How Governments Sabotage Their Workers

The press is freer about its comments of other countries than of the practices of their own country. So the NY Times can make a pointed comment about "bad government policy" with respect to China. But the same policy applies to America (from NY Times):

The subsidies that China showers on its corporate sector have been crucial to building an industrial economy. But they have also led to a severe concentration of income. Some of it takes a form Americans are used to: the rich receive a much larger share of the national income than they did a few decades ago. Forbes reported early this year that mainland China and Hong Kong had 89 billionaires. Japan, with an economy almost as large as China’s and per-capita income several times higher, had just 22.

Since Reagan broke the labour unions, government in America has been "tilted" toward the ultra-rich and against working class and middle class Americans. So there are lots of billionaires in America and they are all clamouring to get their "Bush tax cuts". Who cares that there is 9.6% unemployment and a 17% under-employment rate (see here).