David F. Ruccio — “If poor people knew how rich rich people are, there would be riots in the streets”

Chris Rock may be right. Still, Americans are well aware that economic inequalityin their country is obscene, even though they often underestimate the growing gap between the poor and the rich.

But it’s Frank Rich, who conducted the interview with the American comedian, who made the more perceptive observation:

For all the current conversation about income inequality, class is still sort of the elephant in the room.

Occasional Links & Commentary
“If poor people knew how rich rich people are, there would be riots in the streets”
David F. Ruccio | Professor of Economics, University of Notre Dame

Well, some are talking about class. But that is in the UK where class is more evident that the US. The US pretends to be a class-less society.

We’ve eliminated the deficit, and all we had to do was attack the poor and vulnerable with a relentless fury, create a new generation of young people for whom the concept of pensions or even steady wages is a fantasy, and undermine public services to such a grotesque extent that it will take years to rebuild what we’ve lost. Hooray!

It’s worth pointing out, not that this hasn’t been said before, that the rationale for this strategy was always a confection of fear-mongering and economic illiteracy that misrepresented the causes of the 2008 crash as being something to do with “Labour overspending” rather than a global banking crisis. This was an ideologically driven attack on the concept of redistribution through public spending. The upper-class bumblers in charge latched on to any excuse, no matter how quickly it was debunked, to pursue their project of returning the country to the Victorian slum state of their romantic imaginations, where finally, at long last, poor but cheerful urchins would give them the respect they deserved for being born wealthy....

The Guardian
Eliminate the deficit? Eliminate economic hope, more like
Phil McDuff

Economists have recognized for a long time that in negotiations between employers and workers, the employer has a built-in advantage. John Bates Clark , probably the most eminent American economist of his time, put it this way in his 1907 book, Essentials of Economic Theory

"In the making of the wages contract the individual laborer is at a disadvantage. He has something which he must sell and which his employer is not obliged to take, since he [that is, the employer] can reject single men with impunity. ... A period of idleness may increase this disability to any extent. The vender of anything which must be sold at once is like a starving man pawning his coat—he must take whatever is offered."Are there some ways to tip the balance a bit more toward workers?….

Conversable Economist
Rebalancing the Economy Toward Workers and Wages
Timothy Taylor | Managing editor of the Journal of Economic Perspectives, based at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota

Also

Defend Democracy Press
Wall Street vs Workers: Minsky, Marx, and Capitalist Crisis

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