r they are a bit misinformed and don't really know what they're talking about.
The "Fair Share" rhetoric doesn't work.
You need to get some historical perspective.
During the postwar years there were labor and tax policies which tied the wages and benefits of workers to productivity gains. Such that when more money was made from the country's vast productivity engine, workers were given what amounted to a larger slice of the pie. This resulted in a massive consumption economy based on the Fordist principal that a domestic economy succeeds when workers are compensated enough to buy what they produce. (Compensation can take the form of "After Market" policies like the GI Bill, which, by making education more affordable, freed up more money for consumption)
Problem is: the large corporations which started to take control of the GOP in the late 50s didn't want to give workers such a large share of the pie. They wanted cheaper labor. When we were fighting the Cold War, our capitalists saw that workers in freedom-hating nations were producing goods for pennies a day. This is why they wanted American workers to compete with 3rd world workers, the result of which would be a higher return on investment (because of cheaper labor costs, e.g., investors make more when their sneakers are made in Taiwan by dictator-controlled workers making pennies a day and living in hovels).
Walmart, one of the largest contributors to the GOP, gets over 50% of its products manufactured in communist China. (Sorry uncle Milty, Capitalism doesn't want freedom; it wants the labor costs
made possible by freedom-hating dictator nations)
So starting with Reagan we began to detach Capital from American Labor, giving investors mobility to flee to the globe's cheapest labor markets. As solid middle class jobs were shipped overseas, a problem arose. How can we sustain middle class consumption - which supports the domestic economy - in the face of lost jobs and lower wages? Answer: credit (debt). Therefore, starting in the 1980s American Families began accumulating massive debt. Indeed, this is when we all started receiving 3 credit cards a week.
As the American capitalists shifted production to freedom-hating communist nations, the American middle class (having lost those jobs) started borrowing more and more to stay a float. It got so bad that the poor consumer hawked and pawned the last thing left with any value, their homes. Indeed, stating in the late 90s Wall Street invented all these different financial vehicles that enabled Americans to increase consumption by leveraging the value of their homes.
Obviously, the system blew up because you cannot replace wages with credit cards.
It's not about fair share. It's about recognizing a deep flaw, namely that the capitalist's drive for lower wages undercuts demand. During the postwar years we addressed this flaw by a number of mechanisms which tied wages/benefits/entitlements to rising productivity. Reagan dismantled that, saying that the profits would naturally trickle down to solid jobs and benefits. Funny thing, right after we bought what Reagan was selling, we watched a 30 year migration of jobs to communist China, which was curiously paralleled by a 30 year expansion of middle class debt to make up for lost jobs and diminished wages.
Again, this has noting to do with "Fair Share". Life isn't fair. It's about the construction of an economy that substitutes wages with credit in order to make room for tax cuts for anti-patriotic capitalists who have shifted manufacturing to the developing world. This is why we learned a new term during the Bush years called "Jobless Recovery", when profits grew staggeringly on top without a corresponding increase of solid American jobs.
It doesn't trickle down because the capitalist does not want to support a first world labor market. The capitalist doesn't need to invest in the American economy when communist China can give him higher returns w/ oppressed sweatshop laborers living under a dictator.
In order to make up for the jobs/money/prosperity that wasn't trickling down, the American consumer went on a 30 year borrowing binge. (Morning in America brought to you by Master Card, Visa and Amex) Now, after decades of increasing the debt of American families, we don't have enough solvent consumers left to sustain the consumption requirements of the American economy. We've run out of people with room on their credit cards.
(When Reagan gave the upper class cheap labor, and the lower class credit cards (to make up for lost jobs) . . . the system was bound to inch toward a total failure of demand)
We swallowed poison in 1980
