David Cay Johnston has written an other powerful article for the National Memo, in the USA, this week. As he notes:
Powerful new data shows just how badly American workers are faring in the 21st Century, as corporate profits soar ever higher.
Labor and capital share in the nation's economic output, but an awful trend line for working people appears in data released Wednesday night by the Federal Reserve Bank in St. Louis.
The data looks like this:
Labour share is falling rapidly.
And he matches this with data on US corporate profits from the same source:
So labour share is falling and profit share is rising dramatically, despite and maybe because of the recession and the chance it has created to impose austerity and wage cuts.
Howard Reed for the TUC has shown the same trend in the UK.
Please don't argue that inequality is falling as a result - especially when top rates of tax are being cut for the richest and companies at the same time - especially in the UK. That's just not credible. It's just not true.
But the real question is - who, apart from unions, is doing anything about this?
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I’m afraid this message is just not getting to the British public. Instead everyone seems to be banging on about welfare spending as if it is the poor, ill and unemployed who are the problem. As someone on benefits at present, I feel deeply saddened and hurt by this as I find myself turned into a social pariah. In America the culture is even m ore intensely primed for this sort of thing where anyone poor is made to feel worthless because they just didn’t try hard enough. WE now know that those vast salaries have nothing to do with real human productivity. Michael Hudson has been talking about the development of ‘debt peonage’ for years – I think he’s right.
These graphs are apples and oranges, one is a percentage share while the other for Corporate profit is actual profits with no accounting for inflation or growth in gdp.
If you showed monies going to labour on the same scale it would also show a huge increase in billions over decades.
You have a graph showing labours share falling but the one for profit is useless.
Respectfully – an absurd argument when it is known that wages are falling at present
But why not present misinformation as argument? As the Churches are saying, it is a neoliberal habit
One Nation Labour?! After this week’s announcements from the two Eds, I am joking, of course, Richard.
Anyone who held up any hope that Labour would produce a new narrative for the 21st century (based, perhaps on the Cruddas policy review?- I joke again) must be sorely disappointed. What we’ve seen instead is Labour come to the conclusion (which in truth they had probably come to months ago but were just waiting for an appropriate time to make it public) that the neo-liberal project cannot be stopped. To try to do so will simply bring down the wrath of most of the media, upset potential party funders, and make life difficult when/if in government – and thus down that road lies electoral disaster.
And so what do we have – One Nation Labour based on slightly differently targetted cuts, privatisations and a little less persecution of the poor and disadvantaged. And maybe a little bit of pain for the rich – although once in office I suspect that’ll go out of the window once the lobbying starts in earnest.
In short, a slightly left of centre Tory party in all but name. Perhaps what Cameron once dreamt the Tory Party might become in his hoodie, huskie hugging days.
But in truth, what should we have expected? Both Eds and many of their cabinet colleagues and advisers deeply implicated in the Blair/Brown project of unrestrained capitalism, cronyism, and the transfer of control of the state to big business and the rich. And of course, behind the scenes still advised by people from the same organisations that supply people to the Tories. No wonder neo-liberal groupthink reigns supreme!
Thus, after a short interlude in which at least some Labourites gave the impression that on the back of the 2008 crash, and standing up to Murdoch (via Levenson) – and thus the media more generally – they might actually have the courage to define a new direction for a British social democratic party they squander the moment, chicken out, revert to type, and head back down the neo-liberal road. Still, at least down that road lie numerous future career opportunities, as the real heir of Thatcher – Tony Blair – and many of his ex-ministers have only too ably demonstrated.
Government and public service for and in the public interest? A discredited and forgotten profession in the UK, that’s for sure.
Milliband has swallowed Blair’s ‘advice’ as the latter toddled of to pay his respects to Thatcher. WHY CAN’T WE JUST GET LABOUR OUT OF OUR SYSTEMS AND FORGET ABOUT EXPECTING ANYTHING FROM THEM!
Because, sadly, it is a million times harder to get people to vote for a new and progressive political force than for a party which was progressive once but is now mostly as cowardly as the rest of them.
I agree, James. But at least a significant proportion of the electorate could have a say – and if proportional rep. ever comes in (!) it will increase in significance. An alliance of disaffected Labour, Greens and some Independents would be worth a go.