The headlines this week are wild: Trump is threatening nutso tariffs against America’s traditional trading partners (although none for Russia, of course), demanding that our allies proclaim their willingness to go to war with China, and — along with his billionaire buddies — looting our government w...
  • gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de
    151·
    21 hours ago

    The article is very well written, IMO, and i encourage people to read it.

    First, let’s get back to basics. There are only two primary ways to grow a nation’s wealth: by extracting resources from the earth or by manufacturing goods, adding value to those resources. Everything else — lawns getting mowed, nails getting done, stocks getting traded — may move money around or improve quality of life, but don’t grow the actual wealth of a nation.

    I agree and i call that “actual wealth of the nation” the real economy, while painting nails and mowing lawns is entertainment.

    The Democratic Party has largely understood this since the industrial revolution, as did the first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln, who oversaw construction of the transcontinental railroad and funded over 70 free “Land Grant” colleges like MSU across the nation.

    From FDR through Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, Clinton, Obama, and Biden, Democratic presidents have consistently invested in the physical and human infrastructure that powers wealth creation. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the GI Bill, the WPA and CCC, the Clean Air and Water Acts, and most recently, the Inflation Reduction Act and CHIPS Act all fit this pattern.

    Even Dwight Eisenhower, a Republican, got it, although he was his party’s modern exception. He built the Interstate Highway System and warned Americans against the possibility that the military-industrial complex could corrupt Congress. His vision was of a balanced, productive America, not one dominated by war profiteers and Wall Street gamblers.

    But the Republican Party since the 1920s (with the exception of Eisenhower) has marched in the opposite direction. […]

    In a healthy economy, windfalls get invested in productivity: roads, R&D, education, healthcare for working people. In today’s GOP-run economy, however, they’re getting funneled into yachts, stock buybacks, and political influence. Economists call this the “voracity effect”; a dynamic where powerful groups extract so much from the economy that they ultimately destabilize and then crash it. It’s economic cancer.

    Exactly what i say. The rich skim so much wealth from the economy that it simply starves to death. A wealth tax would be a systemic counter-measure to that development, and it’s bitterly needed.

    • ReallyActuallyFrankenstein@lemmynsfw.comEnglish
      3·
      11 hours ago

      I don’t think I agree with this premise at all, unfortunately.

      The article describes extraction or manufacturing as the sole ways to increase “actual wealth” (apart from government works) but it’s just sophistry to embed the author’s biases against the value of information and services. That’s because services and white collar jobs both (a) can represent intrinsic value, and (b) can both directly and indirectly be subject to international trade.

      To explain, the author would define manufacturing a refrigerator as “actual wealth,” but the knowledge of how to do so as not “actual wealth,” even though the knowledge is equally a prerequisite for the refrigerator, and is a more valuable unit for trade with other nations or economic growth.

      The conclusion about focusing on long term “wealth” creation is fine, but that premise isn’t necessary to get there and detracts from the credibility of the argument.

      • gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de
        2·
        8 hours ago

        Yeah, you’re right. I think the author tried to contrast jobs that add real value to the economy against financial trickery, which he accused of only serving the rich.

        But indeed, white-collar jobs have played a tremendous role in the economy in the last 50 years or so.