Thanks David, you opened my eyes again. I supported Sanders in 2016 and believed that he could have beaten the republican candidate had the DNC not colluded with their own "they" to shut Bernie out.
You have given me logic and rationality that open markets are the key to our salvation, like free trades that impose taxes on us by making drugs far more expensive for everyone, bail out big banks (I think GWB was a very big R Republican) in name of free market and too big to fail.
Thank you. I will make up for my lack of donation to Sanders in this cycle triple speed.
I love things the old fashioned way, bend over and say aaaah for the "free market" that is regulated to hilt for big businesses who steal intellectual property that is free on the open market and patent them. Example, Apple/Xerox. Microsoft MSDOS and ANY drug company you wish to name.
Thank you for opening my eye to continual hacking at our foundation by "free market" spreaders. What they spread is not clear, but doesn't smell good. Hmmm, my nose just opened up too.
90
The only problem with this article is that David Brooks doesn't know anything about what he's talking about. How many jobs has Brooks held that had anything to do with productivity? And, income inequality doesn't have anything to do with company A vs. company B, it has to do with every company that concentrates the bulk of financial rewards among it's most senior execs. My wife works for Apple. Each year Tim Cook makes nearly 1,000 times what my wife makes. That is what Bernie is so correctly and eloquently talking about. This doesn't have anything to do with class warfare. This has only to do with right vs. wrong. Greed vs. the greater good. David, go back and get a real job before you state ill-informed opinions as facts.
170
This is so misguided and gilded.
The very first statement that workers at the bottom rung's salaries are rising faster than those at the top is a huge pile of steaming malarky. Did David bend statistics in an incredibly convoluted way to start his argument? YES HE DID.
Stop it.
Productivity?
Workers are pushed past the point of exhaustion to earn less than they need to afford to live and get the medical care they need.
Are you suggesting we push our workers like Foxcomm in China?
Don't we need to be more inventive with new forms of energy and new ideas to be truly capitalistic or should we simply exhaust people to the point of suicide and violence?
Come on David. Come down out of your ivory tower and experience what working class people and the poor go through before you pontificate anymore.
This column absolutely disgusts me.
144
Haha! What a maroon Brooks is! “Productivity” and “efficiency” equals firing people and never hiring again. And, massive profits for companies and executives, even if they mismanage & destroy companies (Boeing?). If that’s capitalism’s vin diagram then it’s bad for workers.
70
"In the first place, over the past few years wages for workers toward the bottom of the income stream have been rising faster than wages for those toward the top. If the bosses have the workers by the throat, how can this be happening?"
Simple. Many many states and municipalities have implemented higher minimum wage laws in the past few years. How is the NYTimes publishing such non-factchecked drivel?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_wage_in_the_United_States
81
That was an unnecessarily long winded way to say that you don't care about poor people
137
With respect Mr. Brooks, your depiction of the impact of corporate decisions on income inequality and is naive at best, or just plain willfully ignorant.
83
"swing voters in the midwest care more about their values - guns, patriotism, ending abortion, masculinity, whatever than they do about proletarian class conciousness"
It may be a good article but you lost me at this quote ^^
So east/weast coasters by contrast don't "care about patriotism, masculinity or whatever" and their all blue-collar people who represent the proletarian class? Is that what your saying?
Sorry but New Yorkers are the anti-proletariat. Pretty uneducated statement by whatever irrelevant person wrote this.
29
No Virginia, there is not a tired cliche posing as wit in this headline.
24
Please fact check this column, NYT. Brooks is making claims but not providing any evidence.
56
Dr. King told us how it actually works back in 1968:
"Whenever the government provides opportunities in privileges for white people and rich people they call it “subsidized” when they do it for Negro and poor people they call it “welfare.” The fact that is the everybody in this country lives on welfare. Suburbia was built with federally subsidized credit. And highways that take our white brothers out to the suburbs were built with federally subsidized money to the tune of 90 percent. Everybody is on welfare in this country. The problem is that we all to often have socialism for the rich and rugged free enterprise capitalism for the poor. That’s the problem."
“The Minister to the Valley,” February 23, 1968, From the archives of the SCLC.
94
David, you are dead wrong on this one.
56
Your statistics are dead wrong David. You are better than that. See Robert Reich's reply.
41
The ruling class tells the poor there's no class war.
White people tell people of colour that racism isn't a problem.
Men tell women that #metoo is a travesty.
65
" As those companies grow more productive, they earn more profit per employee and pay their workers more. "
" Pay their workers more " ?
What gilded know-nothing planet are you from Brooks ?
It's the same one you've been stumbling (with a semi-operative compass and gravity detector) around on since you began editorializing.
36
Well, David, you grab your pen and I’ll grab my pitchfork...
30
Does factual accuracy matter to the editorial board anymore?
Robert Reich,"David Brooks’ New York Times column has so many objectively false claims in it I don’t even know where to begin. For starters:
— He claims that “over the past few years wages for workers toward the bottom of the income stream have been rising faster than wages for those toward the top.” Wrong. CEO pay has risen 940 percent since 1978, while typical worker pay has risen a measly 12 percent.
— He claims that capitalism is “rewarding productivity with pay, and some people and companies are more productive.” Wrong again. From 1979 to 2018, worker productivity rose by 69.6 percent, while worker compensation rose only by 11.6 percent.
— He claims that when companies become more productive “they earn more profit per employee and pay their workers more.” Wrong yet again: higher profits do not automatically translate into higher worker pay. Brooks is assuming trickle down economics isn't a total sham. The truth is the share of corporate profits going to workers still isn’t back to where it was before the 2008 financial crash.
If Brooks even did one iota of research, his entire argument would come crashing down around him. It’s sad to see the supposed paper of record publish a column riddled with so many blatant inaccuracies."
64
This article is intellectually dishonest. First it ignores The NY Times own reporting on median CEO pay and how it is rising higher than the median worker pays (see “It’s Never Been Better to Be A CEO” by Peter Eavis). Second, it ignores the fact that the Gini coefficient - a measure of inequality for a country- has risen substantially over the past decades and continues to rise.
But Mr. Brooks knows this, which is why he carefully phrases his words by saying: “over the past few years wages for workers toward the bottom of the income stream have been rising faster than wages for those toward the top”. And then he incredulously asks how this could be so if the bosses had workers by the throat.
Mr. Brooks, even if this is true I don’t think we as Americans should be celebrating if a worker who makes $15,000 gets a $5,000 salary increase (33%) while that worker’s CEO who makes $20 million ‘only’ gets a $4 million increase (20%), and proclaim that since the rate is higher then all is right in the system.
NY times Editors- Mr. Brooks prefaces his quote regarding the rate by indicating that he would next be laying out the facts. Don’t you have a responsibility as journalists to then fact check those facts? I think the truth is worth it.
60
David Brooks writes. "In the first place, over the past few years wages for workers toward the bottom of the income stream have been rising faster than wages for those toward the top."
This statement contradicts all the data I've seen about the past 20 years. And here's what Robert Reich says about this ridiculous claim:
"Wrong. CEO pay has risen 940 percent since 1978, while typical worker pay has risen a measly 12 percent."
37
"Thus, the core problem is not capitalists exploiting their workers; it’s the rise of productivity inequality. It’s the companies and individuals who don’t have the skills to take advantage of new technologies."
What a completely ridiculous thesis completely disconnected from reality. Right now, we have one class of people manipulating voters into voting against the better schools and markets you mention in the next paragraph. Workers are being squeezed and with all this news of low employment and high stock markets not budging wages, people are starting to realize things are not adding up. I'm sorry it's not pleasant, I know talking about class is taboo in this country, but it exists and the issues it causes should be addressed.
"Successful executives are doing what’s best for their companies, gathering as much talent as they can. This isn't evil. It's not exploitation."
Part of what happened with the Boeing tragedies was outsourcing software development. Companies are looking for the cheapest, not the best because they have to increase profit at every shareholder meeting. They don't care about quality and they certainly don't care about people's lives. That is evil.
30
If Brooks and his "self-righteous pompous" pillars of industry feel they are so sure about their assessment of how business functions in America, why then do they spend tens of millions , if not BILLIONS of dollars continually lobbying politicians in Washington to rig the government agenda to strictly serve their interests at the expense of everyone else?
29
In the 70s and 80s, when this country began prioritizing shareholders over workers, when the corporate model became “transactional” (a wonderfully neutral term favored by economists that substitutes for the word greed), then yes, it definitely became a class war.
Further, this idea of giving shareholders more financial return at the expense of workers was sold as short-term pain that would be quickly offset by greater corporate returns benefiting the entire country.
Except, corporate taxes were then conveniently lowered, and those greater corporate profits (accrued by abandoning the “waste” of worker investment through regular pay raises, job security, pensions etc.) never translated into modernized infrastructure or any other meaningful benefit for this country.
But yeah, we have billionaires now, and likely trillionaires soon, as our aging roads, energy grid and other critical infrastructure slowly decay. So glad that capitalism and markets lets the billionaires buy their own islands and dream of homesteading on other planets, thanks to tax breaks and worker de-investment. Why should they get to share in what life has become for the rest of us struggling in this exploited country, and planet?
The NYT described these ideas as “The Forces That Are Killing the American Dream:”
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2019/09/10/books/review/transaction-man-nicholas-lemann.amp.html
34
Working-class Virginians don't care about 'proletarian class consciousness.' They care about keeping it together; about basic financial security. More than fifty percent of this country can't afford a five-hundred-dollar emergency. Brooks is part of the problem.
33
There is no class war because war assumes those at the bottom have a fight.
16
Dear David,
I strongly recommend that you start reading Robert Reich. He's written a rather devastating response to your faux facts. Since 1978, CEO pay has gone up by 940%; typical worker pay by 12%. While worker productivity has gone up by approximately 70%, worker compensation has gone up by less than 12%. You and Bret Stephens need to take a road trip. Head west on Route 80 and check out the ruined towns of Pennsylvania and Ohio. Your obliviousness to the lives of tens of millions of Americans is really shocking. And your desire to destroy Bernie doesn't excuse the twisting of his key message. Bernie is not about "theyism." His slogan is "Not me, Us." Unlike the bigot in chief, Sanders wants us to stop pitting black against white, male against female, etc. He wants us to see that we're all in this together. All of us, that is, except for a handful of billionaires who are worth more than half the country. Hoarding this obscene amount of wealth is immoral, especially when so many Americans are barely getting by.
42
David Brooks ignores the fact, wages are being driven down to subsistence level.
19
Compare what Bernie is doing today with what Reagan was doing in 1980. Reagan's "government is the problem" was just as bad as Bernie's "billionaires are the problem". Would Brooks agree with that?
America is slowly being flushed down the toilet with increasing polarized view, fueled by polarizing media.
We have got to get back to the middle.
3
Claims made in this opinion piece, and their debunking. H/T to Robert Reich for the debunking below:
— “over the past few years wages for workers toward the bottom of the income stream have been rising faster than wages for those toward the top.”
Wrong. CEO pay has risen 940 percent since 1978, while typical worker pay has risen a measly 12 percent.
— capitalism is “rewarding productivity with pay, and some people and companies are more productive.”
Wrong again. From 1979 to 2018, worker productivity rose by 69.6 percent, while worker compensation rose only by 11.6 percent.
— when companies become more productive “they earn more profit per employee and pay their workers more.”
Wrong yet again: higher profits do not automatically translate into higher worker pay. Brooks is assuming trickle down economics isn't a total sham. The truth is the share of corporate profits going to workers still isn’t back to where it was before the 2008 financial crash.
13
David, I would recommend reading "Das Kapital" by Marx to get a better idea of how capitalism completely exploits workers for benefit of bosses. It's quite accessible once you start reading.
15
No class war? How about a class action?
4
I am surprised how much Bernie Sanders sounds like the old time socialist Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the British Labor Party, who was massacred in the December 2019 general election, when the working class voted en masse for Boris Johnson, the Eton and Oxford educated Conservative Party leader. Due to weak candidates like Sanders, the Democrats will likely loose the November 2020 Presidential election and be out of power for half a generation like the UK Labor Party.
1
I usually admire David Brooks' rather open-minded Republicanism and decided to read his op-ed with an equally open mind. However, he stopped me dead in my reading tracks with his note that "as superstar businesses grow more productive they earn more profit per employee... (and here I abruptly stopped)...and pay their workers more." REALLY? I'm afraid Mr. Brooks lost me with that age-old Republican belief of "trickle-down economics." Sorry, Mr. Brooks.
18
So, David, how do you feel about all of the comments by very intelligent folks - some, prominent business people. They know what is going on and it's not good. People are suffering. It's not fun being poor.
17
I think Mr. Brooks needs to look at two graphics produced by his colleague, Mr. Leonhardt, relating to tax rates/inequality. Hard not to conclude that "They" is alive and well, and it ain't who he says it it. They is Mr. Brooks. And he taking his cue from too many economists who still ignore the role of power in these unequal outcomes. Every discipline (sociology, political science and anthropology, etc) except economics gives "power" a central role in explaining human society. Those differences in power actually justify the focus on They. Those differences always have in human history. For economists it's a voluntary exchange based on given endowments (how those skills are obtained isn't discussed --- its not "freely chosen") and wages are determined by competitive supply and demand and reflect the value of a laborer's marginal product. Forget all that actual economic and labor history that argues otherwise. It's all seamless, rational and optimal, and absolutely impossible to question given the assumption of the voluntary nature of exchange being made --- no power, no coercion and costless to transact. In a word it's "perfect." It must be "emotionally satisfying" (Brooks term) to believe in the fairy tale that economic life isn't fundamentally political in nature.
TAX RATES: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/10/06/opinion/income-tax-rate-wealthy.html
INCOME INEQUALITY: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/08/07/opinion/leonhardt-income-inequality.html
9
Yes, Virginia and David, there is class inequality. This is the result of long standing access and opportunity inequalities. The causative factors are not related to competitive productivity issues, but rather to longstanding prejudices of cultural, racial, sexist and religious bias.
I dismiss David's use of percentage comparisons of gains as statistically idiotic. Is the inequality between workers and CEO's attributable to productivity? I think not.
Do those who are stuck in the lower rungs of economic and social advancement feel victimized? You bet. Do they feel exploited? No doubt. Have corporations accessed off shore labor and tax shelters to avoid responsibility to the citizenry? Has the gig economy cannibalized the m
If not class war, could civil war be brewing in the country?
8
I’m very disappointed in Mr Brooks simplistic views on class, money, & power. Raises for the bottom do not come close to elevating life styles let alone increasing purchasing power. Mr Brooks, you seem out of touch with the working people.
15
I can't believe I wasted one of my free articles on this guy. I should have known better.
"Class-war progressivism always loses to culture-war conservatism..."
Well, aw shucks. I guess we shouldn't try. Is that your point?
"...swing voters in the Midwest care more about their values — guns, patriotism, ending abortion, masculinity, whatever — than they do about proletarian class consciousness."
And because America is the richest country in the world, and we've enjoyed a higher standard of living than most, this has been true. The problem with this argument is that over the last 40 years people have seen, not only their wages decline relative to cost of living, BUT THEIR JOBS GO OVERSEAS! Or be automated out of existence. 9 million voted for Obama in 2012 -- and then switched to Trump in 2016. Why? Did they magically become racist? Or did they want change and knew that it wasn't coming from Clinton? Fewer and fewer of these midwest swing voters are staying on the sidelines. They're sick of the status quo and want change. And that change isn't coming from a "moderate" Democrat.
Keep quoting people and the institutions that are all elements of the same establishment class, living in a bubble. The problem with bubble life is that it's hard to be self-aware enough to realize that YOU ARE LIVING IN A BUBBLE.
15
David, enough of this bla bla bla! I have heard that before! Bernie Sanders' analysis is absolutely correct and right! This country is paradise for the wealthy and the corporations. Both the wealthy and the corporations exploit the middle class and the poors. Both corporations and the very wealthy people (top 1% to .1%) are EXPLOITING the others and make money on their backs. It is an indisputable fact! -- Many books have been written on the subject (cf. Piketty and Saez' books and articles). -- This is not moral, rational nor acceptable. The system has become RIGGED and is RIGGED more and more as time passes! It is time to change it before the situation explodes! Bernie Sanders and also Elizabeth Warren are right and are trying to change it peacefully! God bless them! Just like for climate change, we need a drastic solution, a drastic change! A solution that preserves the current status-quo is not good enough and will not resolve the problem!
19
This is the perfect theyism: "because swing voters in the Midwest care more about their values — guns, patriotism, ending abortion, masculinity, whatever — than they do about proletarian class consciousness."
These values are terrible. THEY would be much better served by proletarian class consciousness.
6
As was said of Freud by some of his B'nai Brith friends, Brooks is a symptom of the disease he says he wants to cure...
unequal education, productivity, health inequalities etc. are symptoms of the dominance of 1% over 90%. if that's "natural" for Brooks, then his argument is just an apologia.
8
Nothing like someone insulated from privation to tell the impoverished how to think and feel. The revolution will not be televised, Mr. Brooks, nor will it be in 'Goings on About Town.'
10
David Brooks as usual goes thru elaborate wonky reasoning to reach the same place someone lesser would get by simply being stupid.
The fact is that Single Payer is popular with more than half of the voters so running on it should get Bernie more than half of the vote which should in a democracy WIN.
We've done it David's way last election running a sold out insider running on mostly hot air and NOT Trump and she lost. Meanwhile Bernie polled 15% better than the unpopular nominee. He's set up to do way better than that this time and hopefully the fix isn't in this time to deny him and his many supporters a chance to actually do something about our problems, something that apparently never figures into Brook's reasoning.
13
The cold calculations that inform David Brooks misrepresent the nature of America's true reality.
7
This op-ed is shocking; Brooks' research is rather flawed, but worst of all he has the attitude that because he doesn't see it, it doesn't exist. It's so irresponsible and self-serving; seriously, work for FOX if you just want to spew your own propaganda that satisfies your needs. Also, I respect Bernie's realistic look at the country and where it has gone, and what we need to do to fix it.
17
Here's the thing, David. I am an independent. I am by all reasonable measures, a moderate. I will vote for Bernie Sanders in a heartbeat against Trump, and please spare me the false equivalencies.
Moreover, if Trump wins because more people in the "heartland" vote for him because of cultural issues, then this country needs a heart transplant. And so be it.
I am tired of this nonsense. Donald Trump is a national disgrace and everyone who votes for him or stays home or votes third party because they can't vote for Bernie is helping destroy this country.
Europe went too far down the Socialist path in the 1970s, had economic issues and reversed much of it and came out fine with their democracies in tact. Bad policy choices (and I am not sure all of Bernie's are bad) are reversible. Destroying the very fabric of our Republic as Trump is doing, is not.
Vote Democratic across the board in 2020, no matter the candidates!
19
David - If you come from Latin America, India or other such third world countries America is still great. Dog eat dog at its finest.
For the majority of the rest of us under the age of 55, the past 30 years have been a real joke:
No pensions, no job security, skyrocketing healthcare and college costs, etc
Please go away; thanks.
18
Just on time, each NYT columnist is taking their turn to say why policies that have been in place for 50-75 years in any other civilised, advanced capitalist country are completely out to lunch. Us Canadians and Europeans find hope in Bernie and his young followers to finally put a crack in US exceptionalism which we find really, really irritating.
16
“There’s class warfare, all right,” Mr. Buffett said, “but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”
That's Warren Buffet quoted in the NYT. True then and true now.
15
Congratulations David you've finally morphed into Herbert Spencer. You keep talking about the very very best thriving in this economy. Pathetically, the overwhelming majority of what you call the very best were born with a silver spoon in their mouth. America's problem is that it isn't a meritocracy, and more than that the least capable among us seem to control the political system, along with the connivance of the very rich and powerful who have convinced them that guns, anti abortion, and false patriotism are more important than an economy that provides for all. The country that you laud, that provides for those who are at the top of the system in terms of prowess is what my mother called a Shonda, a shame.
Get out of your beautiful office at the New York Times and put your workers clothes on and travel all over this country and see how people are living in what you call a highly productive country. When you've visited all over come back and tell us what you've found. Forget your enterprise institute and other Objectivism related organs of the far right and the obscenely wealthy and see for yourself.
If things are so great why has the birth rate fallen to its lowest level in half a century, why aren't young people getting married, why can't young people buy homes in this country, why is there a constant paucity of housing for all but the very rich. Keep going like this and there will be no future, no children, no marriage, no happiness.
12
Yawn, Another David Brooks conservative warped take on reality. There is class warfare and the rich have won. They control commerce and they control government. Regulations tat control greed have been gutted and the IRS audits a higher percentage of the working poor than the rich. Wages for the working class have remained flat when adjusted for inflation for decades when inflation is considered which DB of course, ignores. This article should have a counter opinion but alas the NYT wants to damage Bernie Sanders more than it wants to be responsible.
