Neoliberalism has slashed wages over the last 50 years and companies became 'lean' slashing staff. State industries were privatised and millions of jobs were cut, while wages were also reduced leading to massive financial gains going to a few elite who off-shored their profits into tax havens. Now the government can't collect enough tax and so we have austerity.
This is how civilizations collapse, with the elite capturing the government and then getting the taxes on themselves reduced, while they use their monopoly position to force wages down further reducing the taxes collected by the government.
Look at Amazon, ultra low wages and no company tax being paid. This economic system can't work in he long run.
It's as if mankind has a built in self destruct button.
We are still worth a third less in some parts of the country than a decade ago, according to a report.I
Research by the Trades Union Congress (TUC) found that the average worker has lost £11,800 in real earnings since 2008.
The UK has suffered the worst real wage slump among leading economies, said the union organisation.
The biggest losses have been in areas including the London borough of Redbridge, Epsom and Waverley in Surrey, Selby in North Yorkshire and Anglesey in north Wales, the studyfound.
Workers have suffered real wage losses ranging from just under £5,000 in the north-east to more than £20,000 in London, said the report.
The Guardian
Ideally, all work should be voluntary anyway, especially since the production problem has been solved, so the problem is not wages per se but an unjust distribution of assets, including land and common stock.
ReplyDeleteAnd how did this unjust distribution arise? Certainly, a major cause is government privileges for private credit creation and by extension for the rich, the most so-called "credit worthy" of what is then, in essence, the public's credit, including the poor's, but for private gain.
Does MMT propose to fix this? Not currently but rather, following Warren Mosler's advice, it proposes to INCREASE the privileges for the banks.