Krugman's vision of income inequality and the disappearing middle class is an excellent example of the classroom propaganda college professors use to exploit America's immature and inexperienced youth. Let's look at it.
Posted on 11/06/2002 3:41:11 PM PST by rwjst4
In his Oct. 20, 2002, New York Times Magazine article titled "For Richer: The Disappearing Middle Class," Princeton University economist Professor Paul Krugman wrote, "For the America I grew up in -- the America of the 1950s and 1960s -- was a middle-class society, both in reality and in feel. The vast income and wealth inequalities of the Gilded Age had disappeared. ... Daily experiences confirmed the sense of a fairly equal society. The economic disparities you were conscious of were quite muted."
Krugman's vision of income inequality and the disappearing middle class is an excellent example of the classroom propaganda college professors use to exploit America's immature and inexperienced youth. Let's look at it.
(Excerpt) Read more at jewishworldreview.com ...
Prezactly.
Michael Jordan has become quite wealthy, playing basketball in the service sector.
But that wealth was obtained through wealth transference, it was not created.
Wealth is created only by engaging in value-added activities. By the same token, Service sector activities do not create wealth, they merely transfer, redistribute and eventually dissipate wealth as consumption. Thus, as value-added activities move offshore and the U.S. labor force shifts to the Service Sector, wealth is dissipated, not created. And the U.S. standard of living declines as a result.WEALTH: The net ownership of material possessions and productive resources. In other words, the difference between physical and financial assets that you own and the liabilities that you owe. Wealth includes all of the tangible consumer stuff that you possess, like cars, houses, clothes, jewelry, etc.; any financial assets, like stocks, bonds, bank accounts, that you lay claim to; and your ownership of resources, including labor, capital, and natural resources. Of course, you must deduct any debts you owe.
VALUE ADDED: The increase in the value of a good at each stage of the production process. The value that's being increased is specifically the ability of a good to satisfy wants and needs either directly as a consumption good or indirectly as a capital good. A good that provides greater satisfaction has greater value. In essence, the whole purpose of production is to transform raw materials and natural resources that have relatively little value into goods and services that have greater value.
SERVICE: An activity that provides direct satisfaction of wants and needs without the production of a tangible product or good. Examples include information, entertainment, and education. This term good should be contrasted with the term good, which involves the satisfaction of wants and needs with tangible items. You're likely to see the plural combination of these two into a single phrase, "goods and services," to indicate the wide assortment of economic production from the economy's scarce resources.
Service is merely a highly perishable good. Services do create value: one simply cannot store that value for long. A memory of a touchdown may last for a few day and provide satisfaction (value) to the observer of a football game. Not much difference with strawberries, which are tangible but also perishable.
to realize that both parents have to work False: they both do not have to work for the same thing. They prefer to do so to have more.
to provide the standard of living that one paycheck did 30 years ago. False. Your parents were simply content with less.
People don't have to be economists to see that job prospects for non-college grads are not what they were 30 years ago Who made THAT a measure of progress?
Should we complain about poor job prosepcts for those who cannot read or count?
precisely because of the destruction of our manufacturing base.
Not at all. People in those jobs do as well or better than before: it's just those with education do even better than that.
Take a few courses at night. You'll feel better.
Strawberries provide nourishment and energy when consumed.
Touchdowns merely consume and dissipate energy.
You don't need to be an economist to see that the very same house a blue collar worker bought thirty years ago requires today two white collar paychecks to afford. Owning a house is a massive and tangible measurement of class position.
People don't have to be economists to see that job prospects for non-college grads are not what they were 30 years ago
Who made THAT a measure of progress?
Well, I kinda think that the prosperity of half the labor force matters. You don't. You demonstrate the stench of class snobbery that tends to pervade free traders, the "Let them learn programming", "Who cares, theirs are jobs America can afford to lose" obliviousness. The kind of smug complacency with which British elites reacted to deindustrialization, the shift from the Workshop of the World to the Financier of the World.
precisely because of the destruction of our manufacturing base.
Not at all. People in those jobs do as well or better than before: it's just those with education do even better than that.
Are you going to pretend that America's manufacturing base is anything like it was 30 years ago ? Are you going to pretend that it is as easy today as it was 30 years ago for someone from 'the lower orders' as you might put it to get a job with health benefits and a pension ?
Take a few courses at night. You'll feel better
Like I said, snobbery and smug complacency. The first steps in late imperial rot.
You demonstrate the stench of class snobbery
Quite the opposite. Mine was a hint that the conclusions were not based on data. As such it was value-free, just urging consistency.
If you want my opinion, I can tell you that most of such lamentations are from those who think like an economic class rather than individuals. If you embrace Marxism, say so. That is what Marxists do: explain differences in terms of "class snobism."
True, class snobism exists --- in Europe and even more so the Arab world. In this country it existed too, but was never quite popular. In fact, ignorance was long ago declared America bliss. Today, you will be received much better if you cannot write than if you insist on speaking good English. You can (but shuld not so hastily) attribute my remarks to "class snmobism." There is another, more plausible explanation: familiarity with economics.
free traders, the "Let them learn programming", "Who cares, theirs are jobs America can afford to lose" obliviousness.
It's interesting: "Let them learn programming" crowd includes all those who work in dry cleaning, grocery stores, bookkeeping, landsaping --- all those jobs in services They do not necessarily make more money. In fact, the wages of workers at Detroit conveyor belts are outrageously high. Those picketing on the West coast tday make over 100,000 on average -- without any risks and investment in themselves.
Finally, your pick and choose from economic history very convenienty to justify your frustration. The shifts occur all the time, not necessarily from manufacturing to services. We switched from rail to highways, and that transition was not smooth for many, many workers. Society evolves. The value of education liees not only in the immediate wage increase but also the ability to protect those wages in a changing environment.
Go to school. It does not have to be programming.
TQ: Not at all. People in those jobs do as well or better than before: it's just those with education do even better than that. Tokhtamish: Are you going to pretend that America's manufacturing base is anything like it was 30 years ago ? One has nothing to do with another. I said that the worker in manufacturing is better off than he was before. Are you going to pretend that it is as easy today as it was 30 years ago for someone from 'the lower orders' as you might put it to get a job with health benefits and a pension ?
See, again Marxzist thinking: why is it that someone else has to provide them for you? If you go out and buy health insurance on your own, you are still better off than you were 30 years ago. TQ: Take a few courses at night. You'll feel better Tokhtamish Like I said, snobbery and smug complacency. The first steps in late imperial rot.
You should not be saying such things aloud: it's embarassing. Urging someone to get education is snobbery?
Keep embracing Marx, my friend.
I just don't know what you are doing in FR, but that's your choice.
No, it's evident that you're the one who needs to bone-up on human motivational theory by reviewing Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. Physiological needs, such as hunger, thirst, bodily comforts, eating strawberries, etc.; have a much higher priority (and therefor value) than the faux and fleeting sense of esteem and self-actualization fantasized by observing someone else score a touchdown. Physiological needs MUST be satisfied first before other objectives can be pursued and achieved.
Good. Because it is your infatuation with non-value-added service activities that produce nothing but a false sense of self-esteem rather than satisfying fundamental needs that identifies you as a liberal 'Rat, whether you're aware of it or not.
One must have the intellectual capacity to grasp all three definitions simultaneously.
Keep working on it, maybe it'll "click".
Yes, that is an example of wealth transference, not wealth creation through value-added activity.
No, I don't think you are "dense".
I think that you are intentionally disingenuous in your attempt to cloud the issue.
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