13
This "theyism" idea is silly. Sanders is a deep thinker who has been consistent and unwavering in his ideas for a long time. Trump is a raving lunatic. They cannot be 'equalized' by being depicted as holding opposite ends of the rope in a 'theyistic' tug of war.
This article could be featured in a statistics 101 textbook in the subject about how you can use numbers to make any point that you want. Even worse, the conclusion is wrong. Define prosperity.
Are we prosperous when we have so many sick who can't go to the doctor, so many that have no decent place to live, so many that have to pay for college into middle age? Hmmm. (head shaking, body shivering)
12
Disagree. You can't possibly believe workers just have to pick better employers who value productivity. Work harder! Is that your answer to American's inability to pay their rent? To afford their healthcare? The federal minimum wage is below $8, and hasn't budged in A DECADE for god's sake, meanwhile CEOs WHO FAIL are getting nulti-million dollar golden parachutes! And Brooks has the audacity to say "all is well." Lord, how utterly ridiculous.
17
Bernie Sanders is a threat to the power of the establishment. That’s why David Brooks writes dumb articles like this that smear Bernie. Brooks will never understand the needs of working class Americans. The NYT, CNN and the entire corporate press attack anyone that is antagonistic to their neoliberal consensus. Bernie is not corrupt, unlike the rest of the candidates, fundraising exclusively from working class Americans.
Bernie Sanders is the only candidate that can attract many of the 100 million people who chose not to vote. Material conditions of ordinary Americans have not improved regardless of which party is in power. Sanders feels the pain of working class Americans. He has never abandoned them like the establishment has. Bernie is not a Democrat and that is a big advantage.
Bernie can run away with the nomination and win the general election in a landslide by making this election about health care. Medicare For All is a winning message. Trump’s health care plan is a GoFundMe page.
As a member of the corporate press David Brooks is afraid of losing his power and influence even more than he already has.
11
FDR was behind the "socialist" agenda in the 1930's because it was either that or a full fledged socialist revolution. Fell free to ignore the history, but NOT electing Sanders the country will be committing suicide, by climate change or the fascism that will bear it's ugly head after this dictatorial president. Either way, it's the socialists who will come to the rescue and American workers will finally realize what a working class consciousness is all about.
10
That's right, David. The rich won!
4
Mr. Brooks, if there were no "haves" and "have nots" there would not be any "theyism".
7
Am I reading the New York Times. I like Saunders because he is Different. But so was lenin. There have been so many successful socialist economies. The Soviets, Cuba, Venezuela. Oops, my mistake. Be careful what you wish for. I guess we could starve tens of millions to death as the Russians and Chinese did. Or destroy the lives or hopes of anyone born in Cuba. Imagine living in a country where your life was predetermined, by someone else. Capitalism and America has it's faults, but they are so minor compared to socialist-communist countries. We are lucky to live here. Now only if we could convince the police not to shoot innocent people.
2
It is extremely depressing that the NYT is pushing, and that so many of its readers actually believe that "over the past few years wages for workers toward the bottom of the income stream have been rising faster than wages for those toward the top," and "wages are still generally determined by skills and productivity." What planet are y'all living on? Oh yeah, the one where you're doing ok and you look the other way when you pass the homeless camp. Edward Lazear? The American Enterprise Institute? Please. Try Thomas Piketty or Joseph Stieglitz or even the World Economic Forum. A overwhelming number of measures prove wages have largely been stagnant for the majority of American workers since the 1970s. Income and wealth inequality, which began to skyrocket in the 90s, today resemble that of the Gilded Age of the 1920s, and the rise was greater during Obama's administration that George W. Bush's! (Clue: he bailed out the banks, not the people.) Thank you, incrementalism. This column is itself an "all-explaining cartoon," parroting a mainstream economic narrative which is simply untrue. Trump or a mainstream Democrat mean a fast or slightly slower continued march toward complete transformation of the USA into an oligarchy, a plutocracy, third world country. Wake up people.
11
"There is Donald Trump’s culture-war Theyism: The coastal cultural elites hate genuine Americans, undermining our values and opening our borders. "
That wasn't Trump, that was you, or do you think we forgot "Bobos in Paradise"?
Trump certainly took advantage of the propaganda you spewed, but it wasn't his culture war - it was yours. Own it.
7
“ W]e are saying that something is wrong … with capitalism…. There must be better distribution of wealth and maybe America must move toward a democratic socialism”
MLK
3
well argued by David Brooks.
He's 100% correct.
1
You know what's funny...a guy (David) that came up in and is arguing in defense of the exact system that led us to this point. Nice try, but you literally have no idea the struggles Gen-X and Millennials are dealing with because, well, you're not one of them. Your way worked for you. And now? It only works, still, for you. At our expense. So you either move over, or, like Bernie and Warren, help us build the system that works for us. Or, well, we wait for you to pass on, and then we do it anyway. Either way, we're going to do what's best for US. Not for you.
8
The very hi tech companies Brooks admires so are among the most viciously exploitative of their work forces.
9
All the vitriol in these thousands of comments shows what a sensitive point David Brooks has hit by highlighting the strong similarities between Bernie’s class warriors and Trump’s culture warriors. It brings to mind a remark, probably apocryphal, but very meaningful, attributed to Goebbels: “It is so much easier to make a faithful National-Socialist from a Communist than from a Social-Democrat !”
That's what the finance guys have been pushing for over a generation. More efficient, cheaper...so now we just buy everything from overseas as American workers are too expensive...finance guys like Mnuchin go around in private jets and marry shiksas....what a joke American financial policy has become. What about "feeding the people."?
1
please see Robert riesch's response to this column. I'll take the Secretary of Labor's analysis over conservative pundit anytime
2
Fast food kiosks and robotic cars etc DO NOT raise all boats!!!
4
So the bottom half of Americans are lazy??? This guy doesn't believe what he has written does he? If you're going to bat for the rich corporations that's fine, but to call Americans lazy is down right reprehensible.
8
Attacking Bernie is like attacking Lenin, and against the PEOPLE. To the barricades!
1
I can’t wait to see how you rationalize this after Bernie becomes our next president!
1
The Left, with whom I spend most of my active life, will never let themselves grasp the fact that regular people do not judge their lot in life by comparison to the "other", but rather they judge their life by their childhood experiences. If they are doing better than their parents, they are proud of their life and their achievements. Income, therefore, is not the real measure. It is quality of life or standard of living. While wages have been flat, the cost of everything is vastly less than it was a generation ago. Hence, to the perennial dismay of the woke generation, average Americans are center-right in their political views..
8
The figures quoted about wages are extremely misleading. Between 1989 and 2017, the average rate of inflation was 1.59%, meaning that it cost 197$ to buy what would have cost 100$ in 1989. https://www.in2013dollars.com/1989-dollars-in-2017
So, in order to barely maintain their standard of living, workers would have needed wage increases of 97% over the period, not 34% and 26%.
In other words, these workers have gotten a lot poorer. Brooks should have run this past his colleague, Paul Krugman, before rushing to print.
21
What makes Brooks so sure that midwestern swing voters care more about guns and abortion than economic populism? When, until Bernie Sanders in 2016, has progressive economic populism even been on offer in a presidential campaign?
15
Brooks throws out a smokescreen about workers wages when the issue Bernie is talking about is Capitalist Profits. Nobody is getting into the 1% by working and earning a wage. Those who control the capital are in control of our government and making it so that they (those with the most capital) continue to profit more from the economy than the rest of the country. The consolidation of capital into the hands of a very elite few is one of the known flaws of unregulated Capitalism. Just as the failures of “planned” economies are well known to be a flaw of pure Socialism.
We just need better diversity in our thinking, our economy, and our leaders. Diversity is strength. Purity is weakness.
13
You write: " A side effect of their efficiency is they spend a smaller share of their revenue on labor even while raising their workers’ wages. In a global information-age economy, the rewards for being best are huge."
Piketty (paraphrasing): if r>g then GINI increases.
Class war is not about bad people with high earnings, good people with lower earnings. In fact it's not a war or even a struggle. It's just a "market," an unseen hand that does not recognize the importance of equilibrium. Unchecked it proceeds toward a bad end.
3
The columnist argues that progressivism loses to social conservativism due to voters' -- especially midwest working class -- valuing guns, patriotism, ending abortion masculinity over their economic interests. Is there ANY example in all of US history where that wasn't true you might ask? And you'd need only go back to President #44 Barack Obama to disprove his premise. Obama was a economic and social progressive. He achieved an electoral college blow out against the social and economic conservative McCain. Obama won in Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Indiana, and Iowas as well as FL, NC and VA. Dems can win by pulling back the Obama voters who switched to Trump and Mr. Trump has done much to ensure that will happen in 2020.
14
"The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." Apparently Brooks and so many other members of the MSM have never heard this quote from Einstein. They will continue to back bland candidates such as Joe Biden, just as they did in 2016 with HRC and watch their candidate lose over and over again.
Writers such as Brooks keep saying that someone like Bernie Sanders will get destroyed in the general election, however the Democrats have never nominated a far-left progressive in the history of this country, so they have no information to base this off of. If the candidate is anyone but Bernie, Trump will win four more years. And it will be the worst "I told you so" our county could possibly face.
13
Long term effects of m.i.a. universal, available, affordable education, healthcare and “capital”, plus more recent causes and consequences of 2008 financial crisis (still circling) need better representation to identify & resolve the convenient and perceived schisms represented.
1. Clearly, you don't understand the problem. The Class War isn't between the $22K/yr fry cook at the bottom the the 99% and the $400K/yr mid-level Tech Exec at the bottom of the 1%. The Class War is both those guys versus the $4M/yr Rentier (ask Dr. K.) at the bottom of the 0.01% who owns his own Congressman.
2. Rentiers don't earn something as paltry as "wages". They make Profits and Capital Gains. "Wages" are what they pay the little people. So the comparison you're making isn't relevant to the Class War.
3. In the Lazear Study you cite, Productivity increased 34% while wages increased 26%. How is that equitable? 34% increase in output should translate to 34% increase in reward. Who kept that 8% ? Its not a perfect World, of course - Free Enterprise is designed to create winners and losers. But when even the Best and the Brightest are falling measurably behind, Public Policy needs to address the problem or else we in the Rabble (that includes you too, BTW) will need to make the changes ourselves.
And remember, the first volley in the Class War was fired by the Rich.
16
Still can't get over Brooks calling the Iraq war on the eve of the invasion a "noble cause." Now we hear his thesis that wages rising faster at the bottom than they are at the top means the "bosses" can't be taking advantage. This guy will simply never grow out of his naiveté. If you want to raise livestock and make a profit off of it, you had better not starve them to death. Wages could not get any worse at the bottom, and they have been at a historical low in real value versus food, shelter, and education for a very long time.
Sure would be nice if SOMEONE would make a decent pitch for taking one or two lessons from the way they do capitalism in some of the Northern European countries, and the way they don't do war.
19
I found it difficult to confirm that lower-income workers are seeing greater wage growth than those at the top. The best I could do was a Goldman Sachs report from Mar '19 that compared the top and bottom 50% - a strange way to slice the data.
The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta produces a Wage Tracker that shows the bottom quartile of wage earners' pay outpaced the top quartile in the early years of the recovery, but that trend has reversed around June 2015, and has diverged sharply since -- high earners are seeing more growth.
Now, examining wages alone limits our perspective. After all, the vast majority of wealth accumulation at higher levels comes from capital returns rather than wages. This is one of the structural problems that our progressive candidates hope to address.
7
I can think of many sectors where productivity has soared but salaries have stagnated or cratered.
Academia - adjuncts scrambling to make a fraction of what tenured professors make.
Drivers - Uber/Lyft drivers working long hours for a pittance
Administrative staff - technology has made them so productive they don't even have jobs any more; their work is being done by technology. They earn - zero.
Productivity does not determine income.
17
Dear David, there are several countries ahead of the US in terms of labor productivity, including Luxembourg, Ireland, Norway and Belgium. None of these countries have the same level of inequality the US does, largely because their capitalists have to play by different rules. Nobody is saying that capitalists are trying to destroy workers, but if they can exploit them by paying them as little as possible, they will. Compared to most developed countries, the US offers relatively few constraints to exploitation. Its laws do not empower labor to organize and bargain with capital. The argument you are offering is a fallacy. Bernie is telling the truth, however inconvenient.
17
“Feeling the Bern” is a cult, not a political movement, just like “Making America Great Again”. The Sanders core supporters are not people who have thoughtfully studied history and decided on a course of political action, but rather believers in need of a guru, who do not expect reality from him. These core supporters do not really care that it’s impossible to build a consensus for the radical, damaging changes that Sanders preaches, that those changes have zero chance to be actually implemented - that’s what marks the difference between a political movement and a cult. In an article today, David Leonhard was noting the rough, take-no-prisoner style of some of Bernie’s supporters, which is never disavowed by the guru. The ressemblance with Trump’s core supporters is unmistakable.
6
It sure would be great if what Mr. Brooks is saying here were true. But there is an Us and They. Depending on your relative position, Us is laboring over whether to go with Teak or Mahogany floors in the guest room at the lake place while They are wondering where to sleep tonight along with 500,00 fellow citizens. Us have spent more on political campaign contributions in this (never ending) cycle than Theys' yearly income.
The rules - otherwise known as laws and tax codes - have been utterly transformed in the last 30 years to prop Us up and accelerate Our accumulation of wealth with little regard for the welfare of They.
14
No class war? America's greatest struggle is the one between the haves and the have nets. It's been so since inception.
Trying to say Bernie is not seeing clearly is intellectually dishonest.
12
This is just another example of an "elitist" sitting in his Washington/New York "bubble", whom much like the corporate/establishment "politicos" continue to pretend they know the reality of what is going on in the rest of America when they ultimately don't have a clue and really don't care. This is the attitude that continues to prevail especially among the corporate/ establishment wing of the democratic party who learned nothing from the 2016 election and why Donald Trump got elected inthe first place.
I am sure Brooks would be pleased that with the tax cuts corporations have been handed, just in the last two years alone, the top SIX banks have saved 32 BILLION DOLLARS.
In order to have an actual connection with reality, I suggest Brooks read Pultzer Prize winning novelist, Christopher Hedges book, "America, The Farewell Tour" whereby in order to gather infomation for the novel, Hedges took TWO years to travel around America interviewing countless people in different circumstances in different towns and cities throughout the country.
Hedges "evidence based" conclusions documenting what is REALLY happening, as suspected, are quite different from David Brooks.
10
"Swing voters in the Midwest care more about their values...than they do about proletarian class consciousness"
What is weird to me is that there is nobody campaigning to the somewhat socially conservative, economically left-wing part of the electorate. People with this combination of beliefs are actually pretty common, especially among the working class of all races. Breaking off a (mostly white) chunk of these voters based on cultural appeals was part of how Trump won.
I don't wish to see a Democratic candidate who is anti-abortion and pro-gun (however left-wing economically). Still, the Dems need to make an effort to do well within this demographic - to make such people feel welcome in the party even if they don't see eye-to-eye on all issues.
I actually believe Sanders is fairly well-positioned to win some of these voters because of the way his rhetoric does not lean heavily on identity politics (excluding class) and focuses mostly on economic issues.
My bottom line overall is that I don't want to see the Republicans winning Erie County, PA or Saginaw Co., MI, or the traditionally Democratic counties of SW Wisconsin again. I think, though, that the candidate doesn't have to become a Biden or Klobuchar-like centrist on all issues - it's the cultural ones where moderation is important, while on the economics many swing voters actually prefer left-wing positions.
4
David has the audacity to look at bottom end wage growth due in large part to recent raises in minimum wage as evidence CEOs arent in fact winning. Ah those "lucky duckies" on minimum wage huh David?
17
If productivity is the hero, then watch out for the robots. How long before all companies which are still in business (as opposed to the print journalism industry for instance) hit the productivity jackpot with AI/automation? If all that matters is the bottom line, then that is what the future looks like. We need a transitional reordering of our economic system, not to mention the need to radically transform our K-12 education system, like Universal Basic Income. That is why Andrew Yang is the president for the 21st century, he gets it with human centered capitalism.
4
I generally enjoy your articles David, but I think you are off-base on this one.You are correct that there is a kind of class-warfare surfacing, but this is only a symptom of the real issue. This same issue got Trump elected and is causing a myriad of tensions including a greater us/them mentality. Andrew Yang has is correct. There is an incrase in capital efficiency with a decreasing reliance on humans to achieve it. Its not hard to see in your local mall. Please look into this further as you are only looking very superficially here.
2
Problem is that people like Brooks don’t shop at the local mall. They don’t really see how the regular wage earners work and live.
8
I’m a capitalist but its big flaw is the accumulation of wealth or call it greed at the top. The corporate boards should be taking care of that but they don’t. How do we fix that?
4
I do not consider advice from David Brooks: "Productivity is the key to national prosperity." Above ingenuity, education, experience, research? On the other hand, Senator Sanders is a good example of them vs. us: He is an Independent; almost everyone in the Senate is "them" for him. Sanders can improve on "them vs. us" to "them vs. me." This too is a form of narcissism!
From the article and to the extent I've read comments, what I see missing is a Constitution which should consist of a social contract, that includes a publicly assured economic life of subsistence, independence and dignity. Of course, the individual also reciprocate with an education, work and if necessary, relocation obligation Where I live expensive homes are selling like hot cakes yet simultaneously, a large percentage of our workforce earn incomes (if they're working) that doesn't begin to measure up to living costs. This is where we need to begin our transformation, one that will reduce levels of poverty, crime and the class struggle that exists. We refuse to face the inherent indifference of capitalism to those economic classes without accumulated family wealth.
4
@tennvol30736
Three months prior to his death, FDR gave a memorable speech in which he announced he was going to introduce a Citizens "Bill of Rights" or as you describe it, a "social contract" which would enshrine in the Constitution rights such as, "the right to work, the right to a decent wage, the right to have decent housing, the right to healthcare", etc. etc.
Clearly, if he had lived and implemented his Citizens Bill of Rights, no doubt, America would be very different place today.
6
This is bunch of malarkey, and who is Brooks trying to fool? According to a Pew Research Center study from 2018, "... despite the strong labor market, wage growth has lagged economists’ expectations. In fact, despite some ups and downs over the past several decades, today’s real average wage (that is, the wage after accounting for inflation) has about the same purchasing power it did 40 years ago. And what wage gains there have been have mostly flowed to the highest-paid tier of workers." Furthermore, if all these productivity gains are flowing to low-skill wage earners why is there a huge push for a $15 an hour minimum wage? Anecdotally, I overheard a customer this week at Trader Joe's say to a cashier, "I don't know anyone who only has one job." Finally, while my grandfather was able to support his family and send both his sons to college on a diesel truck mechanics' salary. Today, most households need two incomes, and many need to work more than one job to make it. We may have low unemployment, but for an economy that unevenly rewards the rich and investors most Americans aren't on the receiving end of Brooks' rosy assessment of the state of our economic affairs .
22
Once Bernie is really vetted by the Republicans and the media, he will be crushed in the general election. We will all have to face 4 more years of the worst president in our history. History repeats itself. Unfortunately I remember voting for McGovern in my youth. I am not happy about a Biden/ Amy ticket but they can win. Bernie will not win the general election! This is too important of an election to lose. The majority of voters will Not accept a doubling of their taxes. They will accept a public option, background checks, and some college debt relief. Please remember most Americans are happy with the best economy in decades. Don't risk 4 more years of disaster!
6
@Roger
For starters, I guess at any given time, that is why 45% of Americans couldn't come up with an extra $500 for an emergency, 29 MILLION(and growing) Americans have no health insurance, 45,000 within that group die every because of it and over 500,000 annually declare bankruptcy because they can't pay their medical bills?
They would question your conclusions.
7
@Deus None of those unacceptable conditions will change if trump is re-elected. A total disruption of the economic system will not be accepted by the majority of Americans. To have change you have to win. America is not just the east and west coasts. It doesn't matter if you agree with the electoral college, it will still be in force in this election. The flyover counties will not accept a total upheaval of the American economy. Trump must be delegated to the dustbin of history. There is a reason trump wanted Biden trashed by a Ukraine investigation. He is afraid of Biden. He's not afraid of Bernie.
1
If there is no class warfare, how do you account for the rise in diseases of despair: the overdoses, suicides, and alcohol related deaths?
12
"As those companies grow more productive, they earn more profit per employee and pay their workers more."
They do not, Mr. Brooks.
I worked in Silicon Valley for 10+ technology companies from 2000 to 2015. The pace of change during this timeframe was staggering. I kept up. I learned new skills, stayed competitive. There was no choice but to produce more in less time, all the time, quarter after quarter. Over those 15 years, my salary remained essentially flat. The real money turned out to be in the gamble: the equity I negotiated. While there were some giant flops (and they didn't flop because workers were unproductive; they were leveraged to the gills and based on totally questionable business models), I got lucky on a few. Luck is what enabled me to retire, not my salary.
