Shogun, it's a bit too much for me to try and respond to most of your points, so let's just go back to the two articles you posted.
Worker productivity jumped by a record 20% between 2000 and 2006, yet real wages (pay adjusted for inflation) edged up an anemic 2%. Meanwhile, fewer workers are getting employer-based health insurance or pensions. Even Alan Greenspan, before retiring as chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, told Congress in 2005 that he found growing inequality of income and wealth in the U.S. "very disturbing."
From the first article.
The supreme irony here of course is Alan Greenspan's statement. "Very disturbing" indeed. He's either lying, or jaw-droppingly ignorant for a man of such a high position.
What happened from 2000-2006 is, our crooked banking system, aided and abetted by the federal reserve, blew a huge credit bubble. Do a google image search for MZM or M2 or M3.
People seem to have this strange idea that inflation hurts the rich, while the debts of the poor are wiped out. Nothing could be further from the truth. Inflated assets mean that rich people are receiving the bulk of the gains. Meanwhile, the inflationary effect of the credit bubble insures that wage gains by workers are negated.
As Labor Day approaches, it's time for an honest assessment of where working people are. Wages, even for college graduates, are falling behind inflation. The number of families in poverty is growing. The middle-class debt load is off the charts and the personal savings rate is below zero. The costs of a college education, of health insurance, of energy for heating and driving, and of pharmaceuticals grow out of reach for more Americans with each passing day.
Yes, this is exactly right. Wages will typically be the last price to go up during a period of monetary inflation. And the reason we had monetary inflation so badly from 2000-2006 is because Alan Greenspan and co. were willing to accomodate a government whose spending was wildly out of control, far more than the democrats ever dreamed of. It turns out that wars are expensive and are always a drain on the economy.
Also: note what he lists. College education, health insurance, energy, drugs. Hmm. What do they have in common? Things which are not easily outsourced to china.
That's the other problem. We don't recognize what's happening as good old 70's style inflation. Mainly because the prices of things at Walmart and Home Depot have stayed steady. We're content because the stuff we buy has remained steady in price; in fact it would have gone way down if we had a sane money policy.
What economists call the "income distribution" is, from a middle class perspective, as bad as it has been since the Great Depression. During the Roaring '20s, the split between rich and poor grew exceptionally large, leaving relatively few in the middle class. In the decades following the Depression, things began to change for the better as income and wealth became more evenly distributed. But now we are back to where we were as the nation stood on the brink of its greatest economic catastrophe ever. The very rich are richer than ever, but the rest of us are falling behind at an increasingly rapid pace.
The boom of the roaring 20's was largely caused by a credit bubble, just like the housing bubble! And of course, the benefits flowed largely to those who held stocks. Again, this is due to the federal reserve. Not an ill-defined group of "rich", who apparently are greedy for a while, and then not.
I don't have any problem with unions. I believe that actions between consenting adults should not be forbidden by law. Lots of liberals say that but don't mean it. If unions want to go on strike, let them. If a company wants to fire them all, fine. If they can't find replacements, then they'll have to give in.
I'm sure they are fine for insuring that safety issues are brought up, voicing employee concerns and so forth. But you simply cannot give the good life to millions and millions of ordinary people without improvements in output per worker and output per unit of raw material!
Everybody in america could join a union tomorrow, and it would not increase living standards for americans as a whole, because everything would be more expensive, or companies would go under. If there were a modern-day Henry Ford of the solar panel industry, someone who could do to solar panel prices what Ford did for car prices, they would do more for our living standards than all the unions in america combined. But inventions and production advances don't happen without investment.
