In his most recent Washington Post column Robert Samuelson muses about a column he’s never written, one that sketches the contours of the “economy of the future”. Here’s the kernel:
Industries vary. Not for everyone is the planned disorder of the “gig economy.†But neither can we resurrect the calm economic growth of the 1950s, when large American corporations seemed to control their markets. That was the basis of the postwar contract between capital and labor. The goal now is to convert the worker shortage into a better-paid, better-trained and more productive labor force.
There are multiple factors working against that future. One of them is the loose labor market created by importing workers, legal and illegal, from outside the country and pressing wages down. The other is a lack of domestic capital investment. If there is an over-arching theme for this blog, it’s advocacy for that version of the future.
Not everyone shares the goal expressed above by Mr. Samuelson. And some of those people, who envision an economy in which companies reap enormous profits at low risk, paying low wages to workers who don’t protest for fear of being replaced, are among the wealthiest and most powerful people in the country.
Samuelson is senile. (I used his book in college.) For the last 40 years, working class wages have declined in real terms, and middle class incomes have stagnated. That means there is a labor surplus. The surplus derives from five things: women entering the labor force (almost all unskilled); automation; legal and illegal (and off the books) immigration; off-shoring manufacturing; and free trade.
These globalist policies have produced economic growth in the US, but the Ruling Class has captured every single penny of it and more. They have clawed income away from the working class. Samuelson is a member of the Ruling Class, and his has benefited greatly. He is most certainly in the upper 5% of the income distribution, and considering the success of his books, might be higher.
That’s a different Samuelson. No relation.