Donald Trump Isn't the Presidential Candidate We Should Be Worried About

[Hortensis]

2. Depression to 1980, the lower 90% took home

some 70% of the growth in national income. An era of unprecedented growth in productivity was already beginning, but from then on dramatically less and less accrued to 90% of Americans. From 1997 to present, American workers took home 0% of the growth in national income.

This is only one, but huge, marker of the change. We no longer get a cut of the pie we bake, only pay set by employers that usually has nothing to do with, and is well below, the cost to draw new workers into the field (the traditional economic test for appropriate wage levels).

It didn't have to be this way, we didn't have to vote to "get off the backs of big business." We didn't have to vote to "cut the waste" in government that included agencies and programs that could have worked with colleges and working people to help millions retrain for new, good-paying jobs.

We didn't know our pay was considered the largest part of the waste we were cutting by eliminating our own power to have a say. Those nasty "intrusive" regulations on business. But it still doesn't have to be that way.

Btw, scholars care about the differences between libertarianism, neoliberalism, neofascist conservatism, and many other names, but ultraconservatives like Charles Koch and thousands like him use whatever works for them at the moment to keep the transfer of the nation's wealth and power to them going.

Excellent article, Cali. Thanks. This is hugely important.