EXCELLENT EXCELLENT POST. Read the part at the bottom about embracing high performing immigrants. I hope every American out there reads this and wakes up to the call of reality!!
The real problem for most Americans isn’t the recession.
It’s the more ominous fact that average household income hasn’t budged for the past 10 years. That’s true in every income quintile of the population, even the top.
And for the bottom 60%, that stagnation has lasted twice as long. Most of the country has just been treading water over a period that spans expansions and recessions, bull and bear markets, and Republicans and Democrats in charge.
Just try finding the bad guy in our real-life movie. The advent of a large-scale global labor market means that millions of Americans are competing for jobs with Chinese, Indian, and other workers, pushing our high pay down. Social trends have led to more single-parent and typically lower-income households. Perhaps most important, America no longer boasts a world-beating education system that turns out masses of graduates who can support an ever-rising living standard.
Who’s the villain?
It isn’t a few evil people or any one sector. It isn’t the rich; the gains of the top 1% needn’t cause declines at the bottom. Our society isn’t behaving villainously at all. It just isn’t adapting to a changing world. Don’t despair; we can return to a rising standard of living. We’ve done it before. But we’ll never do it as long as we refuse to face the real reasons that so many Americans are in economic trouble.
How to raise living standards
1. Increase accountability and pay in public schools. We can turn out better graduates by realizing that principals and teachers respond to the same incentives as the rest of us.
2. Embrace high-performing immigrants. They don’t steal American jobs; they create them and make the U.S. more competitive.
3. Lower the U.S. business tax rate and end corporate welfare. That will help make U.S. companies more globally competitive and aid American workers. To top of page
Blaming Wall Street for recession won’t help most Americans – Jan. 29, 2010.
