there's the rub because right now the labor market is anything but "free" in any meaningful sense. all the power is on the side of the labor consumer so they are able to set whatever wage rate they want. while the labor provider is pushed by necessity, through having to have that job just to provide the basic food, shelter, and medical expenses to keep him and his family alive, to take the first bad offer that comes his way.
provide a society where people don't have to take the first awful job that comes along just to stay alive and then you might have a freer labor market. right now it's just a con game.
The greater gain of the rich is a result of their greater contribution to production relative to the non-rich, and does not result from stealing from the non-rich or exploiting them.
that's ridiculous. you can't make a cogent argument that the average executive is hundreds of times more productive than the people actually making the widgets. as worker productivity has risen their share of their productivity has gotten smaller and smaller so yes, they have been exploited and have had a portion of their labor stolen.
So, what do you propose is the solution? Tax the wealthiest quintile until they are no more than $17,000 above the fourth quintile? You accuse the top quintile of stealing it from the others (”Making out like bandits”) so why not? That will surely take care of the problem.
Your view is far too narrow. You are casting this once again as a battle between labor and management in this country. That was always flawed since the battle is and always has been between labor and labor. Why do you think that the word ‘scab’ has all the baggage and hatred that it connotes? If a management is shackled to its labor force, and the labor force strikes for unmeetable demands, they both may lose. The owners (shareholders) will liquidate if they cannot make a profit. If they can, they must and will hire a replacement labor force. Where is most union violence directed, at management personnel or at replacement workers?
The evolution of the labor market is that the battle of labor vs. labor is now global. There is an inevitable leveling of standards of living and wages that is going on due to exponential growth of international commerce, communications and shipping. As our workers’ conditions decline, conditions for workers in other countries rise (relatively). This is why the ‘power’ rests with the labor consumer. There is a surplus of it.
I’d say, the bottom quintile are people who largely don’t work except in casual, low-skill or part time situations. The folks in the middle three quintiles are the ones at risk, whose jobs may be among those that can be exported. The trend started in manufacturing, but then expanded to IT and ‘information economy’ occupations that were once excellent paying white-collar jobs. Soon it may engulf real professional jobs - it is already occuring. Where was your last CAT scan read? Here or in Mumbai? An electronic image looks the same there as it does here. Wait until robotic surgery gets rolling.
Concurrently, while our education system continues to decline, others are advancing and passing us. Fact is, across pretty broad segments of occupations, our people aren’t any more skilled or productive than workers in other nations, or at least the differential in skill and productivity is often outweighed by the lower cost of compensation, even with added transportation and risk costs factored in.
Sorry, but the unionized, 40 hour medium-skill production line job that paid for a stay-at-home mom, three kids with braces, a new Chevy and a 3 bedroom 1 1/2 bath Cape Cod in the suburbs went out with double knits, lava lamps and Woolworths. We have to keep advancing, keep innovating and keep finding new competitive edges to stay ahead. The people who do that are the ones in your top quintile. They aren’t all the same people all of the time. As another poster pointed out, people move up and down the scale. Twenty years ago, the ability to write HTML and SQL meant an $80,000 income. No more. On the other hand, a CDL driver, critical welder or crane operator working in a shale play can be pulling down that much and more thanks to hydraulic fracturing. Innovation = competitive edge.