13
This sounds like the same strategy they used to explain away wealth and income inequality globally: there is more inequality BETWEEN countries than there are WITHIN countries. The idea is the same: countries have vastly different economic structures so the difference reflect those differences.
Of course what this explanation MISSES is that the GINI coefficient has been getting worse EVERYWHERE over the past generation. The only common element during that time that impacts all nations is global trade and the tendency for countries to remove the mechanisms that in prior generations kept the problems we are seeing from getting worse.
It is quite so simple to see the desperate measures that they will use to keep their massive wealth even it means eating the seed corn for future generations.
4
As expected, Mr. Brooks, one of the leading cheerleaders of rampant capitalism, tries to convince us that there is no class warfare. Perhaps he should change the terminology. Instead, consider it a widening gap between the "haves" and "have-nots" and call it what it really is, and always has been: a battle to hold on to power.
One needs to look no further than to the etymology of "capitalism" which is about money, and "socialism," which is about people, to understand the difference between a government controlled by the wealthiest capitalists, and a social democracy that focuses on the welfare of all its citizens.
No matter how well intentioned, the framers of the Constitution were the country’s elite, their status defined and measured by wealth and education. Believing themselves honorable and virtuous men, they were guided by ideals and principles derived from the philosophy they read, the religion they practiced, and English law.
That their leadership was politically and fiscally conservative was understandable. As much as they stood on honor and principle, as “the haves” of the country, they also protected themselves, their property, and their wealth. Despite what might be construed as progressive political ideals for the time, the Declaration of Independence and Constitution were written in that context.
Money always buys the power to manipulate and control those who have none. The system has been rigged from inception. It can be changed.
13
I don't even know where to begin.
Brooks conveniently overlooks a simple fact: that despite wage increases at the bottom, personal buying power for those very same people is still not keeping pace with the cost of living. Even if the lowest paid workers were granted a federal guarantee of $15/hour, they would still not be able to afford housing in the cities in which they live, never mind health care or college. $15/hour minimum wage is already a reality in San Francisco, and we still have a housing crisis.
He conveniently overlooks the fact that higher productivity (and thus profitability) via automation has not translated to greater benefits for those workers, many of whom are contract employees or gig workers.
When Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren talk about capitalism not working, what they mean is that we've de-regulated business to the point of worker exploitation. A regulated form of capitalism works just fine in other Western nations; why not here?
My question is, if corporations are people (Citizen's United), then why do those "people" bear no responsibility toward society like the rest of us? Why are they not held to account in the form of paying taxes? Why aren't labor and stockholders treated equally, in terms of a return on their equity, be that sweat equity or capital?
The Second Gilded Age is upon us, and corporate titans have tilted the board in their favor.
24
Mr. Brooks' third point makes false comparisons. He notes that leading companies in EACH industry are capturing larger and larger market shares and that this translates into higher salaries for their employees (and much higher profit taking for these companies, which he calls a "side-effect").
While depressed wages in lagging (compared to leading) companies in a given industry might suffer along with their companies' productivities this does not mean that LOW-LEVEL workers are not exploited within either of these groups (though presumably more by leading companies). The productivity monitoring of low-level Amazon employees may soon become a type of serious exploitation (not compensated by wages). More importantly, when one looks at all those industries that do not have "superstar companies" within them there is surely plenty of old school, worker exploitation to be found. Many service sectors industries, like fast food and senior care, and industrialized agriculture, to name a few.
3
I love how you totally ignore the CIO to worker salary differential, or the hedge funds differential with any top professional!
6
"Sanders starts with a truth: Workers need more bargaining power as they negotiate wages with their employers." It is a truth shared by most Democratic candidates. My preference is Warren/Harris as a team, but others would do. The only one who can not beat the lie machine is Sanders. Socialist. Creepy yelling old man. So, yes, he's off base, but the fundamental truth, the enormity of the unshared wealth, comes back to bargaining power. Some real teeth in support for unions. 20$ minimum wage except when business owner makes less than $200K profit. A guaranteed minimum Federal tax of 20% for families over 100K income. Ne escapes through hiding money, exporting it, deducting it. A minimum. It would add 600 billion dollars a year to the tax revenue. Enough talk about "millionaires and billionaires". Then the defeat of crazy patriotism, reduction of military funding by 200 billion a year. Then the solar/tidal/wind infrastructure jobs.
3
"People can't earn what they don't produce" is a barbaric, non-democratically chosen idea about measuring people's inherent value economically. For individuals that will always be at some disadvantage in skills through no fault of their own, i.e. inherently lower IQ's, higher vulnerabilities to stress, their material comfort and value should not be determined by what they can produce economically.
David, you should read Richard Reeves' "Dream Hoarders". Corporations and wealthy individuals, which includes you, need to pay more taxes to care for those who the "skills based" market will eventually leave behind, no matter how much education and job retraining is provided.
By the way, are you personally going to give up your mortgage interest deduction and your tax free 529a college savings plan to pay for the investments we need in education and retraining? I surely hope so because I'm sure you have enough money already.
I was a social worker for 10 years and now I make about $70,000 a year selling health insurance. I am going to ask my accountant to tell me how much taxes I'm saving due to ineffective and unnecessary tax breaks I get and don't want and donate that to charity.
If it's not a class war then what separates us at this point is heart. Don't give me technocratic explanations about productivity inequality while homeless people rely on non-profits funded by corporate donations, again not a democratically chosen way to operate. Where's your heart David?
8
Once again, Mr Brooks has adroitly identified several problems that tie the American Dream in a nasty knot, and once again he's provoked differing responses. Yea, for all of us because of the differences--but I think the most important element to David's astuteness is to identify that Bernie Sanders just ain't the man for the job of President. Sanders merely reiterates, endlessly and on every stage, the same old problems facing society, the problems we all know about. That's all he seems to do: "This is unfair," "That's unfair...." Let us hope the nomination for the strenuous job of US Prez goes to someone who can win and not just whine.
3
@Emma Hardesty
Maybe Sanders says the same things because they never change, either.
13
@nora m
Also, the problems are never rectified, i.e healthcare which Americans have been haggling about without resolution since Truman was President.
For the first time in decades somebody(Sanders) is actually trying to do something about it.
3
@nora m It’s emphatically not the path forward
This line stood out to me: "Today’s successful bosses are doing what they should be doing: increasing productivity, growing their businesses and offering great service."
First, they are not "offering great service". They are not allowing great service to exist. Service from most companies is poor and dishonest. We have merely been led to expect lesser service.
Second, "increasing productivity" is essentially anti-life. It is pushing people to inhumane levels of stress, it is extending work hours when extending work hours is not really more productive, it is destroying family life.
And third, "growing their business" is illegal when it gets big enough to be anti-competition. It is also immoral.
I figure Capitalism is like fire — it can be used for great evil or great good — but in order to be good, it must be carefully, scrupulously, and completely controlled.
12
I disagree. Your facts concerning productivity are correct, but I've seen industry and the 1%s take more profit and give less to the working class with abandon over my life time. Income equity is the problem for this generation. Workers can be more productive but if their pay does not generate a living wage than the current model for capitalism is broken. The working class income is down 11.4% over 50 years. it's not because we are being treated fairly our that most larger corporations are too poor to pay it, it's because there is an "us" and "them." "they" can manipulate the current political environment through the Citizens United ruling and at-will employment rules. "Us?" We have no similar recourse to reverse these trends. And it is evil of corporations and the extremely wealthy to ignore both the current and next generation of workers by blatantly exploiting your political power. IF you look at what the current people in power find acceptable: No federal minimum wage of $15 per hour, non-equal pay for women, rampant justice and penal discrimination, and a Senate that won't call a witness for a sitting president who doesn't understand the difference between perjury and fact-how can you not consider this a focused attack on "US" I'm a white male, well taken care of, and in no danger, but even I can see that there is an class war being fought.
4
Why did the US rise to become the world's superpower? Why is it generally the best economic performer in the world?
Its a stable democracy with minimal government intervention in its economy.
The voters don't want to be Denmark. They want to be Americans. Its not a silly thing to want.
6
@George
The US became a superpower by actually fighting for less than a year in WWI while providing munitions for the Allies for far longer. In WWII the US stayed out of the war for 2 years - again selling arms and munitions to the allies for years beforehand.
After WWII the US was the only industrial power left with an undamaged industrial base. It profited for two decades without any real competition.
The US built up its military during the Cold War and used it to perpetuate the petro dollar.
We gave our industrial base to China and have squandered trillions in failed wars in the Middle East.
The concept of America is very different than the reality of America.
10
Mr Brooks writes: "Today’s successful bosses are doing what they should be doing: increasing productivity, growing their businesses and offering great service." What a rosy, romantic description. What about 'successful' bosses like Mr Muilenburg and the corporate culture that that gave him $60million+ after being dismissed from Boeing?
11
It’s the companies and individuals who don’t have the skills to take advantage of new technologies.
Wrong. I have a Ph.D. and make pauper's wages.
10
@N
But is this your choice? And regardless, academics get more than wages from their careers. Brooks is actually right here. Individuals that don't have skills or education are especially disadvantaged in America.
1
Brooks writes "In the first place, over the past few years wages for workers toward the bottom of the income stream have been rising faster than wages for those toward the top. If the bosses have the workers by the throat, how can this be happening?"
Mr. Brooks, you don't have be a Bernie Sanders partisan to acknowledge that wage gains for workers at "the bottom of the income stream" is in large measure a consequence of many state, county and municipal legislatures raising the "minimize wages" in their jurisdictions often in step-wise fashion over several years toward the $15/hour target.
Sanders and other progressives have drawn attention to growing income inequality, the concentration of wealth in the top 10% or 1%, and that minimum wages are not "living wages."
This persistent jawboning by Sanders and other progressives has also succeeded in "shaming" "billionaire class" owners like Jeff Bezos and Walton family members into raising wages at Amazon and Walmart, two companies that most certainly have their non-unionized workers by the throat.
Mr. Brooks, you need look no further than NYTimes which has reported 1) that Amazon warns and then terminates employees who don't meet productivity expectations -- proof it does "have workers by the throat" and no trouble recruiting new employees; and 2) Amazon voluntariy raised wages since the 2016 Presidential primary campaign to $15/hour when Bezos attention displace Bill Gates as the wealthest American.
6
Mr Brooks writes: "Today’s successful bosses are doing what they should be doing: increasing productivity, growing their businesses and offering great service." What a rosy, romantic description. What about 'successful' bosses like Mr Muilenburg and the corporate culture that that gave him $60million+ after being dismissed from Boeing?
4
If there were no class war there would be no surge in 'deaths of despair.' People are dying because there is a war, and there is a losing side. The decline of unions, brought about by both parties in service to corporate influence and donations, is a battlefront in this war. The soaring burden of higher ed for the non-rich is another. Across all these fronts, there are defeats. The only solution is to recognize the struggle for what it is.
6
Productivity has little to do with remuneration. There is a class war, but it is not being waged at the worker level, it is being waged in the back alleys of congress, through tax "reform" that steals services and goods from the public and puts cash into the pockets of the 1%. It is waged in union busting, in mass deportations, in defunding agencies that support and defend our health, our investments and our consumer interests.
6
There are so many refutable points to this piece that misses the forest and the trees, but I'll just point out one: Brooks says: "over the past few years wages for workers toward the bottom of the income stream have been rising faster than wages for those toward the top". And asks how this is possible. Let's imagine a race between 2 runners. One starts running, the other walks. As the runner approaches the finish line, she slows seeing no chaser. At the same time the walker starts running. At that particular moment the walker is moving faster than the one who ran, but the one who ran is still winning by huge margin. Though a more accurate analogy would be that the 'walker' was trying to run but was weighted down.
4
@Jon
Actually it is a result of several state and cities raising the minimum wage.
5
If this had a shred/modicum of truth, US Median Per Capita Income/GDP Ratio should not have fallen over the last 40 years. Instead, it should've maintained pace.
What's happening is that a larger slice is going to the top, while worker salaries have remained stagnant. To make matters worse, many employers leave positions unfilled, in the expectation that the labor on hand can perform additional tasks, thus maximizing their productivity.
But that's not included in here, because Brooks is only interested in killing the power of the messenger. News Flash: vague arguments won't cut it.
4
In the past few years an increasing number of cities and state have raised minimum wage requirements. Guess what the result might be? Let's assume it would effect employees on the very bottom of the pay scale and not so much those at the top of the pay scale.
2
If Bernie wins the Iowa caucus, in the heart of the country, you'll be proven wrong. Voters will decide whether or not there's class warfare. It's practically all that Bernie talks about, so if most people support him, there's your counter-argument. This isn't an either/or choice like in 2016 for the Dems. There's a whole menu of options this time, across the left side of the political spectrum.
5
By and large it's not the rich who think there is class warfare in this country, nor the poor, nor the middle class. It's the intellectuals. That's who Bernie is channeling. What he's really saying is that there SHOULD be class warfare in the US. And I agree. But most people don't, and that's why he neither can nor should become President.
1
It is important to remember that in some very important ways, progressives are closer to Trump in fundamental beliefs about self than any other classifications one could make. Both believe that truth is not understandable, and so perception is reality, and what we say is what makes something true. But the truth is, there are facts in any situation; lying is not how you lead, nor through the mindless ideology of economic, political, or social theory. If even our basic physics is only idealized mathematical assertions, and we try to reduce everything to physics, then no wonder we have put empirical evidence on the back burner. Wake up America. Our freedoms are facts, but unless we protect them by thinking much harder than we are doing now, (ideology is not thinking), we will lose them. And that is just the facts man.
Productivity Inequality - I don't buy this, David. When I hear Sanders say that the top 1% has more wealth than the bottom 92% (hope I quoted that correctly), this has nothing to do with bosses and workers. And it is a travesty.
I am lucky - I make a good salary. There are others who haven't a chance to be more productive, because they can't afford to acquire the skills, because they were poor dirt-poor and other reasons. Telling them to be more productive is a slap in the face.
631
@Irondoor You are absolutely on the money about the college and public school administrators, but understand that most public employees are paid 20-30% less than the private sector (and I'm not talking about people who sacrifice their personal life and health to work a lot of overtime like train engineers).
Some examples are most of the lower/middle management employees at the various MTA agencies (not HQ), and other state workers at various agencies and teachers in many towns and states. They are all however expected to be as, if not more productive (due to multiple layers of incompetent management, procedures and work tools), so that is why they are one of the few places pensions and decent healthcare still exist.
8
@Irondoor I would suggest you define the word productivity yourself and publish it here. Go ahead and do it in a way that can be verified and measured.
You cannot make a decent argument without this piece of information. It is just hand waving otherwise.
30
@Irondoor
I'd like to answer each and every item in your comment air-mailed directly from the Reaganomics of the 1980s. But due to lack of space, I'll just deal with two of your statements.
----
You ask: "Who is going to reward the unproductive?"
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That depends on how you define "unproductive" and how you define "productive", doesn't it? Is a Hedge Fund Trader who earns several million dollars a year more productive than a Public School teacher (an occupation you seem to like to denigrate) or a Secretary at a Doctor's office? Perhaps. 2x as productive? Maybe. 5x as productive? Possibly. Or 100x+ as productive as current pay scales would have us believe. Those are the real-life figures that we have to deal with today.
--------------
You state:
That takes money out of someone else's pocket because there is only so much money to pay out in total compensation.
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Indeed. At this point in time, the money is being taken out of the pocket of the school teacher and the Secretary, and others that in your world you would label as "unproductive" and given to the 1%. This is not some 'Marxist myth': it is well documented by Nobel prize-winning Economists (some who even write for this newspaper) Your myth of unproductivity is an excuse to take money of THEIR pocket.
Here we are at the crux behind Sander's current popularity. I dare you to try and argue these points. (And only with facts and figures: please no vague platitudes of meritocracy…)
50
Here is the rebuttal to this asinine article http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/01/bernie-sanders-david-brooks-class-war.html
8
As companies grow more productive, they do so with fewer and fewer employees while collecting more and more of the wealth, power and influence. They are leveraging technology and globalism. But I suppose the American working class should compete to see who is best at Java, AI, robotics, etc, and the rest can starve. Its all good cause its capitalism / preserving the establishment here at NYT a little longer.
7
NO, David, this is not Capitalism. Is the principle of creative destruction which makes capitalism function efficiently really being practiced? When times are good, the mantra I hear , is "free markets for free men" Unfortunately, I did not hear that mantra spoken on Wall Street when the crash of 2008-2009 descended upon us. They were there along with the wealthy business interests with their palm extended crying for help. They were bailed out but what about the rest of us?
No ,what we have today is not Capitalism but the privatization of wealth when times are good and the socialization of losses after greed has run its inevitable course.
10
Well, while I have greatly appreciated Mr. Brooks of late, this article is simplistic and one sided. He has obviously not worked in the real world recently if ever. Having worked from the bottom up, it's not easy. It's takes years and few people give you a hand up, and no business friendly helpers help you that don't cost you an arm and a leg. And there is no one fix all for everyone in every part of the country. I live in Vermont, know Bernie and he's just another human being with a point of view who's decided to run for President. He's not going to "dismantle" Capitalism. He might make it a little fairer, but that might be wishful thinking unless he had both houses.
Let's be real, it's not just the POTUS who changes things, but Congress and most importantly, We the People.The system IS broken, but no one, including Bernie said throw it all away. We cannot continue the way things have and gotten worse since the present administration got in. My business has lost between 20-30% since 2016, for many reasons, and many attributable to trade wars. Why don't we stop ALL wars? Why don't we strat talking and make some real decisions instead of saying "they" are the problem?
5
Yes, yes, yes. Thank you for articulating this. It's tough to find even a single thing to disagree with here. It seems so obvious when it's explained like this, but it flies in the face of so much blather that you find in politics and in social media.
2
@John Fox Says the guy living in one of the wealthiest counties in America. What do you know about the ACTUAL struggle working people face?
ALL of Brooks' assertions can be disputed with statistics. And that's not the saddest part of this article.
4
Dave Brooks is the smiling kind of dopey Conservative that is on with Mark Shields in the PBS NewsHour weekly. He is good natured, often self-effacing, and moderate, trying to show he is a nice reasonable guy. Except when he isn't and accepts his role as the right-wing soldier taking on his duties as a Conservative warrior.
He's got a point about Bernie Sanders, a point made so often I wonder why Bernie has not been tested from the Right. I love Bernie and he was my candidate in the last election, where he could have won, or so they say, or done at least as well as Hilary Clinton. That is why my candidate this time is Elizabeth Warren, though any of these Democratic candidates I will vote for.
The fact though that the voters that deserted Hilary in 2016 were, many of them, Bernies supporter. Then there were the fake Bernie Bros, I believe were part of the Russian plot to hack our election.
But the takeaway from all these conflicting ideas is that the "elites" whoever they are, puppeteer both parties to a large extent through lobbyists and corporate money. There is a surprising number who will vote for Bernie.
I'm aware of the McGovern campaign and its record loss. Progressives have to do better, and with the critical mass we have that should happen.
3
David Brooks must have inadvertently deleted part of his column and then not noticed it, since he neglects to talk about how vigorous the American middle class was during the 1950s, when the marginal tax rate hovered around the low 90%'s and unions were strong. We have the opposite today, after decades of his Republican sponsors trashing and opposing unions, and a tax rate that lets the rich thrive while the public sphere decays.
If the minimum wage had kept pace with inflation it would be $22.50/hr instead of a third of that. And that would be the *minimum.* Brooks ignores this, in favor of his usual Republican boilerplate. He also ignores the fact that productivity is a function of automation, and all the job training in the world won't make a worker qualified to be the 21st member of a labor force that only requires 20. (Next year it will require 15.)
As for "class war," as a sign at a rally once said, "They only call it class war when we fight back."
6
@Ellis Weiner Come on man! I am 75. Used to be an accountant. Do you really believe anyone paid 90% of their income to taxes? Aside for the fact that there were accountants, deductions etc...Do you think someone that made say 100,000 and paid 90,000 in taxes could afford a house , a new car every year, money to put away for college for the kids and retirement? Amazing how this fable refuses to die!
There are no malevolent elite ; only greedy billionaires wanting more , without the sir and please. This has existed throughout the ages . We no longer have slaves per say , but there still exists the class of workers who devote their sweat and sometimes tears to earning a living and providing for their families ; while the ceos , owners , bankers rake in the major share . There is no equality , there never was ; Bernie Sanders may believe he is the answer , but he is not exactly truthful . One man is not the answer , it lies within each person to address the inequality and advocate for more share of the pie , or rather for what they have worked for and not settle for the scraps doled out to them by their companies . It is accomplished together and not through a political figure like Mr. Sanders .
