Lessons Never Learned

I watched a CBS News program tonight and they reported that while the average worker's wage increased by 0.5% from 2010, the average CEO's wage is up between 20% and 30%. You would think that would make people fighting mad because companies are rolling in money, refusing to hire more workers, pushing their current workers to be "more productive" and only paying them 0.5% more. What a crappy social deal.

Here's the latest Paul Krugman op-ed in the NY Times that also expresses shock at how the American people are so passive in the face of a rapacious right wing political ideology:

Watching the evolution of economic discussion in Washington over the past couple of years has been a disheartening experience. Month by month, the discourse has gotten more primitive; with stunning speed, the lessons of the 2008 financial crisis have been forgotten, and the very ideas that got us into the crisis — regulation is always bad, what’s good for the bankers is good for America, tax cuts are the universal elixir — have regained their hold.

And now trickle-down economics — specifically, the idea that anything that increases corporate profits is good for the economy — is making a comeback.

On the face of it, this seems bizarre. Over the last two years profits have soared while employment has remained disastrously high. Why should anyone believe that handing even more money to corporations, no strings attached, would lead to faster job creation?

Nonetheless, trickle-down is clearly on the ascendant — and even some Democrats are buying into it.

...

What our economy needs is direct job creation by the government and mortgage-debt relief for stressed consumers. What it very much does not need is a transfer of billions of dollars to corporations that have no intention of hiring anyone except more lobbyists.

Back in 2008 the idea that the US would go down the path of Japan into a decade or two of recession following a big bubble bursting made me laugh. I knew that Americans were much more nimble, more creative, more willing to take risks and more committed to growing the economy. Or so I thought. I've now discovered that the ultra-rich in the US are very much like the ultra-rich in Japan, i.e. willing to strangle the economy rather than let some populist or progressive ideas for growing the economy see the light of day. Tragic.