Robert Reich on our tinderbox societies

[eridani]

http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/279-82/11241-the-tinder-box-society

It's a combustible concoction wherever it occurs: Increasing productivity, widening inequality, and rising unemployment create tinder-box societies.

Public anger and frustration can ignite in two very different ways. One is toward reforms that more broadly share the productivity gains.

The other is toward demagogues that turn people against one another.

Demagogues use fear and frustration to advance themselves and their own narrow political agendas - scapegoating immigrants, foreigners, ethnic minorities, labor unions, government workers, the poor, the rich, and "enemies within" such as communists, terrorists, or other conspirators.

Be warned. The demagogues already are on the loose. In Europe, fringe parties on the right and left are gaining ground. In America, politics has turned especially caustic and polarized. (The right is even accusing people it doesn't like of being communists.) No one knows where China is heading, but reformers and ideologues are battling some of it out in public.

May 1 may be a good day for the Dow Jones Industrial Average, but the future depends on the job prospects and wages of the average worker.


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