grown with productivity since 1973—as it did over the preceding quarter century, according to the Economic Policy Institute—that family would now be earning more than $105,000 a year. Just imagine, education reforms aside, how much larger and stronger and better educated our middle class would be if the median American family enjoyed a $29,000-a-year raise.

In fact, the most direct way to address rising economic inequality is to simply pay ordinary workers more, by increasing the minimum wage and the salary threshold for overtime exemption; by restoring bargaining power for labor; and by instating higher taxes—much higher taxes—on rich people like me and on our estates.

Educationism appeals to the wealthy and powerful because it tells us what we want to hear: that we can help restore shared prosperity without sharing our wealth or power. As Anand Giridharadas explains in his book Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World, narratives like this one let the wealthy feel good about ourselves. By distracting from the true causes of economic inequality, they also defend America’s grossly unequal status quo.

We have confused a symptom—educational inequality—with the underlying disease: economic inequality. Schooling may boost the prospects of individual workers, but it doesn’t change the core problem, which is that the bottom 90 percent is divvying up a shrinking share of the national wealth. Fixing that problem will require wealthy people to not merely give more, but take less."
From: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine...enough/590611/

NICK HANAUER is an entrepreneur and a venture capitalist, the founder of the public-policy incubator Civic Ventures, and the host of the podcast Pitchfork Economics. He is the co-author, with Eric Liu, of The Gardens of Democracy: A New American Story of Citizenship, the Economy, and the Role of Government.

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Old 06-10-2019, 11:36 AM   #22
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Originally Posted by Nebe View Post
Look at what Walmart does. The family who owns Walmart is one of the richest families in the US, yet they pay their employees such low wages that most are on food assistance or welfare. We, the taxpayer get to pick up the tab. In other words, we are subsidizing the way that family has become so rich.
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https://smartguide.walmartone.com/Sm...lance-2018.pdf

https://www.insidehighered.com/quick...ition-benefits

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/11/walm...-tax-bill.html
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