1
I totally disagree Mr. Brooks. I would like to see the source of your statistics that shows low class workers wages rising faster than the wealthy in this country. The bottom 48% of this country are averaging $18,000 a year. The majority of jobs being created are service jobs that are paid minimum wage. A wage that has not been raised in over a decade in my great state. So there might not be a war going on but half this country feels beaten.
2
Money enables political power because of the campaign finance laws, thereby rigging the system to favor the wealthy. Yes, it is rigged
6
David Brooks has written one of his most important and 'lasting columns' of his life. What he says here has a lot of merit and reality is Democratic Party is committing suicide by promoting 'wrong and foolish' arguments of Bernie Sanders.
Alas, like Trump Voters; there are many voters in this country who will rather 'fall' for prejudices and misconceptions - that is for Bernie - than 'thinking through' the issues.
When History of 2020 will be written, Bernie Sanders and his Supporters will be identified as the most 'destructive' to Common Americans due to their misguided M4A and Socialism.
375
@Umesh Patil : The fact is that the Happiest Countries on Earth are the highest taxed, with the widest redistribution of wealth.
The Fact is that Socialist Norway has a huge Sovereign Wealth Fund (extra money) and the USA has a massive debt.
456
@Umesh Patil
I find it hard to believe that historians will look back on this era - an era in which the government pulled back basic environmental protections, allowed gun violence to claim tens of thousands of lives a year, let an opioid crisis savage the heartland, and fought endlessly to repeal basic health care protections - and decide that a guy who wanted to up tax revenues a little and expand medicare to those who want it was the greatest danger to the nation.
583
@MJB Why do you think it is that only OUR country, among the developed nations on earth, does not manage to assure health insurance to everyone, a high quality education to all, right through college, along with myriad social programs that make life much less stressful? Here, we have rampant Capitalism. Elsewhere, there is democratic socialism and/or very regulated Capitalism. It's a no brainer regarding what allows us humans to thrive.
305
The problem with a Bernie candidacy is that he has not yet been attacked from the right. Should he get the nomination, that attack will be vicious, will have enough substantial backing to make it plausible, and it will destroy him and lead to large majorities for the Republicans in both houses.
Love Bernie, and have for decades. Sadly, he would be an absolutely terrible presidential nominee.
228
@Skillethead Bernie has been attacked from the right by the establishment press and the establishment Democrats who are right wingers. Sanders’ only problem is he doesn’t punch back twice as hard. But the attacks will continue and worsen if he runs away with the nomination.
The only attack Republicans have against Bernie is that he’s a democratic socialist. Republicans have nothing to offer except the corrupt, failing status quo.
41
@Skillethead Bernie has run against Republicans and won; David Daou, who was a key player on Hillary's team in 2016, said he's seen all the oppo research on Bernie and there's no there there. He is now a passionate Sanders supporter.
34
Watch his town hall meeting on Fox News. They tried to take him down but couldn’t.
30
I agree with Mr. Brooks analysis. Bernie's willingness to put the arguments out there for everyone to react is one thing. Supporting his unilateral disassembly of our economy and redistribution of some of it's wealth is another. It's a large pill, practically, to swallow. So, I can't support him. With the corrupt and lying Trump, we are in a very very challenging period of our history. The focus must be on the short term elimination of this threat...then the "big stuff" can follow. To remove Trump an alternative candidate, that appeals to the largest block of voters should be supported. Then some of the changes Bernie proposes can be introduced, considered and implemented incrementally.
276
@Harley Leiber The hysteria displayed in this and other comments is misplaced. Not much can be done without Congress (Trump has done as much unilaterally as an executive can, and it has not changed the tax structure at all). Sanders has one way of indicating that the US is at a real crisis, something which Mr. Leiber certainly appreciates. One reason Trump got in was his success in painting the US as a "disaster", totally on the wrong road. That deeply resonated decisively with many voters. Vanilla Joe doesn't bring out that passion. If Bernie scares you enough to consider not voting for him, well, then you're part of the problem, and I hope you think it over carefully. I doubt Trump will treat Biden any more kindly than he will Bernie
68
@Professor David
That's great. So anyone who doesn't align with Bernie Sanders thinking is "part of the problem"? Perhaps, instead, the problem is people assuming the worst of other people simply because their politics don't align. Perhaps the problem is people on both sides seeing themselves as morally superior to the other, rather than accepting their differences? Perhaps, Professor, you need to go back and re-enroll in a civics class and then we can talk about how social dialogue around politics is supposed to work.
28
@Professor David
"Supporting his unilateral disassembly of our economy and redistribution of some of it's wealth is another."
I think you need to familiarize yourself with the man's platform if this is how you're going to characterize. M4A is not Bolshevism; not by a long shot.
55
"In the first place, over the past few years wages for workers toward the bottom of the income stream have been rising faster than wages for those toward the top. If the bosses have the workers by the throat, how can this be happening?" - David, have you not actually read the underlying literature? The answer to your question is the rise in minimum wages in particular states. It's not the bosses losing power, it's government stepping in to help the poor.
According to Mr. Brooks, "...wages are still generally determined by skills and productivity." Compared to a low-skill worker, a single high-skill worker has far more opportunity to have a high level of productivity (relative to their salary) because they have far greater MEANS to produce wealth - they may have 100 workers under them whose wages are not included in Brook's wage-productivity comparisons. And if the high-skilled worker produces great negative wealth/losses that individual just gets fired (and not charged or sued) - and their productivity losses are then written off, at least in terms of Brook's comparisons. Such skewed relationships never occur at the scale of productivity associated with low-skilled labor.
1
Let's call a spade a spade. Sanders is spouting long-discredited Trotskyite-Marxist ideology. And you can see it in the comments to this column: Workers of the world unite. Workers must own the means of production. The bourgeoisie must be overthrown, forcibly if necessary. The path of blaming others/"they"--read that as the capitalists, industrialists, landed class--leads only to anarchy, violence, and eventually a dictatorship. (Indeed, Stalin and Lenin pointedly called it the "Dictatorship of the Proletariat.") This is the destructive path down which Sanders and his allies would lead the American people.
1
Trump and Sanders are very much alike, not identical but similar in very concerning ways. Both encourage and exploit polarization and tribalism for personal political gain. Both present significant threats to our democracy but in different ways and for different purposes. Trump flouts the law and treats the Constitution as a personal inconvenience and is concerned only for himself. He remains a would be dictator, blithely persistent in pursuit of personal power. Sanders, whether he admits it or not, or whether his followers realize it, is a Marxist at heart, his world view built around the Marxist narrative of economic exploitation. His threat to democracy lies in his commitment to a much greater centralized economy with a centralized government reapportioning wealth according to a theory of exploitation and resentment. The greater the centralization of economic decisions, the more burdensome democracy becomes for the decision makers (the central committee!). Just as Trump supporters would happily trade freedom and democracy, for a mythical world that exists only in John Wayne movies, Sander supporters would similarly surrender democracy for a highly planned and controlled economic system that, in their mind, dispensed economic benefits freely and equally, especially to those supposedly disenfranchised. Sanders is touting a theory that has already failed. What both show is the tragic nature of democracy: people only support democracy when they get their way. Both terrify me
1
It is heartening to see how the comments in general form an antithesis to Brooks (and of course the Times) thesis.
A Bernie presidency will be the synthesis.
Good old Hegel :-)
4
Wow! Mr. Brooks you are really showing your stripes here.
Although you seem to be straddling the divide much of the time, now I detect some really conservative DNA that is often concealed by your genuine humanism that I admire.
My argument here is that our society needs the low wage, less skilled workers. Many of them are working in low growth industries that nonetheless provide essential goods and services. Those workers are the ones who are the hardest hit by unreasonable costs of living having to do with housing and essentials; not to mention HEALTH CARE.
"Productivity is the key to national prosperity". That may be true in a way, but as a closing statement it does nothing to justify the thesis of 'The Bernie Sanders Fallacy'. Sanders is not anti-capitalism, but he is correct about the injustice of gross economic inequality.
Finally, this "theyism" idea is silly. Sanders is a deep thinker who has been consistent and unwavering in his ideas for a long time. Trump is a raving lunatic. They cannot be 'equalized' by being depicted as holding opposite ends of a 'theyistic' tug of war.
3
In the United States the top 1% is very rich. The second percentile is also very rich. Each percentile is different.
Where are the bottom 99% all equally miserable? North Korea. In Marxist countries, poor people starve. The worst famine in all human history took place in China starting in 1959.
Hi David,
Just a simple question: Don't you think there is something wrong with a society who creates billionaries like Bezos while we have some people who must have two jobs to get buy?
Is Sanders really there problem here? Honestly?
2
@Ulrik
One can argue that Bezos at least created a company and profits from that creation. He is a modern day robber baron who maximizes profits by paying the lowest possible wages while demanding the highest possible productivity.
Worse are those that INHERIT their wealth and seek to increase it by cutting the wages of workers. Look at the Walton family who are worth $191 BILLION, Their annual earnings from Walmart holdings have increased continually while the wages of Walmart workers have stagnated. Many are stuck working part time so Walmart can avoid paying benefits. Many of their employees have to apply for food stamps. Keep in mind that Walmart is the largest employer in 20 states and employs over 1 million people in the US.
The Walton family also benefited from changes in the inheritance tax - to the tune of another $6 BILLION over the past decade.
2
Brooks is spent opinion maker. I doubt if even his fellow Republicans find him relevant.
The biggest lie that he tried to pass in this column is this:
"Every time we increase productivity for one person, we all thrive a little more, together."
Productivity today is yesterday's Slavery.
4
Glad to know everything's been going great and the country never voted for a demagogue because of how broken everything has been.
2
David, why don't you read Timothy Egan's column and perhaps you will see and understand what is going on. Some of the thoughts that you write about show that you are not in touch with the real world. I heard you say on Judy Woodward's show that you think trump is funny! That was a scary statement because that man is dangerous and is ruining the United States of America.
2
Dear David,
A trained economist with broad reognition among well known peers you are not. Your background is not even as a scientist or well-grounded engineer. Your colleague Paul Krugman is the right person you should talk to before propagating discounted supermarket analysis and earn yourself some ridicule.
This post is lazy and not serious. I wish political columnists venturing into economics can show more humility, do a lot more research including considering conflicting facts, and admit they are very often wrong.
Regards.
7
@R.
Right. That article could be featured in a statistics 101 textbook on the subject of how you can use numbers to make any point that you want.
Sanders' overall point that we live in America at a time where economic inequality is outrageous and tearing at the fabric of our society is true. Until people adopt the belief that it is unacceptable for children to die of malnourishment and inadequate health care while others accumulate wealth that is counted at 11 or more digits, we will continue toward an economic apocalypse. There is simply no rational way to see the American economic system run as it currently is, as sustainable.
3
I find this article infuriating. It rationalizes the greed and cruelty of corporate America. To accuse those who suffer from inequality for a lack of productivity is ignorant. Perhaps Mr. Brooks should spend more time with working class Americans and less with his privileged circle of friends and colleagues.
5
As long as there are only two parties the USA is doomed to remain in stagnating tribalism. There is no left , right mow you have a right and a centre right. In Canada we have the NDP and the Greens both of them represent our social conscious. The Liberal party straddle what it claims is the middle ground. The conservatives are more or less Republican light. The Dems should split into moderate and progressive wings with their own new titles. The Republicans should do the same, hopefully there are still some moderates and of course you have the rabid extreme right wingers....Until things change you will be stuck in the 24/7 election cycle.
1
Sometimes you just wish that some of these columnist just tried to live under different circumstances for a change, just to challenge themselves and get a broader perspective on society.
How is it to live as a poor working person in todays america? Do you get a decent pay? Do you have some power over your work situation? Do you need two jobs to get buy? Do you have enough free time and energy to spend time with friends and family? To educate yourself? To engage yourself in your community? To enjoy culture? To take part in democracy?Etcetera.
2
Yes, David, there is a class war.
It's just being waged against the poor, not the rich. For the last 40 years....
2
The so called wrong and foolish arguments are only seen that way by the right wing or the Dems who are corrupted by bribes from corporations. And those who have been brainwashed by either or both of the above. Make no mistake the elite in charge do not want to lose their hard won ground of having most of the wealth in this country. They do not care about the rest of us except to exploit. Not all of course, but I am here concerned about the criminal element of the elite. And yes it is a crime to try and deny people complete healthcare as a right so the insurance companies and Big Pharma can drive up costs for greater profits.
Bernie is only serving the voters the best way he knows how, he is not the devil, he thinks that the rest of us deserve decent lives and it is not our job to give up everything including our sanity to the oligarchs. We honestly are not serfs, and should not be treated as such. But there are none so blind as those who want to support the status quo because the status quo has terrorized you out of your own innate rights.
And why, oh why, does NYT have right wing columnists such as David and not play fair and have just one Progressive columnist. Sadly the NYT is not on the left all that much and that is OK and yes the NYT is biased against the real left which is progressive, but is it possible to at least give one voice here who fights for the rights of the majority of us? Thank you for your consideration.
2
I like David Brooks, a fine writer and thoughtful person. I believe he is way off on this column. He endorses quality schools and colleges, yet companies such as Amazon reaped 9 billion in profits last year and paid zero in taxes. They're not serving America, their home of Seattle, the Puget Sound area, or anyone but themselves.
The rigging of this tax code has robbed poor (and any) schools of needed tax revenue to help educate out kids. So yes, this is a class war with Bezos and his ilk as the 5-star generals. I'm surprised someone as sharp as Brooks doesn't know this.
503
@TRS Agree. If Brooks was correct, there would be linkage between CEO pay and company performance. Looks inverse to me.
26
This. The quality of this opinion piece is really poor for the NYT. To anyone who has been paying attention, the billlionaires have rigged the economy. Mr. Brooks, surely you know that we've been drastically lowering taxes on the wealthy since the 80's, that lobbying by the wealthy and businesses has led to corporate control of much of our country and the erosion of unions and workers rights, and that -- simply put -- if one has money it's much easier to make money. Being a young scientist, I have very little to invest, but what I have invested has performed very well. If I had millions to invest, I'd have made far more than I ever have by teaching, working at stores, and doing research in physics. So why call it all made up? Shame on Mr. Brooks for repeating the Fox News talking point that progressives are somehow delusional.
41
Does this explain why the CEO received 40 million when he resigned from Boeing? He was being compensated for a job well done?
Amazon workers have not been allowed to unionize. Is that because they are not productive and therefore do not deserve a living wage and benefits?
Your argument has some truth but conveniently lines up with an ideology that stacks the deck against the workers. Capitalism was supposed to raise everyone's boat not just the owners and executive elite.
I do not like Sanders and never have considering him to be egocentric, inflexible and one of the most unsuccessful federal government electives over the last 30 years. He is the other side of the conservative right and just as deluded and dangerous.
That said, I will vote for whichever Democrat wins the nomination because the republicans in government are so power-hungry they will do anything to keep Trump in office; democracy and our constitution be dammed.
Benjamin Franklin was right to question whether or not, as a people, we could/would do what it takes to keep our constitutional republic.
Bernie Sanders would not have the power and following he does if the GOP and Citizens United were not about endless insatiable greed.
Where is that in your equation?
2
The day the Boeing CEO was given his golden parachute of 62,000,000 million dollars, it was announced that 2,800 workers of Boeing’s suppliers were being laid off.
And, then, a few days later, David Brooks writes that workers need to work harder and produce more for better pay.
In David Brooks, as was once said of another character, it’s hard to imagine “a man who has better motives for all the trouble he causes,” or who’s as “impregnably armored by his good intentions and his ignorance,” if one may.
1
There is no 'war' if only because the wealthy have won.
The top 1% utterly dominate the rest of the population by all measures that matter - wealth, political power, land ownership and more. They dominate every category but debt.
3
David Brooks must have blinders on if he doesn't see President Trump's administration executive actions hurting the poor and the middle class. " productivity in mostly high-skill industries rose by roughly 34 percent and wages in those industries rose by 26 percent. Productivity in industries with mostly less-skilled workers rose by 20 percent while wages grew by 24 percent." 26% of two dollars is still a lot more than 24% of fifty cents. The poor are spinning their wheels. I hope the new North American trade deal levels things for the lower skilled.
Per their website, The American Enterprise Institute exists as "an influential think tank....that supports limited government, private enterprise, and democratic capitalism." So one wouldn't expect them to be exactly unbiased.
While I am not a Bernie backer, both he and Warren have found success in their campaigns because what they are saying rings true to a huge number of folks. We see with our own eyes the terrible inequality and unfairness of the current system brought about by rampant capitalism.
Our desire for change and a new visionary perspective on how we can resolve this mess, and the energy and excitement around those ideas, is what is going to win the day for the Democrats in the next election. Like it or not, David.
1
American capitalism works very well if you work hard and apply yourself. Even if you are poor if your parents respect getting an education and working hard you can do well. My parents were some of the poor that respect education and teach their children to work hard. I am a successful middle class person and owe that to my poor parents and American capitalism.
I often appreciate your editorials, David, but I am so disappointed with you here. This is all thoughtless re-spewing of wealthy capitalists' talking points: the perspective of privilege. Yes it's difficult to be "at war" when your neck is underfoot or in a yoke and your family's necks have been for generations--but people are indeed struggling for better, whether those with all the means and power have noticed or not. Bernie is clear-eyed and ready for the future, and I wish you'd be too.
4
Why does David Brooks not perceive that health insurance is the means by which corporations game the system of employee compensation?
Employees are practically indentured servants because of their need for family health insurance. It is a very simple condition to understand that employee options for earning a living are quite limited by their need for health care. Medicare For All could create a renaissance of entrepreneurial ventures for current employees that corporate executives now take for granted. Paying better compensation to hundreds of millions of workers across the nation might reduce net profit Thus the economic catastrophe that corporate executives envision is the reduction of their own exorbitant salaries and bonuses because they are based upon net profit.
2
Mr. Brooks has generally made excellent points. However, he should have put more emphasis on the overwhelming influence of corporations through lobbying and excessive campaign finance. Also, he could have spent more time talking about the need for greater opportunity for education and training, affordability of, and access to, housing and health care, and the role of racism in opportunity and income inequality. When one talks about " productivity" one must address the issues of automation and artificial intelligence.
1
The fallacy is that Sanders isn't electable and that he wouldn't be the best president since FDR.
3
Don’t worry. He is inching there and will be the best President we ever had including FDR.
2
David Brooks is right as usual.
Trump may be bad but the Democrats must be worse because they are not Republicans. We should stick with the GOP until the transfer the remaining 10% of wealth owned by the 90% to the 1% is complete. This will ensure the wealthy continue to feel truly appreciated in this capitalist heaven we all enjoy. And woe betide anyone who thinks otherwise, not least of all Johnny Foreigner, right.
So thank you Mr Brooks for putting the putting the vast majority of Americans in their place and your help in keeping us there. We deserve nothing less than to be dressed down by Republican of your standing.
Any update on your Weaver friends?
5
This article helps me better understand the majority of Republican senators and house members way of thinking when they vote on healthcare and other like bills. They really find ways to justify the belief there is no inequality, and no need to provide assistance to remedy it, crazy as this sounds.
3
Rich guy claims that there is no class war and then proclaims it to the masses. It honestly baffles me how so many pundits have such a basic political understanding. Or perhaps they use their place of power and privilege to purposefully spread misinformation. It's easier for me to belive that well educated people with an incentive to lie are doing so rather than actually believing the dogma that they profess.
5
It is sad to read the reasoned dispassionate cruelty of Mr. Brooks. I like to think that If he knew of some of the extraordinary brutality of the celebrated practices that capitalism, sexism, racism has wrought, he would support Bernie Saunders. But I know that he knows and prefers to support the luxury and comforts and convenience of his lifestyle and cannot entertain even the slightest idea of a threat to it.
5
David Brooks is right. There is no class war. The 0.1% have already won, although they will now have to cannibalize the 10% and ultimately the 1% to keep adding to their heaps. The rest of the people are just fighting over the scraps like junkyard dogs.
5
Mr. Brooks has been having too many dinners at Le Cirque and too many cocktails at Eleven Madison Park. And since he's been making millions every year, for years, he's not really in touch with anyone outside NYC. The rich have been buying politicians and legislatures to get what they want for decades. That tax cut wasn't just a spur of the moment thing. Mr. Brooks needs to get out once in a while where dinner isn't 200$ a person.
6
@markd
He may have dinner wherever he likes, as far as I am concerned.
However, since "productivity" is his explanation for wealth, it would be nice to have a column in which he explains his own explosive productivity growth to justify his earnings.
Does he write more words per minute than a decade ago? How has his increased income been justified on productivity grounds?
