At the turn of the 21st century, however, the I.T. revolution entered what the authors call a “maturity stage,” in which much of “the new capital is in place” and “cognitive task workers are only needed to maintain the new capital.”
.. Mal-employment involves working in jobs that do not require a four-year degree or higher level cognitive skills.” It’s not just baristas, either: many college graduates are working in stores like Target or Whole Foods.
.. The E.P.I. report, “Raising America’s Pay,” points out that “entry-level hourly wages fell on average for both female and male college graduates from 2000 to 2013 (8.1 percent among women and 6.7 percent among men).”
These trends are certain to reverberate into the political system.
The Republican Case Against Republican Economics
In a prescient article published in November of 2011, Henry Olsen, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, wrote that “the differences between white working-class independents and the GOP’s conservative base are becoming too substantial to ignore. The GOP base voter believes the deficit is as large a problem as the economy; the white working-class independent does not. The GOP base voter believes cutting entitlements is necessary to cut the deficit and that taxes on the rich should not be raised; the white working-class independent disagrees.”
.. Pethokoukis points out that the Cruz-Lee-Meese manifesto fails to acknowledge that “globalization and automation are playing a role. Going forward, some economists fear a permanently bifurcated labor force with rising pay for a slice of tech-savvy workers, and stagnant wages for everyone else. It’s not all about Obama’s economy.”
Inequality Is Not the Problem
We now have stagnating incomes for a large majority of Americans and runaway incomes at the very top—especially the top tenth of the top one percent. This is not so much “inequality” as a complete lack of growth for much of the country. And this is what the nation should focus on.
Credit Suisse Pleads Guilty in Tax Evasion Case
For one, the plea deal will not require the bank to turn over the names of its American clients, a hot-button issue in Congress. Credit Suisse has argued that Swiss law prevented it from turning over the names of its American clients.