David F. Ruccio — Looking below the surface

What liberal mainstream economists don’t see—and don’t want the rest of us to wrap our heads and hearts around—is that growth, by itself, has only a small effect on incomes for poor and working Americans. It doesn’t raise wages, it doesn’t reduce poverty, and it doesn’t close the gap between productivity and wages. Not in any significant fashion. And it will probably make the distribution of income even more unequal than it is now. 

That’s why increasing numbers of people have become disenchanted with the “liberal fantasy” and have begun to look elsewhere—below the surface—to ask new questions about how the economy is currently organized and how it might be reorganized to actually benefit poor and working people.

The growth is good (for all) assumption is based on trickle down, and that has been shown not to work as advertised, or even much at all.

"It's the distribution, stupid."

In a system in which labor power is suppressed, for example, "to control inflation", labor share will be controlled by the ownership class that the management class serves, or are members of.

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Looking below the surface
David F. Ruccio | Professor of Economics, University of Notre Dame