3
"In the first place, over the past few years wages for workers toward the bottom of the income stream have been rising faster than wages for those toward the top. If the bosses have the workers by the throat, how can this be happening?"
This, and many other arguments in this column are false or debatable. I'm very disappointed that Brooks didn't do more fact-checking on this important topic. Yes, Bernie is a bit far out, but it is a mistake to compare him to Trump in a lazy "both sides" argument.
1
Trump played class warfare to great affect. Why wouldn't it work for Bernie?
Totally agree with you David! And I wish Bernie would just get off it, last time he insisted the race issue with the blacks was based on economics not racial basis. Wrong, it's bigotry that's causing the inequalities in our nation. We need to come together as a nation and applaud the development of both capitalism and democracy in a free society.
1
Says the man with more wealth than the majority of Americans.
1
Brooks reminds me of the go slow approach preached by many politicians concerning civil and voting rights on the 60's. They said it wasn't yet time. African Americans weren't ready for full and equal participation in society. We needed to go slow. All the while African Americans were being denied their rights and worse.
The solutions he recommends like fixing education are decades in the making. People are hurting right now. Brooks just doesn't get it. Get your nose out of the book and look around.
3
I want to say I'm mystified why David Brooks, an intelligent man, is saying Sen. Sanders doesn't consider that wages have been rising. Note to David: a wage rising from $13/hour to $16/an hour, is pathetic. A lot of people are being offered wages today that I got back in 1980, and that is very, very, wrong, that workers are getting paid so low they have to apply for Medicaid and food stamps. But then again, David Brooks is a member of an elite class [of journalists] and what does he really know about wages and how they are too low to alleviate every day difficulties?
2
Mr Brooks gives us overt untruths ( often called lies by those of us in flyover country). First, he refers to Democrats' concerns about income inequality, and its toxic effects on our democracy, as "proletarian class consciousness". This is a likely intended misuse of the word proletariat, which is a Marxian term for people who produce, and not a word that is a synonym for the working class, blue collar workers, or any other description that separates people into workers and owners. His logical rabbit hole in which income inequality is magically transformed into "production inequality', is just another way to blame anyone who is not clever, intelligent, predatory, or productive enough to defeat others, has no right to a living wage, health care, or other human rights. He reveals his values more nakedly than he knows. He does not believe there is any value except economic success, and that human society is a fight to the death to win the economic battle. His values are disgusting and dangerous, in my opinion.
6
This is so far off base it's insane. Sounds like it was written by an OK Boomer living in a relic of the past.
Assumptions like: "Class-war progressivism always loses to culture-war conservatism because swing voters in the Midwest care more about their values — guns, patriotism, ending abortion, masculinity, whatever — than they do about proletarian class consciousness." - Have no basis in reality.
The premise that it has never happened so it never will is so narrow minded it raises the question, why ever try anything new at all?
Completely disagree with just about every point in this opinion piece.
4
i do wonder which of bernies stated position that david is against. is he against medical coverage for those who are not covered by other means? is this the bug bear? how about housing for all? is he happy that the there is a good level of homelessness at present and thinks that it should continue? how about free public college for all? does he think that the that g i bill of yester year was a misguided policy. a policy that was responsible for changing this nation from a beggarly state to its present affluent level.
i could go on but you get my drift.
3
Capitalism would be "perfect" if we were all angels, but the fact is that we are not. Humans are naturally self-serving and greedy so the owners of capital need to be on a tight leash. We've already two revolutions in this country pitting the 1% against everyone else, we don't need another one.
3
Another fervent anti progressive article. The author seems desperate to do anything in his power to prevent a progressive candidate from being elected. It does case me quite a concern at the thought of a conservative non-supporter of Trump voting for Trump anyway to prevent a progressive candidate from ascension to the presidency. It seems conservatives like Brooks are firmly set in their positions, so the only thing remaining is for folks who want to live in a Democratic society is to get out and vote!
1
As usual, Brooks comes up with a oh-so-slightly snide "explanation" for why people should just try harder. Or, accept that they just aren't up to snuff in the great market economy, which --after all-- always "gets it right" in setting wages and returns to capital.
Well, Mr. Brooks I did an MBA in finance at Wharton many years ago and have founded several moderately successful tech companies in the last 40 years. My conclusion: the more you see how the sausage is made, the more it is apparent that the game is deeply and pervasively rigged. Get more vocational skill training . . . what a laugh! All that does is gets you slightly ahead of the other ten thousand rats that are trying to climb up any scrap of flotsam they scramble onto.
The specific error in Brooks' argument is to assume that a "them-vs-us" story is false because he assumes --incorrectly-- that neither side can actually disenfranchise the other side. Well, that was before corporate boards across all industries started methodically off-shoring production and buying politicians in both parties to crush unions. Now, with robotics and AI, even creative economy workers are finding themselves "redundant." Wage workers in America of all skill levels are being methodically reduced to penury.
Frankly, in my whole life, I've never been as ready for radical political and economic actions as I am now . . . and, advice from "thinkers" like David Brooks doesn't figure much in that future.
7
According to Mr. Brooks:
Class-war progressivism always loses to culture-war conservatism because swing voters in the Midwest care more about their values — guns, patriotism, ending abortion, masculinity, whatever — than they do about proletarian class consciousness.
This is only true for WEALTHY swing voters in the Midwest. A educated rich guy like Mr. Brooks doesn't have the faintest idea how uneducated poor people in the Midwest and elsewhere think.
3
Hey David, maybe you can explain to me why the federal minimum wage is approximately $7.50 when, after factoring in increased productivity, corporate profits and inflation, it ought to be about $22?
Oh wait, that doesn’t factor into your narrow viewpoint on how the economy works. Nevermind.
4
What's meant by "productivity"?
1
Oh, come on. So what if productivity has gone up, and some wages have gone up. Blah, blah.
Who is going to pay for this education? Not David Brooks, that’s for sure. When that becomes an issue, he will come out with another column blaming workers for making bad choices.
And what is his answer to the obscene siphoning of trillions of dollars out of the middle and lower classes to the top .1? Does he seriously contend that any increase in GDP or productivity has been equitably shared as a matter of just social policy? How does he defend an increase in the deficit by $1 Trillion by a whacky tax break motivated purely by greed.
Surprise, David! There ARE people working three jobs who still can’t make it.
What about the very high portion of the wealthy whose wealth comes solely as a result of financializing everything under the sun, privatizing government services and then looting the service and and abandoning the recipients, or by simply manipulating markets by buying and selling without creating anything of value?
No, David. There is massive inequality. There is class warfare, but it is conducted by the wealthy against the less fortunate, and they are completely justified in calling it out. It started with Louis Powell’s memorandum and has continued ever since with attacks on social programs, unions and tax policy.
If there were an actual “war” with pitch forks, David Brooks is one of the first people I would come after.
5
No Virginia, there is no NEW class war...
It is the same arrogance cast anew, re-formed and measured in dollars.
Dear David, how many managers have you worked for, how much do you produce?
You literally do not know what you are talking about, but because you have achieved an exalted position of "expertise" your get to promote a failing view that will certainly ensure your security, because the expense or burden you place on others is not visible to you, you are not aware. You might as well be a 14th century royal family member.
Every time someone like you defends "capitalism" you empower the Trump supporters of the world, people who dogmatically cling to their "rights" to exploit things that actually do not belong to them, and consider it a "virtue" when they succeed.
Bernie is a bit of a traditionalist when it comes to certain aspect of economics - but at least he understands the dangers of too much power concentrated with too few individuals, and how this is in violation of the very principals upon which this country was founded - seemingly forgotten by the people who confuse "busyness" with productivity, and "dollars" with value.
Our world will not survive the perpetuation of our current mode - we can chose to tear it down and build a better version, or wait for the destruction to be visited upon us.
Apparently you think the latter is preferred, mainly because it requires nothing of you...
1
This country has fantastic wealth that can distributed amongst its inhabitants. Yet the society is so tied up by antiquated notions of “deserving” and “earning” and “property rights” and “productivity” and so on, when we could be a self-sustaining economy that requires little human input. We could have a society without all the pointless and demeaning consumption that now sustains its. A decent standard of living can be enjoyed by all in the good old United States, but that would require a rational redistribution of the common wealth. Regardless of how possible is such a change through electoral means, the masses are so blinded by propaganda from the rich and powerful that I can’t imagine their seeing through to such liberation.
3
No class war? Consider Amazon. Jeff Bezos decided last year that Whole Foods should no longer offer health benefits to its part time workers. What impact did this decision have on Amazon's bottom line? I'd argue negligible. But thousands of workers' lives were suddenly thrown into turmoil. Add to this scenario that Amazon the corporation paid no tax at all last year.
The corporate class can continue to make decisions to impoverish the lives of its workers. But these situations never end well, do they?
5
I am sure that Mr. Brooks is correct on the statistics. What I am not sure of is whether Mr. Brooks looked below the surface of the statistics of productivity. How much of the productive growth of the start companies was the result of automation? Workers will not be able to compete with machines. Our productivity-growth based capitalism is destroying workers in the US. No amount of productivity growth will save our workers. Capitalism as we have been practicing it is broken.
2
Yes, business executives do what’s best for their companies and public policy should help the rest of us. The problem is that corporations and the wealthy have too much influence on our government and its policies. We need to get big money out of politics, and overturn Citizens United!
3
Over the past few years, wages at the bottom have risen faster than those at the top, but, over the past fifty years, wages have remained roughly stagnant while upper-income has increased greatly.
Brooks does not seek to justify Bernie's observation that the top three people own as much wealth as the bottom half, which would have been a good point to interrogate.
And the idea that people with more education and skills earn more is a tired justification. Some people don't have sufficient education or skills, and they never will. They will be condemned to minimum wage for the rest of their lives, which is not enough money to make all ends meet, and not enough to properly care for children. But lack of skills doesn't mean they deserve to suffer.
1
If anything of an elitism does not exist, it will on Bernie's watch. Bernie's idea of "Medicare for all" needs a huge amount and definition given that Bernie is from Vermont where Medical Aid in Dying means legalized euthanasia. Although some find this idea soothing, MAiD opens the door to uncontested coercion and murder of those not necessarily
Every business tries to maximize its profits and minimize its expenses, i.e. labor and material. Some do it better than others, mainly through productivity, and will reward their employees, not commensurate with productivity gains- as the data in this piece shows- but just enough to keep them, retaining the difference for themselves or for their investors. But this approach fails when it turns out that domestic labor costs are too high and competitive pressures force productions abroad. Thus far, American companies have had no compunction of doing just that, rather than advocate for equity in labor costs and championing domestic policies lowering healthcare and education costs, for example, which would benefit their workers, albeit at paying those additional onerous taxes. They took the easy way out. Well Sanders and Warren are the leading Democratic hopefuls to address these issues, as well as others like climate change, infrastructure and human dignity. In their entirety they do not represent class warfare, as David seems to interpret, because these policies benefit all Americans. The misgivings many have with Bernie's approach, including myself, is that the total cost far outpaces the reality of getting Americans to back everything simultaneously without prioritization, postponement of less critical initiatives and a willingness to compromise. Thus far Bernie has not shown any of these tendencies.
1
According to Mr. Brooks, "...over the past few years wages for workers toward the bottom of the income stream have been rising faster than wages for those toward the top."
No kidding... as a PERCENTAGE of their measly incomes, sure. What a misleading comparison! It's also skewed because our country's ultra-rich makes a lopsided (non-normal) wealth distribution (ultra-negative wealth/debt, isn't included in the distribution that his statement is based on.) A 10% raise for a billionaire would be a hundred million dollars... every year! A 10% raise for me would be $3,700 a year. So Mr. Brooks thinks that anything less than this for the billionaire would be unfair if I got such a raise without doing anything differently.
3
Accepting that productivity continues to be a goal that is rewarded, it still translates into getting more from labor without paying more for that labor. That may be a truism, however it still begs the societal costs of more marginalized workers, fewer opportunities for them and the ongoing loss of the middle class, historically the backbone of our culture and economy. And although wages are rising, they pale in the face of the 978% increase in CEO salaries since 1979. The question is how do we build a culture that supports all while encouraging individual growth and security?
1
Brooks emphasis on productivity problems is uncharacteristically simplistic in this column. "Theyism" is a problem, certainly, but we can't claim critics of inequality in our economic system are creating phantoms. The imbalance is clear. In 1978, CEO earnings were 30x average workers. In 2018, that was 271x the $58,000 annual average pay. The EPI says CEO compensation grew by 1,007.5% over this time.
A simplistic vision of productivity overlooks the real issue: who is rewarded for productive work? Stockholders, expansive bureaucracy, bloated management compensation, golden parachutes . . . The decline of union power is crucial but so is a clear-eyed analysis of who soaks up the wealth when we have productivity gains.
Sanders is not starting a class war. He and middle America are just losing it.
1
Really, Mr. Brooks? The problem with Sanders is that he might over-correct? Let's all *hope* that's the next problem we have to deal with!
6
"wages for workers toward the bottom of the income stream have been rising faster than wages for those toward the top."
Well, obviously. When a top executive is already making $70,000 a month, it is easier to give a 5% raise to someone making $1000.
The Capitalist system isn't to blame? OH? Then why aren't we investing correctly in the future by helping sustainable industry instead of shoring up fossil fuel conglomerates? Why is Trump removing all the controls on pollution? The answer is simple: Capitalism insists on consumerism and always selling (and making) more, more , more. This is the exact opposite of sustainability - although invested correctly in new industries, Capitalism COULD turn things around for the planet; but not with Conservatives refusing to support the status quo (and their backers) instead of ecological sanity.
I know that the NY Times will have article after article trying to explain why Bernie is not good for the USA - because the NY Times' backers obviously want to maintain their privileges too. Under Bernie, sanity would reign instead of greed; horrors!
1
Good news that workers at the bottom have seen their wages increase by 24% (or whatever) while workers at the top have to be satisfied with maybe 10% increases. The problem is that the wages of those at the bottom are so low to begin with that the 24% increase still isn't enough. Forget percentages: tell me how much more money they will earn and then tell me the size of their paychecks. Don't dazzle me with meaningless percentages: no one spends a percentage. How much do workers at the bottom make, how much do skilled workers make and how much does the CEO make? I am not a Bernie fan, but there is a huge pay gap and there is economic inequality on a massive scale. Brooks doesn't deal with that so he's just making noise.
1
David keeps writing these paeans to Capitalism every few months, alternating with how "Weavers" and classic bootstrapping is the real answer to society's problems..
I guess it his part of his job as a Conservative columnist and needed to stay part of the Republican club in Trump world. Certainly the cherry picking of data, misleading talking points and willful refusal to look at reality certainly make him a trusted part of Conservatism in the Age of Trump.
David, as numerous people have pointed out, the ultra capitalist, Warren Buffett has told us for years now that there is a class war and his class, the rich, are winning. So who should we believe, David or Warren Buffet when it comes to Capitalism?
But no, David keeps quoting people who assure us that, "Capitalism is doing what it is supposed to do." Which is undoubtedly true. Capitalism, as the name demonstrates, is about enriching those with Capital so they have more Capital, no matter what the cost. Like Scrooge McDuck, the purpose of money is to get as much as you can for yourself. That is the overriding dogma of capitalism.
Capitalism has exploited the poor and working class, polluted the oceans with plastic and created catastrophic climactic global conditions while obscenely enriching the owners of capital as they have systematically gutted the working and middle class.
Yes, that is exactly what Capitalism is supposed to be doing. just ask any CEO, Business school MBA, Republican politician or David.
3
Wrong David. Why can’t working people today afford housing? Why are working people still qualifying for SNAP? Why are working people getting food at food banks? My father and mother worked in the 1960s at the lower-end of the wage scale. They owned a home and car. I could pay for college on my own. My parents did not have enough money or savings to help. My brother and I were the first in the extended family to go to college and get skilled, higher-wage jobs and actually have careers. If I were growing up today under similar circumstances, I know the results could not be duplicated. Yes there is a class war. We are discouraged to frame our society that way. No, we are shouted down.
3
Most of the comments below ignore Brooks' first point, that it's not so much whether or not a class war exists, but whether or not the lower classes acknowledge it. They don't. A war without warriors is like the proverbial tree falling in the forest.
2
Oh, I pray enough of us see that the tree has fallen in the forest on top of all but very few of us, so we listen to those with the most to lose, our younger generation and elect Bernie. It’s a testament to the power of repeated narrative that has blinded so many from seeing that proverbial tree fallen in the woods has already crushed them.
3
I am 71 years old retiree and a life long democrat and would cut off my hands before I would vote for any republican as the party exists as it is today. That would be America's official racist and hate political party. I also just received my first social security payment of the new year. My big cost of living increase was an incredible $8.30 per month. That's less than the cost of a six pack of half decent beer. There is no way that I will vote for any democrat that advocates everything free for everyone and says only billionaires will pay for it. In the end the middle class pays for everything because the largest comp[antes in America pay no takes thanks to Bone Spurs and the Republicans in congress.
Mr. Brooks apparently needs to go back to economics school. Bernie Sanders’ overall main point is that capital shouldn’t be better rewarded than labor and that the game is rigged in that specific fashion.
As long as this won’t change, global CEOs and their surrogates will be able to point out in earnest that by keeping wages as low as possible and dividends as high as possible, they are doing the best for their companies
2
The Federal minimum wage is still at $7.25/hour and the last time it was raised was 2009! Workers are definitely not being rewarded by increased productivity.
Some companies do wildly better than others. Why? Because of monopolies and oligarchies. If you engage in an unfair market that you control, of course you'll do better. Doesn't mean it's right or that it's capitalism.
Mr. Brooks says we need better education and training. Where's that coming from? A tax base that has had its standard of living decline since the 1970s. The above said monopolies and oligarchies are evading taxes. They aren't paying for enhanced education and training. We, the People, with no living wage can try, but it cannot continue. Our infrastructure is crumbling because we cannot pay for it anymore!
I don't dislike rich people. I don't know them. I do know how to recognize a country being dismantled by giant tech and energy monopolies and real estate oligarchies.
Finally, this idea "increase productivity and we all thrive," how does that work as the Earth burns and we starve as a result? We need a path to a more equitable, sustainable future. With Bernie, we can start the negotiations toward that goal.
So in the 1930s, the capitalists could not give an inch and the result was Germany gone crazy, taking the rest of the world with it. In the end, forms of democratic socialism still came to Europe, standards of living rose, etc. So why do we have this bashing of a sane alternative to Trump?
3
David Brooks is missing an important element of the overall "class warfare" story here. To discuss the problem Sanders is focused on solely in terms of productivity and earnings is to miss the important element of tax policy and distribution/redistribution of wealth.
3
Does Mr. Brooks know that employees are increasingly working from home, after work hours doing the work that increases productivity. And that work is not compensated. Have done it all my working life. Factor that into your analysis and you will see a much different picture.
2
Capitalism *might* be the best thing for humanity as a whole, but it is ludicrous to say the system isn't exploitative.
And of course billionaires rigg the economy to enrich themselves/protect their business interests. To say otherwise ignores the entire history of capitalism.
Lastly - to say that "Class-war progressive always loses to culture-war conservatism" is a bit of stretch. FDR was one of the most successful politicians ever and while his victories may have occurred a long time ago we are back to the same levels of inequality that helped propel him to victory.
5
The last paragraph of Mr. Brooks column sums up his thesis:
"The job of public policy is to make it easier for everybody to do what successful people are doing. Productivity is the key to national prosperity. Every time we increase productivity for one person, we all thrive a little more, together."
Really? If the job of public policy is to promote productivity we should continue damaging the environment, promote monopolies, enslave minorities and the under-represented, and abandon broad based education in favor of hyper specialized, ultra efficient skills training. We don't need public policy to promote productivity. As Mr. Brooks points out, capitalism and open markets push in that direction already. Public Policy needs to combat against the problems and worst tendencies of our existing system. Public policy should guard against the narrow needs of special interests. There are plenty of problems in pursuing a class war, but a little "Theyism" might be necessary when when "they" are a privileged, narrow, special interest with enough money to shape policy for everyone. I want success and prosperity as much as the next person, but I won't sacrifice Equality, Justice and Liberty to achieve it.
4
fundamentally rich means resources were harvested from a group of people to a small group. problem arises when that small group dont want to help maintain the " golden feather". in other words cant take all for long.
1
So we're now to substitute "productivity warfare" for "class warfare." But what, really, is this "productivity" that David Brooks extols? Is it, as he suggests, just the productivity of a company like Alphabet (Google's parent) as measured by a market capitalization of a trillion dollars? Or does it include productivity as measured by curbing climate change, lowering the infant mortality rate, reducing poverty and expanding educational opportunity? Brooks's view of a thriving economy seems limited to what might be called "shareholder capitalism." When what we ought to be talking about is "stakeholder capitalism" - a system whose benefits flow to the many rather than the few.
