Capital Plus Labor ... Plus Art? More On Current Threats To The Economic And Worker Foundations Of Civilizations

"One of the reasons the economy is so deeply in the tank is that ordinary Americans have not received a fair share of the economic advances of the past several years. You don’t hear much about this. Americans have been working harder and harder, and more and more efficiently (we are now the hardest working people on the planet, having passed the Japanese in this category), but ordinary workers have not been paid for this enhanced productivity.

As my colleague at The Times, Steven Greenhouse, pointed out in his book “The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker,” published earlier this year:

“Even though corporate profits have doubled [increased by 100%] since recession gave way to economic expansion in November 2001, and even though employee productivity has risen more than 15 percent since then, the average wage for the typical American worker has inched up just 1 percent (after inflation).”

That was part of a pattern of gross unfairness that has been unfolding for some three decades. No wonder people have depleted their savings and maxed out their credit cards.

The crisis now, of course, is not that wages are stagnant but that the jobs themselves are disappearing." ...

Bob Herbert "A Team of Whizzes" New York Times December 2, 2008

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Header: Joern Utzon's Sydney Opera House via papertoys.com. Copyright controlled. With thanks.

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When Joern Utzon's Opera House opened in Sydney, Australia, in 1973, the architect was not invited to the ceremony, nor was his name mentioned.









Photo credit: Bjarte Sorensen via Wikimedia Commons. With thanks.