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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Road Walker who wrote (181826)	1/28/2004 5:54:44 PM
From: Tenchusatsu	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1574267

JF, good article, though I disagree with the author's interventionist conclusions. The rules of the economic game have always been dictated by those in power, whether it be through politics or wealth (or both). Yet somehow the middle class always survives and evolves. I believe that isn't a product of some government invention, but a product of the general spirit of the nation. We may be seeing yet another evolution of the middle class as we transition to a more global economy. But all government can do is help the evolution along, rather than force some sort of social engineering upon the middle class only to run into the law of unintended consequences. Tenchusatsu

To: Road Walker who wrote (181826)	1/29/2004 3:28:53 AM
From: Amy J	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1574267

Hi John, good article. "According to Baumol, in a technological economy falling prices for manufactured goods and automated services eventually increase the relative cost of labor-intensive services such as nursing and teaching. Baumol has predicted that the share of gross domestic product spent on health care will rise from 11.6 percent in 1990 to 35 percent in 2040, while the share spent on education will rise from 6.7 percent to 29 percent. As Paul Krugman has observed in The New York Times, a Congressional Budget Office report shows that from 1979 to 1997 the after-tax income of the top one percent of families climbed 157 percent, while middle-income Americans gained only 10 percent, and many of the poor actually lost ground. ... I liked this part a lot: "encouraging the widespread ownership of income-producing assets." ... This may seem a radical change. But only in recent generations have Americans begun to receive most of their income in the form of wages. ... In the course of the twenty-first century what may be called the "capital wage" could be added to these, so that middle-class Americans—not merely an affluent minority—might derive income from three sources rather than just two. theatlantic.com -------- Regards, Amy J