7
No, Virginia there is no class war--not literally; but Yes, there is income disparity, and, to use a Bernie-ism, it is YUGE, and getting bigger every minute, as billionaires and corporations enjoy massive tax breaks and consume a greater portion of America's wealth. So, David, as you and I sit idly by and watch the income gap grow incrementally and unattended, as global warming grows and grows, how much time do we have before the America we remember disappears?
4
As an Eisenhower Republican I disagree. In fact, I started to wonder back in 2016 whether Bernie was the best way as a practical matter to get back to a political line defined by Lincoln, TR, FDR, Ike, and LBJ. And I’m starting to wonder about that again.
I’d prefer it if we talked about American theories of regulation, progressive taxation, and public goods as the alternative to socialism, rather than as a form of socialism.
But again, as a practical matter, I’m wondering anew as someone who walked away from the national Republicans in 1980 whether Bernie isn’t the best way to get the country back to my preferred path. What we’ve been doing the last 40 years isn’t sustainable.
7
What you won't see, David is the fallacy that "productivity" should so single-mindedly drive pay. "Productivity" in quotes because it takes no account of the civil debt we must all pay on the things capitalism does not get.
Capitalism tries to pretend that when I produce a good, I never need pay for invisible (for those not looking) costs to society as a whole, be they environmental or other more difficult to target societal malaise costs.
Because it is difficult to define in the short term, capitalism as we know it fails to deliver in the bigger picture. Capitalism is great at one thing- turning needs, desires, and even greed into a halfway decent driver of a lot of general economic good. But it misses some very big long term costs that we ignore at our, and more-so, our children's, peril.
2
Well, clearly there are tensions among the losers of the capitalist lottery toward the winners, or Bernie's class rhetoric wouldn't resonate the way it does with so many people. And it does! So defacto there must be tensions in the country.
So yeah I think the time has come for Bernie. His ideas have been consistent over the years, and the socio-economic deterioration of the country has come to him, and his rhetoric resonates with a great many of us...
2
How about raising taxes to provide more services? That’s what Scandinavians do, and Denmark often leads the list of happiest people on the planet, as do the other countries with high taxes on the wealthy and benefits for all: free education, free healthcare, subsidized housing for all who want it...I could go on and on with what good governments can do with higher taxes, both on income, and most importantly, on wealth.
Oh, and Denmark doesn’t allow foreigners to buy real estate, unless they are working there full time. A great way to keep housing affordable for the native population. This all adds up to happy people. Why is that so hard to understand?
5
What if Sanders is the McGovern of the 2020 election. We are in deep deep trouble...
3
Fight with us to make sure that we, with Bernie win, because we are already in deep, deep trouble if he doesn’t.
2
What if the sun doesn’t rise tomorrow?
1
If productivity were the magic sauce and productive workers were paid by dint of their contribution, why would workers need to organize? Why is industry, and their bought-and-paid-for GOP members of congress fighting so hard to stop workers from engaging in collective bargaining? Bernie may be blowing the loudest trumpet in the band on this, but he's not out of tune. The people being left behind are not there because they are not hard workers; but because they have been unable to keep up with our fast-changing economy. When we embarked on globalization, there was an implicit and explicit promise to retrain our industrial work force. It was to be a rest top on the Bridge to the 21st Century that Bill Clinton endorsed and George Bush abandoned in the wake of 9-11.
2
There are a number of problems with this article. But I will highlight just one:
The reduction of what is important to a number or metric. Productivity in this case.
Sir, we are talking about human beings here. Not machines.
6
We are in a hard patch here. Much of the diagnosis is right and much of the prognosis is likely, but what should be done is unclear. We once believed that democratic governance would exercises checks over competitive capitalism, and that competitive capitalism would exercise checks over authoritarian governance. We now have a neurotic‐symbiotic relationship where dysfunctional governance feeds anti-competitive capitalism and anti-competitive capitalism feeds dysfunctional governance. We have citizen stakeholders who blame bad government, those who blame bad capitalism, those who blame both, and those who run for cover. What we don’t have is a dialogue committed to reaching some consensus for moving forward. We are like a bunch of cooks who know what chickens are, and what soup is, but we refuse to blend the two to make chicken soup. We need to blend regulation and market forces to make a functioning democratic governance with vibrant elements of market capitalism.
1
@Sam L
This is great comment, they should let you write a whole column.
I have a suggestion - dismiss the terms "capitalism" and "socialism".
"Class-war progressivism always loses to culture-war conservatism because swing voters in the Midwest care more about their values — guns, patriotism, ending abortion, masculinity, whatever — than they do about proletarian class consciousness."
Almost hits the nail on the head. But it is their own economic self-interest, not some abstraction of proletarian class consciousness, that so many swing voters ignore in favor of their conservative values.
2
The premise that we ALL benefit from increase productivity is false. Increase in productivity benefits the portion of society that has the income to spend. If you are part of the growing hordes that does not you do not benefit. The only answer to this is an increase in income that exceeds inflation.it is true that we reward people with skills, the people left behind without the demanded skills are bringing us all down..
3
All you have to do is look at the ever-widening income inequality in this country and you'll see that Mr. Brook's article is one-sided.
I am a freelancer who makes well into the six-figure range but I have no health insurance because it is too expensive. Think about that.
And regarding Bernie Sanders, I'm becoming more convinced by the day that he may be our nominee. His messages about how the billion dollar salaries of CEOs compare to the $8-an-hour wage of their workers could very well pull some Trump voters back to our side.
6
"Productivity is the key to national prosperity." A strong capitalist viewpoint throughout as if written with bllinders on to other views of what might constitute human success. What are "successful people" doing that the rest of us should strive to copy? I am not in need of it. I consider myself very successful, though I doubt Mr. Brooks would think so.
2
Mr. Brooks, You are clearly not an economist, though you reference selected studies and simple theories (of productivity, for example). But you could be one; UChicago has a nice school that fits your world view.
Just a couple of examples -
(1) re "...productivity in mostly high-skill industries rose by roughly 34 percent and wages in those industries rose by 26 percent. Productivity in industries with mostly less-skilled workers rose by 20 percent while wages grew by 24 percent." So, wages rose about the same for two groups that had somewhat different productivities. Was that the point you were making? No, quite the opposite: "wages are still generally determined by skills and productivity."
(2) re "Today’s successful bosses ... spend a smaller share of their revenue on labor even while raising their workers’ wages." Don't forget, part of that rising revenue is due to rising market concentration and the resultant market power - i.e., rising prices - quite separate from costs/productivity.
The statement "In a global information-age economy, the rewards for being best are huge" is telling: 'winner-take-all' markets have been identified (even by you, when you were more lucid?) as a reason for rising inequality, the basis for divergent pay for individuals w very similar productivity. Hummmm.
Back to school.
1
To the extent that there is a class war, it is between the 1% and the rest of us. Most of us in the middle class just want to provide for our families as we always did. Working class families and even the poor who are not working want the same thing. Relatively few want a handout, but the right demonizes most of the poor as moochers rather than the elderly, young and disabled that populate this group for the most part. In recent years, there have not been decent jobs for many without advanced education and sometimes even for those who are educated. We will solve this problem only when we focus more on workers than on company profits.
2
Following this advice (increasing productivity), Mr. Brooks suggests, is conditional on improving education, so that follow-on innovation can happen. That would be great, except that (judging from efforts to improve education since Clinton) too many Americans aren't interested in better education. It sometimes looks like many of our representatives aren't much interested in a better educated constituency either. If we were interested in better education, we'd get it done.
Any employer paying Federal Minimum wage is exploiting workers. And if employers paid people in relation to their contribution, we would not need a minimum wage.
But capitalism does not have a heart. Employers will always pay the least amount of they can get away with.
It isn't a we versus they argument. It is who has the most POWER. Money can buy power, and he who has the power makes the rules.
6
That market-driven competition has an inherent tendency toward concentration (winners take all) and thus inequality should be beyond argument by this time. The baseline problem with Brooks' argument is that he continues to resist the self-evident truth that government must oversee markets to keep them competitive and transparent, and even then, government has obligations to the general welfare that no amount of private-sector competition and 'efficiency' will address. The exploitation of our dispossessed and distressed fellow citizens is due in substantial part to the entrenched advantages of the wealthier and more politically powerful classes, continually reinforced by the actions of a privatized Congress. With respect, I suggest that Brooks is going through a struggle between decades of indoctrination and the increasingly self-evident realities of specific aspects of civilization that private incentives will never realize. Warren Buffet is aware enough and candid enough to acknowledge a long-standing class war, and that his class has won to this point. A few corporate and financial executives have recently shared that recognition (cf. Black Rock CEO). Past time that Brooks gave up trying to make an argument for feudalistic practices, including structural debt peonage, and start considering how to evolve a more balanced and sustainable political economy.
8
David writes, "over the past few years wages for workers toward the bottom of the income stream have been rising faster than wages for those toward the top. If the bosses have the workers by the throat, how can this be happening?" That is some serious cherry picking. Look at wages over the last 50 years and you'll see a different story. Look at wealth distribution over that time and you will see a small segment of society capturing a tremendous amount of the overall wealth. Yes, some of this can be explained by things like productivity, but much of it is driven by policy choices that benefit a small elite. From our tax system to labor rights to trade, policy choices (not simply an organic evolution of productivity) have contributed to this dangerous disparity. I personally don't love the us vs. them narrative as I think we need a more unifying tone overall, but I completely understand where it's coming from...
13
Any hard-working American deserves a wage high enough to buy a little house, pay for healthcare, and send their kids to college. This was the norm in Fifties and Sixties when those at the top of the food chain were rich but not not hogs. They left a bigger piece of the pie for the workers so they could leave dignified lives without the existential fear of being homeless or easily bankrupt from a single bout of illness. What Brooks fails to understand is that when the super rich economically humiliate masses of other humans and threaten their livelihood and well-being, it will be nearly impossible for the later to be civil and nt see the haves as some kind of evil force. Because it is the haves who are treating the have-nots like non human abstractions in the first place. It is those with the most power that have the most responsibility to set an example of how to treat others. Bernie is just piercing their comfort bubble, insisting they see workers as humans. Brooks has it backwards.
9
Of course there is a class war going on. Such conflict is an objective part of capitalism. It exists whether or not anyone recognizes it. Classes here exist in themselves.
The real issue, however, is subjective. Here classes exist for themselves. They develop class consciousness and act accordingly. The forces of capital have had the upper hand for quite some time. So yeah, there is a class war going on,
6
I'm sorry David, but now's not the time for purity politics, Bernie has the best chance of beating Trump so you need to get in line. Once Trump is gone you guys can figure out the little things like making housing still more expensive and cutting your own taxes later. Charter Schools and privatization of Social Security can wait. For now, the Republic is at stake, so enough purity testing and just get behind Bernie.
7
Mr Brooks is presenting a fairly accurate picture of wage changes during the last three or four years. Looking at wages over a longer time period tells a vastly different picture. Looking at wealth accumulation over the last 5 decades tells a devastating tale for the middle and lower class.
Take a look at the census.gov tables that show household wealth arranged by income strata (quintile). Security in a capitalist system is obtained by the accumulation of wealth. The bottom two income quintiles are completely insecure they have no wealth. They can't access 400 dollars for an "emergency". A 400 dollar surprise expense is ludicrously small when compared with a normal rent payment in most urban areas.
The third and fourth quintile have very little security by most accepted standards, 6 months of living expenses in liquid assets. Wealth inequality tells the real us versus them story. In fact 19 percent of US households have negative net worth. Homelessness is on the rise, food insecurity is real, people really are rationing their drugs, serious illness really does bankrupt most people. Productivity of a gig economy company is illusory because the overhead costs are shifted from the company to the worker.
Yes, we really do have a race to the bottom, Amazon is winning, brick and mortar is losing. When the local hardware store in my neighborhood goes out of business, productivity for their business goes to zero.
7
Somehow, David Brooks manages to avoid looking at studies which concluded:
"CEO compensation is very high relative to typical worker compensation (by a ratio of 278-to-1 or 221-to-1). In contrast, the CEO-to-typical-worker compensation ratio (options realized) was 20-to-1 in 1965 and 58-to-1 in 1989. CEOs are even making a lot more—about five times as much—as other earners in the top 0.1%. From 1978 to 2018, CEO compensation grew by 1,007.5% (940.3% under the options-realized measure), far outstripping S&P stock market growth (706.7%) and the wage growth of very high earners (339.2%). In contrast, wages for the typical worker grew by just 11.9%."
https://www.epi.org/publication/ceo-compensation-2018/
Brooks claims that wages are determined by productivity. Do we really believe that these CEOs increased their productivity 1000% while their best workers only increased their productivity by 300% ?
12
"...guns, patriotism, ending abortion, masculinity, whatever...."
The only "cartoon" is the picture of the American Midwest you invent for your column. And the "cartoon" impacts even upstate New York where I live, which is geologically and often culturally an extension of the Appalachian Mountains. You left out prayer, church, community, opioids, loss of jobs and manufacturing, hollowed out economic centers; indeed, many of the same "values" and problems found in urban black centers.
In fact, our "values" led many of us to send Barack Obama to the WH for not one, but two terms. For you to juxtapose our supposed "values," with Sanders' "class war" jargon, is cartoonish, and very condescending.
But you also forgot that in its time, the United Mine Workers strikes, for example, were extremely "class conscious" and progressive. And miners often like to hunt.
Mr. Brooks, I've observed that you are not a fan of Trump.
Keep publishing these kinds of amateurish generalizations and punditry put-downs of wide swaths of the country, and watch Trump get re-elected.
Since when has being insulted changed anyone's mind at the ballot box?
7
Everyone I know is being asked to do more and more of whatever job they're working at for less and less! Across the spectrum! Graphic designer friend - asked to take on the work of a part time person they let go. For the same money of course. Caregiving jobs - working for a facility that is part of a chain - company wants to squeeze the most out of their workers so they can raise the stock value. Baby boomer generation requires a lot of these care workers to bathe, take to toilet and dress and get paid minimum wage. Important work but on the bottom of the value system. Nurses, some of the hard working friends I know, all begging for a decent increase in wages. David, please put down the Wall St Journal and look around you. -This is the template that is being used on labor over and over.
5
Say what you will about the article, but I think more comments need to be dedicated to the image. Beautiful white hair and a nice red bald spot. Great choice.
2
"Capitalism is doing what it’s supposed to do. It’s rewarding productivity with pay, and some people and companies are more productive." Wow. Or should I say, Ouch? Remind me, how much did Boeing CEO Muilenberg get after being largely responsible of the terrible bottom-line fixed company culture that led to the deaths of hundreds of people? Ah right, more than 60 Million. Some people are just more productive than others. No further comment.
7
@umetik
Right on. Trump and Kushner are the best arguments against Brook’s thesis. And don’t forget the Jeff Immelt debacle at GE.
3
David, if you think there is no class war, it is because you are in the class that is winning it.
Here is a challenge for you: Live on $1,218 for a month, which is the gross income for someone earning minimum wage. You don't even have to do in NY or Washington area. Try it in Worcestershire Mass or Peekskill, NY. You can even sleep on someone's couch if you wish, but you must buy all food, health care coverage, clothing, transportation, utilities, haircut, cell phone service, car insurance and repairs, auto registration, educational loans, and entertainment from only that income. Then, get back to us on the experiment.
I can't wait to hear how wonderfully you manage your money.
10
A pay increase of 24 percent over 28 years? And David Brooks cites that as a good thing? Look at costs of housing, medical care and education and tell me how much those have increased in 28 years. David Brooks has no idea how real workers in this country live.
Theyism isn't the problem, greed is the problem, particularly corporate greed.
7
Where to begin? I agree that some of Senator Sanders arguments are extreme and we won't succeed or unify this country through revolutions and an us vs. them mentality. But for Mr. Brooks to suggest that the cornerstone of our inequality is all a productivity issue is utterly absurd. There are thousands of examples that undermine this thinking. While the Waltons and Jeff Bezos were revolutionizing retailing and becoming the richest people in America, I didn't see the folks in the Walmart stores or Amazon warehouses getting their share of the spoils. David, I find your pieces stimulating and often agree with your points, but there are times you are so far inside the Beltway or so entrenched in your capitalistic self-righteousness that I really wonder what you're on about. This is one of those times.
5
There is no class war. I agree. The war was won during and after the Reagan era.
The Reagan era wildly expanded a system where those that have will gain rapidly while putting more obstacles in the path of those LOOKING for opportunity.
Sanders "billionaire" argument exaggerates only as a tool to counter Reagan's Welfare Queen narrative and the expansion of that to Trump's "invasion of rapists and murderers" narrative.
You can not fight a massive, well funded, well armed system with a pea shooter.
4
I think it is a war but between us and big big business who knows it's above our laws. The vile cell phone business is the perfect example of corporate hatred towards it's paying customers we are denied any kind of meaningful "customer service" and they are NEVER brought to account when they break their own contacts which is far more often than not but because they like all big business have bribed every member of Congress and the Senate and the President they know they have no worries and no taxes to pay. The average American spends close to 15 hours a week trying and trying to fix things they are paying and paying for and get nothing but lies in return.
2
"capitalism is doing what it’s supposed to do. It’s rewarding productivity with pay, and some people and companies are more productive. If you improve worker bargaining power, that may help a bit, but over the long run people can’t earn what they don’t produce."
You say that with a straight face while the CEO of Boeing was just fired, walking away with 60 million dollars for his leadership
Let me know what his leadership produced during the 737 max fiasco that literally killed people and may kill Boeing's future.
8
Wages of the bottom parts of the economy are rising because of an increases in the minimum wage in a number of states and cities, not from some benefit installed by the top of the economy.
6
Perhaps worth noting is the subtle way in which Brooks elides a long-standing way of viewing our system into an individual, Bernie Sanders, as if Bernie Sanders developed these ideas independently. He didn’t, and he would be the first to admit it. The ossified moderate wing of the Democratic Party needs to realize that Bernie Sanders is a symptom, not the cause of this discontent. Their failure to deal with this discontent head on is what has allowed the progressive wing to gain momentum, not the supposed charisma of an aging lefty or his willingness to promise pie in the sky to ‘his base’ (which is arguably what establishment democrats have been doing for decades). I wish people like Brooks would stop equating left and right populism like they were mirror images of each other. They simply aren’t. And while you might question Sanders’ ability to work within the old system, you’d be hard pressed to critique his ability to mobilize people to change it. I welcome the debate, as does Sanders, I’m sure.
10
@C Coomb
I agree. Bernie’s core strenght is his courage and ability to mobilise a lot of people. In a way not too different from Trump. But, I am also interested in outcomes post elections and Bernie, for all his leadership, needs someone by his side with the ability to orchestrate large scale bureaucratic reforms and make them happen. That person is Elizabeth Warren. I am therefore very concerned by Bernie’s ignorance (willful or not) of the extreme factionalist behaviour, online, in social media or otherwise, of the “Bernie’s Bro”. EW is just the most recent victim as soon as she dared show a pragmatic side and challenge Bernie’s leadership for the red left. Pete was targeted too, many other (often female) political commentators too (Meghan McCain being the latest one, who defended EW because in the past she dId also get the snakes emojis and social medias insults).
Bernie, If you are listening, you need to show leadership, put an end to this, and clean up your campaign team.
1
@R. There is no such thing as the "bernie bro." A handful of men who support Bernie and who exhibit bro-ish behavior is not Bernie's responsibility to address -- he has a country to unite, and his record speaks for itself. Bernie doesn't stand for sexism. In fact his records shows he support women more than any other candidate, including Warren.
'63 Bernie got arrested, chained to Black women at the protest of Willis Wagons.
'72 Bernie fought for women's Reproductive Rights before Roe v. Wade.
'89: As mayor, Bernie fought for an ordinance that “reserves 10% of all city funded jobs for women.”
'91 Bernie tries to add an amend to Civil Rights Act of '91 that would ensure that race and sex discrimination would be treated identically under federal law. Sanders told reporters, “That women today are not equal under the law is unacceptable.” The amend. was rejected.
'92 Bernie proposes and passes Senate legislation calling for a national cancer registry. Sanders said, “Breast cancer in America today is a tragedy of epidemic proportions.”
'96 Gloria Steinem said Bernie is "symbol of women's Rights".
'98 election, National Organization for Women endorsed Bernie and no other VT. politician, saying: "He's a congressman we don't even have to call, we know he's going to vote the right way."
The list continues all the way up to this campaign.
Did you know that that 71% of his staff are women?
So, R, stop falling for a fallacious smear campaign engineered by Clinton in 2016.
