Robert Kuttner : "American productivity has nearly doubled in a generation. The problem is that the fruits of that productivity have gone to the wrong people. Money that might have gone to wage-earners has gone to the top one percent"

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Huffington Post
Saving the Middle Class
February 12, 2012

By Robert Kuttner
Co-founder and co-editor, 'The American Prospect' - His latest book is "A Presidency in Peril".

Saving the Middle Class

Some excerpts :

The same diligent workers who earned decent wages a couple of generations ago are now working just as hard for a lot less. Workers are better educated than ever. Something has sure changed, but it isn't the work ethic.

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The fact is, American productivity has nearly doubled in a generation. The problem is that the fruits of that productivity have gone to the wrong people. Money that might have gone to wage-earners has gone to the top one percent, and to the top one-hundredth of one percent.

It is hard to swallow the idea that today's one percent has higher skills and somehow earned these astronomical rewards. After all, this is the gang whose speculations just crashed the economy. How skilled is that?

The middle of the economy -- factory workers, nurses, technicians, even retail clerks -- work with much more advanced technology than a generation ago. But their wages have lagged. Take a good look at the clerk at the photo counter of your local drugstore, and the technological marvel that she's learned to operate. She's lucky to make nine bucks an hour.

So the question -- the most important economic question of our era -- is how do we make sure that more of society's total product goes to ordinary workers and not so much of it to the one percent?

Better education helps, but it is no silver bullet. In the 1950s, most of the blue collar middle class hadn't even graduated high school, but working people got a much larger share of the total national product.

There are only four ways to do it. We can allocate more of the total product socially, by taxing the best off and using the proceeds to finance expenditures that provide a higher living standard for all. Places like Germany and Canada do that. It doesn't seem to hurt their productivity at all. On the contrary, a more secure population makes for a more reliable workforce.

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