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Friday 27 March 2009
PARASITIC PREDATION

Back in 1974, the long running connection between improvements in worker productivity and wage growth was severed.  Median per capita wages for individuals have stagnated since then, replaced with measures of growth house hold income (two workers) and growth derived from growing the labor pool (mostly illegal immigration).  During this time, the money derived from productivity improvements over the last decades (which would have doubled the incomes of American workers under the post-WW2 to 1974 social contract), was shunted to capital markets under the ideological assumption (seen in Greenspan’s thinking)  that these markets would make better investments in future prosperity than individuals.  That assumption has been proven false.  The money was gambled away or spent on lavish increases in the lifestyles of oligarchs and their underlings.

However, it would be bad enough if it ended there, with the realization that two generations of American wealth were found to be squandered.   It won’t.  There is increasing evidence that this group has ideologically captured all forms of US governance in a situation similar to what we have seen in emerging markets.

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