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Joan Walsh is another economic know-nothing who thinks that the money that flows to those in the upper income levels should flow to lowest eschalon of American workers (whose wages according to Walsh have been stagnating).

What she doesn't understand is government has no control over where money flows in a free market economy and any attempt to control it only impedes growth. The best, if not only, way for those at the lowest income levels to raise their incomes is to retrain for higher paying activities.

"Because wages got hit then by the double-whammy of global competition and new technologies, the typical American family was able to maintain its living standard only if women went into the workforce in larger numbers, and later, only if everyone worked longer hours."

This caught my eye. I've been wondering for some time now, if the cause/effect isn't going in exactly the opposite direction.

I wonder if the entrance of huge numbers of women into the paid labor force in the 1970's caused the slump in working men's hourly wages and the death of the ideal of the "family wage": wages so that a workingman could adequately support a wife whose thrift and diligence and nurturance maintained their home-life (remember that term? Home Life?) and their children.

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