August 15, 2016

A few years ago, I bought a coffee mug in Ireland — where everyone is a philosopher — which reads: "Trust me. At my age I’m an expert on everything." I doubt that I can claim that, but age does carry with it longer memories, including those of better times, which leads one to imagine that he can advise the world as to its current failings. Hence these ramblings.

A retrospective view can be dangerous if it consists mainly in demanding conditions which would be better only in a self-centered sense, achieved by disadvantaging someone else. When the view of the past is false or imaginary, the results only can be worse. The Trump phenomenon illustrates aspects of this.

However, not all memories are false; consider real wages and living standards, present and past, for ordinary people. Average hourly wages, in inflation-adjusted dollars barely have moved since the mid-60s; the value of the federal minimum wage in present dollars has declined since then. Lagging wages and increasing inequality are reflected in charts prepared by the Economic Policy Institute,[46] such as the following: Wages have not kept pace with productivity; from 1973 to 2013, productivity rose 74.4%, hourly wages only 9.2% (EPI Figure 2). The minimum wage would be much higher if it had kept pace with productivity (Figure 8). Incomes for the top 10% rose 138%, but for the bottom 90% only 15% from 1979 to 2013 (Figure 3). The ratio of CEO compensation to that of average workers was 20 to 1 in the late 60s, 30 to 1 in the late 70s, and in 2013 296 to 1 (Figure 7).  

In recent years, Democrats have not done enough to persuade people of ordinary means that the Party is on their side, but are saddled, in part justly, with an reputation of elitism. The dominant Democratic/liberal position, or at least image, has been a peculiar mixture: socially a rerun of the 6os, economically of the 80s (more accurately, of the Clinton 90s, the Democratic version of the 80s). Fortunately for the Party the Sanders campaign has revived an earlier economic vision, and much of that is reflected in the national platform. It remains to be seen whether Hillary Clinton, as President, will drift back to the former position, but her economic plan was described as "disastrous" by the National Review and "insanity" by Larry Kudlow, a good sign.

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46. http://www.epi.org/publication/charting-wage-stagnation/