A lot of people here experienced the Good Old Days very differently than my family did, I guess

[alain2112]

74. Thanks

In my understanding the economy is not zero sum, the GDP of America has doubled since 1970. The difficulty that makes it look like a zero sum game is that while the pie has become twice as large the working class pie slice remains exactly the same size - some are better off, most are worse off, and everyone is under tremendous pressure. "The Wealthy," however you define that category, has everything they had half a century ago - when they were already pretty damned wealthy - plus literally all the wealth that has been created since then.

That state of affairs is morally repugnant and it is economically inefficient, but the wealthy have been highly intelligent in the way that they hoovered up all the money and that makes it difficult for us to fight back. As we are seeing right here in this thread, it's not hard to set people at each others' throats.

Personally, yes, I think unions are an important part of the solution. I lived Scandinavia for many years, and when I tell Americans how well those people live - how freely, in terms of politics and in terms of economics - no one wants to believe me. As I see it the economies rest on a stable triad of interventionist government, activists unions, and efficient well regulated private sectors. Getting a reasonable facsimile for America will be quite difficult - I suspect that we will start with regions like New England that are already amenable, and spread out in something like an oil drop strategy - but it's absolutely worth doing.