Gee, I dunno. Sounds kinda like some entity that represents the people of the country as a whole. Hmmm... Can I think of such a thing? Why, it's the gu'mmint!!!! The Yoo-nited States!!!! No. Wait. That cain't be right. Saint Ronnie of Wheaton (or was that GE...or Hollywood) said gu'mmint was the problem... Ah, well. I'll just have to wait for it to trickle down. And so it goes....

There's a better option -- or, at least, one that works along side the restoration of progressivity at the highest income levels: Making sure that wages increase significantly. Particularly in a time of a global labor glut, the need to both restore the power of organized labor and do everything possible to move to a full employment economy is heightened; the result, a font of cash in the hands of those who not only spend, but spend in the kind of way that tends to spread itself through the economy, would keep things going for decades. How can we make employing people be more efficient than not employing people? Some sort of tax deduction/tax credit scheme, targeted toward, say, 120% of the median wage... Basically anything that would push employment from being a pure cost item would help. Capitalism pushes from the many to the few, from the bottom to the top; having the political system pushing toward the middle enables conditions from which it can proceed.

It was clear throughout the first years of this century that all was not even remotely well. When an economy cannot sustain a rise in the discount rate without tanking (not "slowing down a bit", but serious unemployment rate spiking, tanking) it cannot be considered "robust." I think once we can look at these times through the 20-20 lens of hindsight, we will see that the rise in real income inequality that was induced by the tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 was the culprit. As buying power was pushed up the income scale the demand curve was made ever more brittle -- and as soon as an economy that was uncertain at best saw a crack, the bottom was likely to fall out. Getting out of this trough will require a kind of political will that will be hard to find in an environment where the few who benefit from things as they have become exert ever more influence. In the land of "Citizens United" getting taxes on the top with government spending flowing to the bottom is not likely to be achievable.

That is indeed true. Dreaming is "free" (as in both "freedom" and "beer"). Still, it's a rotten thing for society as a whole...

Actually, that's horrible. Completely horrible. A worker next year will have one more years experience, one more year of expertise, one more year of added productivity -- and to expect no compensation for that? American dream be damned, eh?

Accepting this situation -- the situation where business complains about the unavailability of skilled workers at unskilled wages, when it's really a reflection of the upwards redistribution of wealth and income messing with demand in the economy -- ain't analysis, either. It's evil. And given the fact that a decade and a half after 6% was declared the lowest possible level of unemployment without sparking mega-inflation we were at 3.9% with a sub 3% inflation rate (2000), this is starting to look a lot like baseball ("In baseball, you don't know nothing." Berra, L.P.)