1
I tried to look up the paper by Lazear referenced by Brooks, and I think I found it but it's behind a paywall. Anyway, assuming
Brooks is describing this paper accurately, it sounds as if the comparison it makes is between a large group of low-skilled workers and a large group of highly-skilled workers. But when Sanders and Warren talk about uneven income distribution they're not targeting large groups of skilled workers. They are targeting a very small group of fabulously wealthy people who are able to game the system in ways that give them still more fabulous wealth and the power that goes with it.
9
@Mary Sweeney
You need to quit Lumping Sanders with Warren. She’s not with Bernie, she just steals his wind.
Research to support a love letter to capitalism behind a paywall...I think that about says it all.
1
This is a very even handed look at the situation we are in. Trump is a corrosive agent but Sanders is Not the answer. We need to seriously look at the candidate that has a view that is Not skewed too far either way. Mayor Pete is Exactly The Person We Must Elect President. He is young and intelligent as well having views that bring people from both sides to a middle ground and the middle is where government works best. To all Americans it is Vital that we take our country back to a place of unity; Not everyone but a majority from center left and center right that allows for people to enjoy the gifts of the Republic.
2
hi John
Please spare us the “take our country back” cheap metaphor. It does Pete no service and, besides, it is in my view not correct to believe this country can go back to what it was. The populists undercurrents on the right and on the left are very strong and do not come out of nowhere. Beside, Biden is already running on a campaign of going back to pre-2016. This political messaging is not a winning one.
There are different kinds of billionaires. We cannot say that all they want to impoverish everyone else.
1
@Trassens
There are also different kinds of flu, too, and not all will kill as many people as the 1918 epidemic, but that doesn't mean they aren't harmful.
To most of the rich, impoverishing others isn't the goal, it is just the byproduct that they don't even notice. Brooks has just given us an example of that.
3
There are many low income workers. We cannot say that all of them are lazy and unmotivated and want free stuff.
The entire article is built on a false premise. Simply type into Google 'Wage growth vs productivity' and you will get back articles and graphs detailing how the 2 diverged some 40 years ago, beginning in the 1980s, a period which happened to coincide with the ascendancy of right wing, supply side economics. Either David Brooks is being disingenuous or he is being very selective with his facts, but the overall trend has been well known and well documented for decades.
18
David, you misconstrue and misrepresent Bernie. Capitalism doesn't have to be exploitative but has become so by rewarding a lack of conscience. And it's not us vs. them but us vs. us: the exploiters are among us sabotaging the very system that made them.
We can require that capitalism have a conscience - with legislative carrots and sticks that punish or rein in human-greed inclinations to exploit and corrupt capitalism, to become conscienceless survival-of-the-fittest opportunists. Graduated income tax is part of it, not just for individuals but for corporations, the wealthiest of whom do indeed owe a great debt to the society that set the stage (e.g., built the roads, the bridges, the freedoms, the educations and health to sustain work forces, etc etc) on which they outperformed. But perhaps the biggest carrot/stick domain is the one you glossed over - the power of the wealthy to "lock in" their advantages by buying legislators to protect them.
Getting money entirely out of politics is sine qua non if we want a capitalism with a conscience: Full public funding of campaigns, no more sources of quid pro quo leverage over public officials. The devastation of companies betraying workers by offshoring, etc was 'allowed' by compromised legislators and elected executives.
There are rein-ins if we care enough to demand them. Our sickness has been acquiescence. That's where impulse to greed and corruption seizes opportunity, dismisses conscience and rationalizes inhumanity.
10
@William LeGro And, as a further example of how this is not about class but rather a conscienceless mentality that Bernie is fighting - the kind that rewards failure with 8-figure payoffs to fired CEOs, etc - consider those who also profess to be Christian. The Sermon on the Mount was in essence Jesus teaching about the necessity of a conscience. Yet there are exploiters of capitalism who pass themselves off as Christian.
What is also needed to resurrect capitalism to what it could be but probably never has been, fully, is public education is the making and retaining of a conscience. And not just classroom talk but getting every growing child and adolescent out into the world around them where they can feel and do something, with empathy and a sense of common humanity, to stand against the effects of exploitation.
2
Prosperity. Is that the sole yardstick by which we measure our country? To be sure, a prosperous nation is a prerequisite for change, growth, and power. But Saunders (and Warren) are addressing a different problem.
There has been a class war since Reagan, perhaps longer. Business leaders have gained the power of kings, with the backing of politicians and organizations promoting their growth. Sensible guardrails protecting our capitalism have been knocked down, and increasingly abused by corrupt leaders. The result is a dramatic imbalance between the upper classes and the rest of us. It's a class war against the vast majority of the country.
So as the prosperity of the few fails to trickle down to the rest, and we're told we have an excellent economy that doesn't seem to be excellent for us, we are seeking a substantial and significant refocusing of our priorities.
We all know that our form of government doesn't favor radicalism, but Saunders and Warren are presenting ideas that direct our prosperity to the whole country, not just a tiny few. In so doing we'll eliminate the growing us and them divide. Saunders and Warren present the anti-class-war.
7
Men are from Mars women are from Venus. This saying was verified at last Friday’s democratic presidential debate. Ms Warren stated That"Bernie is my friend. She then proceeded to contradict this when Mr. Saunders offered his hand in friendship and she repudiated it. A handshake is commonly regarded as assig n. of friendship. The problem related to an alleged comment Mr. Sanders made In 2018 that it would be difficult for a woman to be elected president in United States of America.
This writer is in no way saying that a woman should not and could not be elected president. There are many women today in heigh leader ship positions both in civilian and military who equal and even exceed what a male worker in the same position could do.
However it is commonly excepted that a woman rules from her heart whereas a man rules from his head. Disbelief in today’s culture Influences decisions made after the election box. Thequalifications of leadership required for the role of president but every one of them would do significant holder of the office The president is expected to be a leader, to be able to choose a group of experts to work with him or her in the cabinet. To be effective the president must avoid A need to micromanage his/her team He/she must be capable and willingly to implement opposing policies and views as well as encouraging compromise when this is indicated. In our democracy there is no place for a dictator or for an individual to rule by executive order.
Brooks, as always, leaves out prejudice and bigotry as factors in the USA. If I take myself as an anecdote: I have a doctoral degree in education. I was awarded at my university for being a great professor. At the same time, I was being let go (I was non-tenure track) by an interim chair for being gay - at age 66. So who was going to hire me then? Now I am stuck with a lower Social Security allowance than I had planned on - thinking that I would teach until old age slowed me down. Not in America! What would be unthinkable in most modern countries - firing someone you don't like just for what they are - is legal here. No meritocracy myth can convince me otherwise.
9
I think you need to do some more research before writing a column like this. I don't think the modern labor market is working the way you describe, which would explain why fairly steady productivity increases have largely not been reflected in salaries for almost thirty years. I know for sure I labor under a non-compete agreement and other disincentives that constrain my freedom to offer my services to the highest bidder; it's far from a free market.
6
David is missing an important part of the progressive critique. The central issue isn't productivity inequality, it's that the wealthy and powerful have an outsized influence on our political system, and are able to structure rules for their benefit. And secondly, that in a society with unequal wealth and income, it's a perfectly acceptable role of government to insure that everyone, for example, has access to affordable quality health care.
10
The Daily Beast just reported that Sanders was a member of the Socialist Workers Party, a Marxist-Leninist party, in the late 70s and early 80s. It appears likely that Sanders was a member of the totalitarian left until "actually-existing socialism", that is communism, collapsed in the USSR and eastern Europe, and like so many former communists, he suddenly became a "democratic socialist", the political grouping that the totalitarian left hated and bitterly fought against for many decades. Sanders has not denied this report but he and his campaign are refusing to answer questions.
2
@raymond - It is bizarre that so many Americans are confused about the differences in socialism and communism. Indeed, many believe the two are interchangeable. There are different kinds of each and they are distinct in their differences. A better example of “actually-existing socialism” would be highly successful Norway, not the failed USSR. Norway has a higher standard of living and longer life expectancy than most countries in the world. It is also rated the happiest country in the world which, given its socialist advantages, is not surprising.
So don’t act as if Bernie Sanders is somehow tainted because he briefly explored the benighted Marxist-Leninists. They were actually difficult to avoid for a while until people realized they were actually right wing leftists and wandered away in search of a social justice philosophy that didn’t fanatically believe the end justifies the means.
For heaven’s sake, some people believe that up here in Canada we are all dedicated communists because we have universal medicare. Even most right-wing Canadians love medicare except the die-hards that want to privatize it.
1
@MJM I have to disagree that Sanders briefly explored communism, it appears he was a communist for quite a few years and was one well into his 30s. I agree that Norway is a better example of "actually-existing socialism" but this was a term used by the totalitarian left back in the day to describe the USSR and E. Europe. I was a democratic socialist back in the 70s and early 80s and I never heard of Bernie Sanders and it is no surprise. No, I find it unforgivable that he was a member of a fanatical communist party that advocated for a dictatorship of the proletariat and violent revolution. It was hate group.
Warren suffers the same disease.
5
You know better. The notion that wages for the lower paid have risen at a faster rate than wages for the rich is irrelevant. The rich get richer not by their wages, but by the increased value of their stocks and properties. And the story of how the 1% have gained and the rest of us have remained stagnant or worse is well-documented. Shame on you for passing this off as a meaningful statistic. Beyond this particular blunder, the fact that you have a powerful platform to spread such nonsense is exactly why we need the sort of large-scale change that Sanders and Warren are calling for.
9
Ridiculous. No precedents apply. Three hundred families own roughly half of the assets of our country. If this enormous gap is the normal end of capitalism, it is an inhumane way to evolve.
14
Oh please, spare us the defense of capitalism. While it definitley has had many many benefits and certainly was incredibly better than the feudalism out of which it was born, it is time to move on. We need to build on its advances, face the fact that profit driven societies cannot meet the needs of people or planet and work towards a rational solution that utilizes instead of wasting human potential and intelligence. Celebrate and praise what humans have figured out so far and build on it.
7
I enjoy Shields and Brooks on PBS. Normally, Davis Brooks seems to be a reasonable conservative. However, can he support strengthening unions and passing a living wage law and not delegating this to the states? Supply side economics and trickle down has impoverished mainstream Americans (and the Brits too, who went along with this charade with Margaret Thatcher). We aren't better off. We are worse off. The E. U. nation states, Canada, Israel, Australia. New Zealand. Chile. Japan and some more have a better off populace than that of the USA. Bernie is right that we need a revolution!
2
I think that the issue of economic class warfare is a little more nuanced than presented in this article. It seems to me that most fair-minded people don't resent productive and creative individuals from being amply rewarded. What they do resent are well-placed cretins who are merely fixers and scammers from being amply rewarded.
5
I am appalled that you called out Bernie Sanders for creating class war and not Elizabeth Warren who also espouses the so-called class war. I agree with both of them, but to provide an accurate picture of the so-called class war you abhor you fail to recognize the ideas of a prominent female candidate whose ideas are based on a careful study of the American economy. This is yet another example of male inability to see and notice the ideas of women even in debate.
Women are over 50% of the population of the US and deserve to be mentioned in debate of the philosophies of American politics. You are ignoring the ideas of women and we are sick and tired of being ignored.
3
Ok, I think I agree with this. But then you need to support a massive expenditure increase on all stages of education. If our education system is producing inequality and unfairness, it needs to be overhauled. It’s not fair that kids in good school neighborhoods get a way better shot at life than kids at bad school neighborhoods. You have to have the political courage to spend the kind of money that’s going to take. You also have to have the political strength and patience to tell people 1) your lives stink because this country failed to give you a proper education 2) it’s going to take a long time to fix and it will only directly benefit the next generation.
Are you willing to sign up for that David?
1
The subtext of Trump's message is "I will smite your enemies."
The subtext of Bernie's message is "I will smite your enemies."
I'll have none of either.
1
David, have you ever thought about the fact that richer people tend to buy more 'stuff' and travel more (especially by plane) so they are ultimately creating more damage to the environment and leaving behind huge piles of trash when they die? People who live simply, don't spend much money, do buy much stuff, and don't leave such big piles of trash and huge amounts of greenhouse gases behind when they die may actually be much better for everyone than people who buy fancy expensive cars every few years, live in big houses, go on vacations to Europe, and generally consume a lot more. Think about it.
1
Others have effectively rebutted your main arguments. My only comment is that saying guns are a value, like patriotism and ending abortion, seems bizarre.
5
"Every time we increase productivity for one person, we all thrive a little more, together." That's right, every time an underpaid McDonalds employee takes a second or third job to pay for basic rent, food, and health care David Brooks thrives a little more.
4
As usual, Brooks is only half right. Trump’s appeal to loser Americans in red states is hypocritical and unAmerican but seems to working. Brooks trashes Sanders for his attacks on capitalism. American crony capitalism works largely for the American elites, 1/2 of 1% of the population. Average Americans are much worse off than they were 20 years ago, and the ultra rich are much richer now. Brooks never has a good answer for this truth.
3
Class war. Culture war. Race war. Can we be done with the war talk? All we Americans who are not obscenely wealthy want is a decent standard of living, from pre-birth through retirement, and a better chance for our children. Healthcare -- how much you have to pay for it and whether you have insurance or not -- is the key to that. The cost of insurance and out-of-pockets is sucking the life out of the American Dream and trapping millions of workers in often low-paying and dead-end jobs they have to keep just for the health benefits. So is that a "class" issue? Is it because the corporate class wants to keep workers in chains? Maybe. Whatever it is, Bernie Sanders has the best remedy.
3
It IS class warfare and that’s why I am voting for Sanders and giving him money very day! Does David Brooks really want to live in country with huge tent cities and millions of people living without hope? He should really get out more into the real world!
4
"Sanders starts with a truth: Workers need more bargaining power as they negotiate wages with their employers. But then he blows this up into an all-explaining ideology: Capitalism is a system of exploitation in which capitalist power completely dominates worker power. This ideology crashes against the facts."
Mr. Brooks, starts this paragraph with an accurate sentence, but then he disintegrates into "alternative facts".
Capitalism is a system of exploitation no matter how you present it Mr. Brooks. Perhaps you should had consulted with someone who knows economic systems better than you, Dr. Paul Krugman for example, before you wrote your critique.
4
The evidence of class warfare - the small wealthy class against everybody else - is overwhelming. Sanders calls for an end to this war: "I want you all to take a look around and find someone you don’t know, maybe somebody who doesn’t look kind of like you, who might be of a different religion, maybe who come from a different country… My question now to you, is are you willing to fight for that person who you don’t even know as much as you’re willing to fight for yourself? Are you willing to stand together and fight for those people who are struggling economically in this country? Are you willing to fight for young people drowning in student debt, even if you are not? Are you willing to fight to ensure that every American has health care as a human right, even if you have good health care? Are you willing to fight for frightened immigrant neighbors, even if you are native born? Are you willing to fight for a future for generations of people who have not yet even been born, but are entitled to live on a planet that is healthy and habitable? Because if you are willing to do that, if you are willing to fight for a government of compassion and justice and decency, if you are willing to stand up to Trump’s desire to divide us up, if you are prepared to stand up to the greed and corruption of the corporate elite, if you and millions of others are prepared to do that, there is no doubt in my mind that not only will we win this election, but together we will transform this country."
2
Baloney!! He never asserts why wages are going up. It's because the Blue states are passing laws that increase the wages of the bottom workers, not because companies are sharing their new income. Plus he compares the rising wage rates of the upper middle class workers to the lower class workers. It's not rates that are important, it's amount. If a person making $100,000 get a 5% raise that equals $5,000, but if a worker making $25,000 gets a 10% raise that only comes to $2,500. Mr. Brooks cherry picks his data to make it come out that the rich aren't winning. Bernie is right unless you are a fat cat Republican who want to keep the money going to those who have the money!
3
I wish the NYT would end it's relationship with Mr. Brooks. He offers no new insight and continues to spew the same trite drivel he has for decades. I thought recently when he started to see the hollowness and destructiveness of the ideology he has been touting, he may finally come to see that it wasn't that his beliefs were misused but that in fact his beliefs could only create what has transpired. Obviously David cannot allow reality to nullify his life's work and will continue to argue his beliefs over truth.
In the Age of Trump all is exposed if only one wants to look. The wealthy do control this country, caring not about their fellow citizens, but ensuring that their superiority is known for generations to come. To use the word "warfare" diminishes what they have accomplished because it was all done without battles or shows of might. They simply changed the laws, perverted fellow Americans to believe lies, played on people's weaknesses and fears. The core truth is that income inequality on the scale and dimensions we know in this country could only be engineered. It did not just happen. Since it was engineered then there was a consciousness behind it, fully aware of the negative aspects it would hold for those they were to exploit and yes, their goal was to separate the people from their wealth and secure it among the billions they already acquired.
Stop perpetuating a falseness which maintains the status quo - there is nothing right about this time and place.
3
David Brooks distorts what Bernie Sanders says about income inequality and corporate greed and then disputes. Nice hatchet job. The less well-off just aren't productive enough in our time of extraordinary productivity - now we know.
4
Mr. Brooks you sound quite reasonable while making falacious or non sequitur arguments. Nobody is arguing that better companies should make less money. The argument is about tax policy, safety net spending, regulation, pollution, worker safety.
First off there's no class warfare Marxist party in America and Sanders' isn't calling for peasant collectivization. Please watch your language around these things. It's deceptive. Further, arguing that government hasn't been captured by the upper classes is simply absurd.
There is mountains of evidence and studies showing the disconnect between voters desires and policy. Vast majorities think corporate taxes are too low and yet corporate taxes have been repeatedly cut to such comical levels many of your "superstar" companies get literal tax rebates.
The tension is the impossible wealth disparity not necessarily INCOME disparity. Workers are taxed and "fee'd" at every turn. The wealthy have managed to make huge portions of their income not "income" through the politcal system despite their tiny numbers....how?
Is your position really that nothing can or should be done? Your solution is a 30 year plan to make future generations more productive?
Perhaps you need to think further on the nature of a society and the social contract. Maybe you can convince your class to allow reform before public fury inevitably becomes the classist revolutionary zeal you rightfully point out doesn't yet exist. Yet.
5
The David Brooks Fallacy: Society doesn't organize itself in any relation to political economy. Elites are elites just cuz.
2
All due respect, Mr. Brooks, but you write one, maybe two, columns a week.
Ask journalists in any newsroom across the nation, many of whom write at least two stories a day without overtime pay, whether increased productivity boosts wages.
But if only those journalists work harder, Wall Street venture capital firms will suddenly stop stripping newspapers across America of profits, halt layoffs and give out long overdue raises, right?
3
The NYTimes has become completely biased in their coverage of certain presidential candidates in a way that is truly harmful. In 2016 you sought to damage the reputation of Sanders, and in 2020 you are seeking to capitalize on the rift between Sanders and Warren which was so obviously engineered by Warren staffers and showed a desperate and weak side of her (I'm a feminist, so, no, this isn't sexism I'm spouting but the truth). You reduce the presidential race to identity politics in order to sabotage candidates who want to make substantive long overdue changes to our systems that would improve the lives of millions in our country, just so your company can benefit financially--you're a big corporation, and stand to lose some of your wealth if Sanders wins. You make money off of pitting ethnic groups against each other by supporting status quo politicians who have no plan to unite the country and address real issues of strife in this nation, namely poverty and exploitation that affects all races. The fact is, Biden can't beat Trump. Sanders can. By attempting to hurt his campaign, you're hurting fellow Americans and you're facilitating Trump's second term.
2
David reveals his true colors. When the auto industry in the Midwest was going to tank, he as all for letting it go under.
1
You’re wrong. You’re falling into the trap of unexamined relativism. The impact of unchecked capitalism isn’t a boogey man like the other “theyism” you describe. There is evidence of a widening wealth gap between workers and owners, evidence of the influence of money in our democracy, and evidence of limited natural resources and evidence of climate change as a result of unchecked capitalism and consumerism. It’s capitalism that is ok with our society letting losers whither away and die and we all go along with this. In this country, anyway.
You’re actually describing right and wrong. Unchecked capitalism is wrong. Being suspicious of people is natural. But we don’t extend the concept of personhood to corporations. That’s only for tax purposes.
1
https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/
From 1979 to 1918, productivity has grown 70%, compensation has grown 12%. That's what needs to be addressed, whatever the reasons for it.
1
These "superstar" companies have no real new technology, they have simply outsourced their low wage/slave labor to other countries where oversight is scant, and resistance is futile, as a producer, and as a consumer. All so someone like Jeff Bezos can accumulate unfathomable wealth, and the lowest ranking employees get squat. All for selling garbage made in the third world. I dare you to try not to use the blatant monopoly of Amazon in some way, shopping, entertainment, food... good luck.
An essential part of waging any class war is to have an effective propaganda front: that is, deny that there is a class war and claim that the left wants to start one.
