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"If workers were paid better, there wouldn’t be so much of a demand problem, would there? But then we stumble upon a contradiction: the entire recovery in corporate profitability that began in 1982 came from squeezing wages and workers. The trajectory of profit expansion is very uplifting—returns are roughly double what they were in the early 1980s… So here’s the demand problem: there’s no longer an endless supply of easy credit to make up what’s not in the paycheck. The greatest product of the productivity revolution is the production of profits, which has enabled a vast upward distribution of income and wealth."
CLASS WAR.
@brent_cox Can we compromise and just have a math war?
@Multiphasic , brent_cox : MATH CLASS WAR. And then maybe 6TH PERIOD LATIN CLASS WAR.
@brent_cox By the way, why is the left so susceptible to being told the name of what it's doing? Is this some kind of mxypkyzyk thing? I mean, yes, class war. Yes. That's correct. *Good for you!*
@dntsqzthchrmn damn straight. If I were Obama, I wouldn't have been on about "math". My response would have been to the effect that the class war started a long time ago, with the ultra-rich against everyone else… and I know which side I'm on.
"The greatest product of the productivity revolution is the production of profits, which has enabled a vast upward distribution of income and wealth. No one really wants to touch that one."
It's funny that even with the (supposed) renaissance of interest in Marx and Marxian economics we still read stuff like this.
The hipsters, with their artisanal handmade authentic consumer products, will save us.
@Eric Spiegelman Paint more axes.
@propertius Well that observation came out of my long relationship with Karl Marx (though as a FB friend puts it, Karl & I are in an open relationship). So I'm not sure what you mean by reading stuff like this despite the renaissance of interest in Marx. There may be an interest in some intellectual sense, but there's hardly a mass demand to expropriate the expropriators, is there?
@Doug Henwood : Not only does the author of the linked article stop by to comment on the comments, but he's also sporting a mid-6,000s commenter number among a sea of 20,000+. That's how it's done, people.
@Doug Henwood Sorry for the grumpy tone, I didn't intend meanness toward you. I should have emphasized the sentence "No one really wants to touch that one." There are certainly people who are touching that one, it's just that there is what seems like a conspiracy against Marxian ideas in academia and the media.
I'm taking the very-earnest route here and pointing out what a sweet link this is. I read econ and law blogs, but had not come across Mr. Henwood before. A nifty heads-up.