While I agree with Michelle Chen at The Nation that our economic problem is not that we’re not smart enough, skilled enough, and that we don’t work hard enough, I think that her preferred solutions:
The divergence between productivity and workers’ gains is why labor groups and even labor officials have pushed various policies that focus on making work pay for workers, and making the workplace fairer. These include boosting minimum wages (including recent initiatives to raise wages for workers on federal contracts), and strengthening policies to promote stable hours and more flexible leave time, along with the recently proposed expansion of overtime pay to many previously exempt salaried workers.
will hardly make a dent. She doesn’t mention it but increasing the marginal income tax rate on the highest income earners probably won’t do much, either.
Our economy is exactly what you’d expect from 30 years of allowing a constant stream of low-skill and no-skill workers into the country. People build business models around it at the expense of jobs that pay better, have more flexibility, and are more personally rewarding.
