A Generation Lost

Since Ronald Reagan ushered in government of the rich, by the rich, for the rich, American blue and white-collar wage earners have seen their incomes stagnate - at least the lucky ones that is.    Despite massive increases in per worker productivity, the wealth associated with that has not been shared but has been siphoned off to the top few per cent, the richest of the rich.

In the process the gap between rich and poor has opened widely, social mobility has been thwarted, and inequality of wealth, income and opportunity has burgeoned.   In the process, America's middle class has been gutted.

A new report from the Economic Policy Institute, The State of Working America, chronicles the working class' doldrums and warns that "without radical change" it could take another two decades before working Americans get back to their 2000 income levels.

The report makes clear what has been robbed from low- and middle-income people as a result of conservative policies that have their roots in the early 1980s, as the country turned from balanced growth policies in which labor and capital profited more or less in tandem to government policies that advantaged corporations and the wealthy at the expense of workers.

As a result of these policies, the report notes, "the business cycle preceding the recession [of 2008-2009] was already shaping up as a lost decade for American incomes," with median household incomes falling 6 percent during that period. But when the Great Recession hit, median income of working-age families fell another 7.1 percent between 2007 and 2010.

"This is an underappreciated economic calamity," the report says.

The report notes that this calamity is not caused by a lack of overall economic growth. National income, the report notes, has grown enough to substantially improve the fortunes for all. As the data reveal, however, it is the top 5 percent, the top 1 percent, and fractions of the top 1 percent that have received almost all the benefits of the economy’s growth.

Meanwhile Harper FinMin Jimbo Flaherty is partying it up with Canadian CEOs who want Canadians tossed into the same boat as their American counterparts, the key, they claim, to keeping Canada "competitive."