I read quite a bit on the internet, and most of what I read is, well, useless. The internet has become, unfortunately, a world of trolls, people who only write things to get a rise out of their readers. And unfortunately, a lot of people think this sort of drivel is news. The above-linked article is as good an example as any.
The title of the article tells us that after reading this article our blood should be boiling. And it appears that most of the readers, at least the readers who comment, agree. But, I'm not so sure that whatever the author is going to say is worth getting all worked-up over. And it doesn't take long before I see that I'm right.
From the first paragraph:
"In the past 20 years, the US economy has grown nearly 60 percent. This huge increase in productivity is partly due to automation, the internet, and other improvements in efficiency. But it's also the result of Americans working harder—often without a big boost to their bottom lines. Oh, and meanwhile, corporate profits are up 20 percent."
So, wow, huh. There's some real data in there, and luckily for us, not too much, cuz numbers make for some dull reading. Just enough to start getting our blood to simmer. Too bad they left out a key data point: how much does the author think would be a "big boost" to a worker's bottom line?
Well, it doesn't much matter what the author thinks. First, think about this: If the economy grew by 60 percent, and corporate profits grew by 20 percent, where did the rest of the economic growth go?
As it turns-out, I may have a sort of answer. The government, vile as it is, does offer a wealth of economic data these days. I don't necessarily trust them, but I also don't think they're smart enough to completely pull the wool over everyone's eyes for long, so I'm going to use some of that questionable government data to see if I can find where all that money went.
Here's part of a table from the Census.gov website:
Granted, the top 5 percent have seen greater gains than the rest of us, which almost makes my blood boil since, as far as I can tell, they really haven't done anything to warrant getting a bigger piece of the pie. Still, even the lowest fifth of households saw their incomes increase by far more than corporate profits have. And one thing to note here: the author doesn't say whether the figures they used are adjusted for inflation in any way; these figures are in constant dollars. If they were in nominal dollars, the changes would be greater.
Then there's the bit about increasing GDP being some sort of measure for increasing productivity. Hmm. Well, as it turns out, the Bureau of Labor Statistics has some data relevant to that topic. Here's a graph showing how the labor force has grown over the last twenty years:
Screen clipping taken: 6/25/2014 4:47 AM
So, over the twenty years in question, the actual size of the workforce has increased substantially, to the tune of right about 20 percent. The author mentions somewhat offhandedly that this "huge increase in productivity is partly due to automation, the internet, and other improvements in efficiency." While not explicitly stated, this statement leads people to believe that these things are a small part of the huge increase in productivity. I beg to differ.
To put the technology advances in perspective, let's look at some things about tech in 1994. Netscape and Yahoo were founded that year. Prodigy began pioneering dialup connections, which were, as I recall, at the blazing speed of 14k baud, or some such thing as that (does it show I'm not a real computer geek?). Commodore 64s were still selling, although the company did go bankrupt that year. It was called 64 because it had 64k of memory. How much memory is in your phone today? Probably about 32,000 times that much, or more. The processor ran at about 1 Mhz. Compare that to today's processors.
The point is, that technological advances over this period have been remarkable to say the least, and I think, if anything, they show that Americans don't work as hard as they did 20 years ago, although I'm sure I could do a survey and find that everyone works way harder than they did back then. I know I do.
Now, I'm not saying that I'm happy with the way things are here in the U.S., but that's not the point of this post. One thing we don't really need more of these days is internet trolls, and yeah, I think the author of the linked article is just a troll, and probably too busy playing with his phone and calling it work related communication to be bothered actually finding some real stuff for the rest of us to get angry over. And Mother Jones has the gall to ask me for money to read that stuff. Maybe I should send them a donation, cuz after all, they provided me with the target of this post. Then again, I'm not getting paid for this, so, as it turns out, I am, in fact, sharing the wealth I have derived from their article.
Well, mission accomplished, Mother Jones. My blood is boiling, just not for the reason that you think it should be.
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