Factory worker, 1908
Posted by Admin in Business and Finance.
bobster855 posted a photo:
Must-read column in today’s Los Angeles Times:
Somebody’s making money in this economy. Unfortunately, it’s not the middle class or the working class. And that’s our real problem….
This is just one more manifestation of increasing income inequality in America, where the rich have gotten richer and the middle and working class have gone into debt to merely hang on. Whenever I write about the need for corporations and the wealthy to shoulder their fair share of taxes, I can count on receiving numerous e-mails instructing me that we need to cosset the rich because they’re the source of job growth. "I’ve never been offered a job by a poor person" is the usual refrain.
The answer to this argument is that there are precious few firms that can survive purely on the patronage of the top 1% of income-earners, or even the top 20%. When no one can afford to buy, no one has customers. Broadly distributing the fruits of economic growth is the only way to sustain that growth.
www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hiltzik-20100825,0,1425491…
Photo by Lewis Hine, from the NY Public Library Digital Collection.
