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By Undustrial (registered) - website | Posted March 19, 2011 at 13:37:50
Supply and demand works for labour markets too. Every person who sees their wages drop by two thirds (being laid off and re-hired as a temp, or outsourced etc) puts a downward pressure on wages for everybody in any similar situation. Every additional qualified person looking for work means that each will have to settle for less wages (on average), and that employers can offer far less. And if everybody is making less money, then everybody has less to spend.
To put it bluntly, when Wal Mart pays wages so low that it has to encourage workers in many states to apply for food stamps to compensate, they're also virtually requiring workers to shop at low-quality discount stores like Wal Mart, because they can no longer afford to buy locally produced goods. And so the cycle continues.
In practical terms wages have nothing to do with productivity and everything to do with bargaining power. We are FAR more productive now than we were in the 1970s, and there are far more people working. We have more technology, fancier corporate power structures, and many more billionaires. 80% of us, though, aren't making any more in real terms. Why? Because they've broken unions, globalized economies and become much better at lending us money.
Having lived through the Harris years, I have a lot of sympathy for what Wisconsin is facing now. Glad to see somebody's stepping up and fighting this.
"Today, the notion of progress in a single line without goal or limit seems perhaps the most parochial notion of a very parochial century." — Lewis Mumford
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