Dean Baker: Inequality: Government Is a Perp, Not a Bystander

[marmar]

Inequality: Government Is a Perp, Not a Bystander

Monday, 23 December 2013 10:59
By Dean Baker, Truthout | Op-Ed


In his speech on inequality earlier this month President Obama proclaimed that the government could not be a bystander in the effort to reduce inequality, which he described as the defining moral issue of our time. This left millions convinced that Obama would do nothing to lessen inequality.

The problem is that President Obama wants the public to believe that inequality is something that just happened. It turns out that the forces of technology, globalization, and whatever else simply made some people very rich and left others working for low wages or out of work altogether. The president and other like-minded people feel a moral compulsion to reverse the resulting inequality. This story is 180 degrees at odds with the reality. Inequality did not just happen, it was deliberately engineered through a whole range of policies intended to redistribute income upward.

Trade is probably the best place to start just because it is so obvious. Trade deals like NAFTA were quite explicitly designed to place our manufacturing workers in direct competition with the lowest paid workers in the world. The text was written after consulting with top executives at major companies like General Electric. Our negotiators asked these executives what changes in Mexico's law would make it easier for them to set up factories in Mexico. The text was written accordingly.

When we saw factory workers losing their jobs to imports from Mexico and other developing countries, this was not an accident. In economic theory, the gains from these trade deals are the result of getting lower priced products due to lower cost labor. The loss of jobs in the United States and the downward pressure on the jobs that remain is a predicted outcome of the deal. ...............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/20803-inequality-government-is-a-perp-not-a-bystander

[mother earth]

1. K & R, we are here BECAUSE of a gov't that is no longer representative of the people.

Now that you've put a name on it, Mr. President, what shall be done to correct it? Income inequality, the challenge of our times, is only indicative of our gov't serving the oligarchy.

[BelgianMadCow]

2. Quickly becoming a Baker fan here

the simply insane (from an outsider perspective) US inequality doesn't look like an accident to me. The logical result of coportaions = people and money = speech.

[indepat]

3. Surely thinking people will agree that "Inequality did not just happen, it was deliberately

engineered through a whole range of policies intended to redistribute income upward." Can we agree that any policy/law intended to redistribute income upward is a right-wing policy/law, that virtually everything Republicans do is intended to increase that redistribution of income upward and that a shameful number of Democrats march to that right-wing drum? The right-wing policies et al initiated by the Bush administration, but continued by this administration, should be evident to all: just remember, when a policy or law is deliberately engineered with the intent to redistribute income upward, it is a right-wing policy imo which should be vehemently opposed by every Democrat/liberal/progressive.

[El_Johns]

4. K&R. No accident.