Are Equality & Productivity Incompatible?

[msgadget]

By Peter Brown

It's time to acknowledge that a strong economy in which everyone shares equally probably isn't possible in an era of globalization.

The latest evidence comes from Japan, where the end to its 15-year economic downturn is good news for the world's second largest economy, and everyone who trades with the merchants of the Rising Sun.

But, as incomes, property values and the stock market rise, and unemployment drops, there is a familiar wail from those who see the increasing gap between rich and not so rich as a terrible price to pay for prosperity.

Of course, that has been the complaint in the United States; the economic miracle that has been the U.S. economy in the past quarter century has produced uneven rewards.

There are those who see this as a fatal flaw, though it is hard to believe they yearn for the days of double-digit inflation and unemployment.

Yet they refuse to see the incompatibility of the two. They somehow believe they can repeal the laws of human nature by getting people to produce more, even if those folks aren't going to get any more out of it.

And, if you think the global economy is burying egalitarianism, just wait a few years.

When China and India become the consumer-driven, middle-class societies to which they aspire, inevitably there will be hundreds of millions of people left out.

Those societies in most have been equally poor can decide whether they like their much higher standard of living enough to tolerate the fact that not everyone is sharing equally.

Wanna bet they opt for inequality?

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

1. There's a difference between equality and outright exploitation

When you see CEOs making thousands of times the wage of the lowest paid worker, often by cutting wages and benefits so they can get a golden parachute and bail out of the company in a couple of years, you aren't going to find workers who feel like being productive.

[msgadget]

3. I see sticks but no carrots these days

Appreciated workers are more productive and well-paid workers keep the economy moving yet this piece - which tells us absolutely nothing we don't already know - says there's no foreseeable end to the greed and inequity of our roaring economy. It continues to seem so blatantly shortsighted to me... Maybe I'm too ordinary to understand such things.

[MrModerate]

2. China and India have already opted for . . .

inequality. The difference between urban China and rural China is like the difference between Manhattan Island and the back of the moon. And India has had a tiny middle class riding above a vast sea of people who own no more than the clothes on their backs (when they have clothing on their backs) for years and years. In India, the economic miracle may work out and "trickle down" to other parts of society. In China, with its ruthless, "only idiots play by the rules," approach, big trouble awaits.

[msgadget]

4. As other nations catch up and their (luckiest) workforce

become used to a standard of living, what changes do you think we can expect?