DR,
re: It is convenient to zero-in on some aspect of the economic picture you don't like and offer it as either a premise or a result; but these interactions are far too complex to allow logical conclusions based on such simplistic analyses.
I didn't present it as a premise or a result, just offered the data.
But otherwise, I agree with you. I think back to when I was a kid, my family used to drive cross country for vacations. There were no Holiday Inns, we stayed in motels owned by people; there were no McDonalds or Burger Kings, we ate in restaurants owned by people.
Through my career I worked with retailer categories that went from being primarily family owned businesses to being corporate category killers. Pharmacies (remember when there were a dozen family owned corner pharmacies in every town), now there is Walgreens. The hardware store industry was almost all family owned, now it's Home Depot and Lowes; Toy Stores, you name it, everything has gone from family owned to corporate owned. And as a result, a lot of folks have gone from being owners and employers to being workers and employees.
That's a multi-generational trend. You couple it with the weakness of labor unions over the last 15-20 years, and I think you have a good part of the explanation for the increase in income disparity.
Is it a Republican/conservative Democrat/liberal issue? Not the corpritizing of America; maybe the weakness of the unions. But I think the country was better off, in many ways, when family businesses flourished.
John |