There is already a class war, it is being waged by the ruling class and they have been winning for so long that people are saying ENOUGH!
3
“The real solution, therefore, is not class war to hammer successful businesses. It’s to boost and expand productivity for everybody else. That’s done the old-fashioned way — by having better schools and better vocational training, by having more open competitive markets, by creating incentives to expand investment, by making sure superstar businesses don’t use lobbyists to lock in their advantages.”
And who exactly is it that has historically thwarted your “ real solution “ from happening? Nice piece of sophistry David.
Mr. Brooks has outdone himself in the sheer, no doubt innocent, silliness of this column. Our system, apparently, is just fine. If there is egregious inequality, leading to poverty, deaths of despair and other unpleasantness, well, that will all work itself out in the end. Nonsense!
2
If there were any actual facts in this piece, I would be astounded. There are no data to support the author's view.
This is just a sad rehash of 'trickle-down' that real world data has proven wrong over and over
3
@Logan - So there's a lot of good response here, and good opinions. But one misguided opinion, because it substitutes magical thinking for reality. @CitizenTM thinks the midwestern states have too much power. Do the math. .
New York and California are reliable Democratic states. You can build up around that with Massachussets, Connecticut, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Maryland, Oregon, Washington and Nevada. In 2016, Hillary also carried two Midwestern States, reliable illinois and Minnesota (She lost all of the rest of the Midwest). Let's call these states, along with a few others, the Democratic base in the Electoral College.
In 2016, Trump won the Electoral College by 304 to 227. A blow-out. Forget the national vote count, the supernumerary votes from New York and California didn't win the national election.
Winning Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania is crucial to a Dem win in 2020. If the electoral votes haven't changed for those states (look it up yourself), the Dems would need to win three (any three) of those four states to win the presidential election. Winning even the two of these four with the highest electoral count would lose the election, everything else equal. Simple formula: Hillary 2016 + Pennsylvania + Ohio = loss. 266 for Trump. 265 for Clinton. Check my math.
The electoral vote count was 304 to 227. Check wikipedia. Do the math. Bernie is a loser in 2020, and so is Elizabeth "you called me a liar on national TV" Warren.
2
Here is a much better look at the Class issue than Mr. Brooks’ attempt to lump Sanders and Trump in the same critique(and much more about class and history) than about Sanders:
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/sanders-is-the-only-candidate-who-gets-what-working-class-really-means/
2
Vignettes from the class war in US history:
In 1886 the Supreme court ruled that corporations are people, with a constitutional right to make money (a ruling that still stands). The era of robber barons and oligopolistic trusts ensued. Teddy Roosevelt beat them back...for awhile. We are in another oligopolistic era today.
Robber baron capitalist par excellence Jay Gould once gloated, '"I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half." Fox News, anyone?
Social Darwinism, a self-serving corruption of actual Darwinian evolutionary theory, was all the rage among the wealthy in the Gilded Age, and well into the 20th C. It said that if you're poor, its because you are one of nature's failed experiments: unfit. It's all your fault *and* it's in your nature. Did I say into the *20th* Century?
It took people like Jacob Riis and Sinclair Lewis to expose the utter lack of care that capitalism in practice (not theory) has for the working class, beyond it being a source of labor.
In response to burgeoning, rapacious, corrupt, colluding corporations gaming the economy, in 1890 Congress enacted the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, which said that conspiracies in constraint of trade are illegal. The Act was then used against...labor unions.
In 1914, when Henry Ford started paying workers $5 for an 8 hr day, the Wall Street Journal called it an 'economic crime'. The WSJ, mouthpiece of the capitalist elite, hasn't changed.
1
David,
When these people say they are struggling to make ends meet and can't afford basic necessities, do you think they are lying?
1
So now David Brooks wants to equate Bernie Sanders and Trump? Really? I've heard enough out of Brooks.
1
Our nation, forever conservative, unable to be politically cutting edge. Old, white, male status quo, and rudderless without a vision has been the safe go to since LBJ. A legacy of conformist normalcy, similar to Ned Beatty screaming at Peter Finch, "there are no nations, there are no peoples." Pass the Oxycodone I need to be anaesthetized.
2
David - There IS a class war going on.
Dude, try being poor and then tell me there is no class warfare.
4
When you consider the fundamental idea proposed by David that entrepreneurs are wealthy because they work smarter. I wonder if he was thinking of Richard Fuld in charge of Lehman Brothers, one of the largest banks in American history, when it went bankrupt leading to the Great Recession. It makes me think of Alan Greenspan, who served as Chair of the Federal Reserve of the United States from 1987 to 2006, preceding the Great Recession. HIs explanation of why he didn't interfere during the banking shenanigans that preceded the 2008 Recession was that he didn't believe that bankers would cheat. What about CEO Dennis Muhlenberg and the engineering staff of Boeing who attached a powerful new engine on a 60 year plane design and did everything in their power to avoid requiring extra pilot training, until not one plane but two fell out of the sky. I wonder what ego denying bull they were telling themselves between the two crashes. Pilots should know better???? You must ask yourself which of these smarty pants was in charge of Volkswagen when the deliberately designed their tail pipe emission systems so they would report dishonest results when they were put under test practically destroying a great company. Which of these brilliant business leaders were in charge when 12 of the 13 largest U.S. financial institutions were at risk of failure during 2008? None of these "leaders" went to prison. If a clerk stole from petty cash they would go to prison.
3
You mean like "people are saying"?
Or how about supposed criminal refugees?
Trump is the king of fallacies.
You ought to be a guy, who in his profession once made money off material. Menards, Lowe’s, and Home Depot all found a way to exploit the skills of our tradesmen.
David, nobody is accusing the 1% or .01% of being a cabal or coming after them with pitchforks...yet. What progressives care about is reducing wealth inequality. What moral justification do you offer for the existence of billionaires when we have children who aren’t getting enough to eat?
The premise that we are all just getting paid according to our productivity is laughable. Inflation adjusted wages have been stagnant for 40 years, while productivity has soared. You argue that the Googles of the world are creating wealth inequality by being more successful and paying their employees higher wages, which pretty much demonstrates that you don’t have a clue as to what “wealth inequality” actually means. You suggest that less successful companies simply have to find a way to be more productive, so their employees’ wages can close the Google gap. That’s an idea that you felt was worthy of publication?
Your garbage theory of “productivity inequality” being the “real problem” is utter nonsense. That is not why 5 people own more wealth than half of our population.
3
Hahahahahaha. David, you just wrote a great campaign piece for Bernie. Is it an in-kind donation?
1
David, do you read the comments with the most "recommends" ? I learn so much from them and hope you do too...
Do you ever agree with their points?
I'd love to read some back and forth between you the best of of the best of them.
1
Good to see that the old David Brooks is still there. His 'enlightenment' was apparently personal and not intellectual.
You nailed it David!
Brooks, as always, tells the story he want to see, but fails to do good research
Quoting Robert Reich, about Brooks and this column:
"— He claims that “over the past few years wages for workers toward the bottom of the income stream have been rising faster than wages for those toward the top.” Wrong. CEO pay has risen 940 percent since 1978, while typical worker pay has risen a measly 12 percent.
— He claims that capitalism is “rewarding productivity with pay, and some people and companies are more productive.” Wrong again. From 1979 to 2018, worker productivity rose by 69.6 percent, while worker compensation rose only by 11.6 percent.
— He claims that when companies become more productive “they earn more profit per employee and pay their workers more.” Wrong yet again: higher profits do not automatically translate into higher worker pay. Brooks is assuming trickle down economics isn't a total sham. The truth is the share of corporate profits going to workers still isn’t back to where it was before the 2008 financial crash.
If Brooks even did one iota of research, his entire argument would come crashing down around him. It’s sad to see the supposed paper of record publish a column riddled with so many blatant inaccuracies."
3
One can write a column called 'The David Brooks Fallacy' on a regular basis -- and there have been blogs that have essentially done just that -- but what a dreary job it must be.
1
Notice how David went after Bernie!! I wonder whether it’s a coincidence!!! They went after Warren when she was on top, now they seem to be doing a job on Bernie, and they’ve somehow seemingly even got help from Warren with that gender attack the other day.
Of course, David and his “theys” are working overtime for Pete and Biden, their corporate poodles.
1
Oy! David, David, David. If "wages are generally determined by skill and productivity" then why do women and people of color earn so much less than white men? This comment is as absurd as the conservative whine about Identity Politics.
1
Wrong!!!!!! CEO pay has risen 940 percent since 1978, while typical worker pay has risen a measly 12 percent.
From 1979 to 2018, worker productivity rose by 69.6 percent, while worker compensation rose only by 11.6 percent
Get out of your ivory tower once in a while Mr. Brooks.
3
The most important story today is not being covered by the times!!!
It’s Florida essentially instituting a modern day poll tax to stop former felonies from voting again!!
From the articles I’ve read some have fines they can never even hope to pay back!!!
Florida is a battle ground state, so this is great news for republicans.
It shows evil lives and is strong still which we probably already knew!
2
David Brooks assertion that there is no American class war reminds me of white people who say there is no racism because they've never experienced it.
Come down off your high horse and look around, Mr. Brooks.
1
David Brooks! Let's name this column
"All's well! The view from the turret."
2
Does anyone else care that David Brooks seems to be pulling numbers out of thin air?
3
Wow, Bernie really getting it from the left and right on these pages. We're treated to Dr. K's usual "wow Bernie Sanders supporters are so mean, calling me a corporate tool" a la 2016 complaints; the incessant characterization of Sanders as "loud" and "grumpy" from pretty much everyone such as Collins, Dowd, Leonhardt; the usual panicked column from Stephens warning us that Sanders will turn us into Venezuela (this strikes me as the dumbest, laziest "analysis" of all); and finally now the column from Brooks.
But whatever. The fact that Bernie Sanders manages to annoy every op-ed columnist is proof enough to me that Bernie Sanders is a true unifier. He's got my vote.
3
You speak as if, on the whole, people are paid commensurate with what they are ‘worth’ ( productivity being a part of that calculation). I beg to differ:
The black or brown women taking care of your supposed ‘most precious possession— your children—are paid an average of $10-$15/hour.
The (odds are likely) older white man heading up the Bank, the Health Insurance Company, the Pharmaceutical Company, the Coal Company, are paid obscene amounts of millions and millions of dollars, and then paid obscene amounts of millions WHEN THEY SCREW UP; I have looked high and low for exactly what they ‘produce’ and I have found the answer to be ‘very little.’
I agree with many components of Capitalism, but left ‘unchecked,’ ‘unfettered’ or ‘unbridled’ there is no doubt in my mind 2008 will have only been a taste of what’s next. If we don’t build a strong social safety net for ALL , we are doomed as western leaders and destined for 3rd world look-alikes.’ IMHO.
Elizabeth Warren understands this better than anyone else presently in politics.
1
Oh, my goodness, David Brooks! None are so blind as those who refuse to see.
4
There is a race war, however.
I am totally down with increasing productivity. Are you down with taxing unproductive financial capital, e.g. eliminating the carried interest loophole, in order to stimulate the social programs necessary to foster such productivity?
If there's no class war, why does the top tier spend billions lobbying/writing legislators to stop things like raising taxes, raising the minimum wage, and fight for 'right to work (sic)' laws .
You think those 'right to work' laws were the idea of the great majority of Americans struggling to make ends meet? Who lobbies against universal health care when the majority of Americans are, like the rest of the industrialized world, strongly in favor of every American being covered? It ain't the working class. A majority of Americans are also for higher taxes on billionaires. What did congress just pass before 2018?
Also, you really must get out and see how America is living, hand to mouth, paycheck to paycheck. No one has savings, everyone has masses of debt, and that's by design.
I think you make a good point about the economic vs. culture war. But I also think people live in a national media environment owned by private interests that do not cover class based issues with any deep analysis or regularity. Is that a coincidence?
And finally, there really are very few people brandishing a Marxist vocabulary and commitment to some absolute truth of history when they point these things out.
People are getting screwed and they know it.
4
"...but over the long run people can’t earn what they don’t produce."
-David Brooks
In the quote above, Mr. Brooks unwittingly makes the best case against capitalism's long-term viability. The sharp prick of irony deflates his whole argument. What are capitalists of not people who DO earn what they themselves don't produce?
3
It is not just a coincidence that tax cuts for the rich have preceded both the 1929 and 2007 depressions. The Revenue acts of 1926 and 1928 worked exactly as the Republican Congresses that pushed them through promised. The dramatic reductions in taxes on the upper income brackets and estates of the wealthy did indeed result in increases in savings and investment. However, overinvestment (by 1929 there were over 600 automobile manufacturing companies in the USA) caused the depression that made the rich, and most everyone else, ultimately much poorer.
Since 1969 there has been a tremendous shift in the tax burdens away from the rich on onto the middle class. Corporate income tax receipts, whose incidence falls entirely on the owners of corporations, were 4% of GDP then and are now less than 1%. During that same period, payroll tax rates as percent of GDP have increased dramatically. The overinvestment problem caused by the reduction in taxes on the wealthy is exacerbated by the increased tax burden on the middle class. While overinvestment creates more factories, housing and shopping centers; higher payroll taxes reduces the purchasing power of middle-class consumers. ..."
http://seekingalpha.com/article/1543642
2
You have blinders on. Period.
3
Mr. Brooks, my final word is that your argument is far too simplistic and knowing your writing skills and reasoning abilities, I expect more thoughtful, profound and layered opinions from you.
2
Mr. Brooks falls victim to the old adage “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics.”
1
This rubbish is what I'd expect from Rupert Murdoch's WSJ. But I guess the NYT is determined to eliminate as much daylight between themselves and the GOP as possible.
The Powell Memo: A Call-to-Arms for Corporations was written in 1972. With the election of Reagan, the corporations begin their class war against the rest of us. The result was 40 years of rapid growth in the wealth of the richest few, and treading water for the rest of us.
https://billmoyers.com/content/the-powell-memo-a-call-to-arms-for-corporations/
It's pretty damning that this overly-comfortable opinionator's piece can be destroyed with one graph:
https://twitter.com/classiclib3ral/status/1218170077381611521
~
2
The suggestion that we lowly denziens of the fly-over states care more about about guns, abortion, and masculinity(really?), than feeding our kids, buying gas, or other mundane Midwestern things reveals the existing, growing class divide. Visit the Midwest and you will find that the daily parade of obscene wealth and privilege paraded in the media is no longer seen as aspirational but as evidence of an exploitive society.
4
As Bernie wins the Iowa and New Hampshire primaries, more pundits will sound the alarm: socialism is coming! Get used to hearing it, in ever more nervous tones. Me, I'm going to help Bernie win the California primary this year.
By the way, folks: if elected, Bernie can't flip a switch and disassemble the American economy (nor does he want to). Bernie's vision will be tempered by all of those in government who hold different opinions, and that's as it should be. Calm down, everybody, we won't be the next Venezuela.
5
"The real solution... That’s done the old-fashioned way — by having better schools and better vocational training, by having more open competitive markets, by creating incentives to expand investment,"
how long will it take you to realize that we have done this for the last 20 years and its not working. We give people incentives to expand their business, we have educational programs that embrace competitive models, and we have free trade to create more open markets. Yet, you still feel the need to write these op-ed's about how to fix things.
Im not here to say sanders is right. But to look at the massive income inequality, and say, what we need is more neo-liberal policies, is willfully ignorant. If you dont like the us vs. them mentality, tell the them to stop shrinking our tax base that we need to, as you say, create better educational and vocational opportunities.
Oh, and PS. the little factoid about how low wage growth is increasing over the last few years is BECAUSE of people like bernie making a 15 dollar minimum wage push throughout the US. not in spite of it. Get your facts straight.
2
Two things. 1)There is no status quo to which one can return. That is a fantastical fairy tale. The haves and have nots have always seen one another as diametrically opposites. Being among the proletariat, it is contrary for one to believe that the super-compensated are somehow more productive than the people who actually put the widgets together. Workers are often asked to work harder, faster, and with less than is needed for safety. That is far different than sitting in a boardroom or the corner office. The two just don’t understand each other’s worlds.
2) It is obscene for any person, no matter how clever or intelligent, to be paid in the 10s of millions of dollars for a years worth of work when that money could be spread across thousands of people to make their lives healthier and happier. What justifies such wide disparities? Perhaps someone like Jeff Bezos or Jamie Diamond would appreciate what goes into making their businesses profitable from the perspective of their least compensated line workers. And the excuse that “the board” decides what their compensation will be is a cop out, plain and simple.
3
David, David, get a hold of yourself:
"In the first place, over the past few years wages for workers toward the bottom of the income stream have been rising faster than wages for those toward the top. If the bosses have the workers by the throat, how can this be happening?"
Are you saying that the pitiful amount that those at the minimum wage level are getting negates the fact that corporations are making a killing every day and that the middle class is treading water? Sanders' may inflate a little, but that does not erase the underlying truth. What is going on is not ideology, it's reality.
3
It's a given that all companies will not be productive. So the solution should include two tangible outcomes:
1. Is there actions we can take to improve productivity for these companies with a fair chance of success? If so, who takes those actions? If not, what is the transition plan?
2. What can we do help the workers tide over these transition phases? And who owns those actions?
If there isn't a class "war," it's because only one class has taken up arms. Everyone but the rich is adhering to a disarmament pact.
4
Brooks totally disregards those who are not earning wages but receiving profits. Excessive extraction of corporate funds as profits disregards the value of the inputs of workers, as does the transfer to an information and robotics economy.
Brooks also disregards entirely the constantly increasing gap between CEO's and other top management personnel's salaries and the average worker's wages...the number of multiples of worker wages taken home by exec's continues to increase.
The fact that there are minimum wages but no maximum wages allowed in our society speaks volumes. Many people cannot afford even rent, utilities, food and medicine while others can spend $125,000 for a banana taped to a wall. These are obscene realities in any society in which they may appear. One can dismiss the significance all day long of these outcomes, and say people are practicing class warfare, but people who can't feed, clothe and shelter their children, know where the war is originating. It is not flowing out of Bernie Sanders' imagination.
Income disparity, and a corresponding disparity of political power based in part on the "corporate citizenship" which flows out of "Citizens United" ruling are ripping this nation apart.
5
Warren Buffett, who surely knows a thing or two about finances, famously quipped that he paid a lower tax rate than his secretary. Sanders' "They" are financiers and politicians that allow for a taxation system in which this fact has been holding for decades.
What's better, to let one top earner save a million on taxes and possibly invest abroad, or let a thousand teachers each receive a $1000 that has a much greater chance to be spent locally?
1
"As those companies grow more productive, they earn more profit per employee and pay their workers more. Companies that can’t match that productivity don’t, and their workers lag behind."
Productivity is a misleading metric. It fails to recognize that some industries are inherently more productive than others. For example, a tech or financial services firm can generate 100x revenues from the economic input of one (highly paid) worker because these industries are scalable. At large, manufacturing 'productivity' increases over the last century are a direct result of automation and exploitation of global labor markets. In contrast, industries that support the physical and social fabric of society that are not easily automated --- construction, childcare, education have an inherent limit in their ability to increase productivity because it takes many hours of labor to generate a 'product' that is not easily capitalized on but provides a high actual value to society. Thus the productivity driven economy has failed many workers, who are left behind by the nature of their work. Bernie, Warren, and Yang are on the right track -- we need more universal programs to fill the void before society falls apart.
I'm no fan of Sanders and I often enjoy - even agree with - David Brooks's columns. But this makes zero sense. If the most productive people were the richest, the world would look quite different.
5
Hey, David. Do you have a "great" health insurance plan through your elite employer? Do you live in an 8+ graded school zipcode? Can you afford a $500 medical emergency? Does your police department not let meth and fentanyl dealers make deliveries in your neighborhood?
I suspect yes. We all would like to emulate this "success" if we can.
Since half of us in this country's adult population - that's 130 million people, about equivalent to the population of Japan - can't afford a car breakdown or a visit to the ER for $500, there's a problem when "success" is in the minority. That's much more of a problem if these things in dozens of other countries are actually prerequisites and rights that are agreed necessary to success.
Anyone who denies me what I need to even aspire to what people in Japan, Denmark or Germany take as a given is declaring war on me.
Since these people who have what is a given in other countries live apart, work apart, drive and fly apart, eat and drink and go to school apart from those who can't even afford an ER visit or a new set of car tires, they are a separate class.
There you have it, class war defined.
8
Wrong. Dead wrong. Take a look at the actual economic indicators. Take a look at the CEO vs paeon salaries, adjusted for inflation. Take a look at the cost of living, and how comparable jobs and salaries are not keeping up. Brooks is spewing the same old garbage that’s put our economy in decline under Republican leadership for 40 years. Bernie is completely right about the class warfare. It’s been a war of attrition since Reagan cut the income taxes so drastically. We need to get back to what works.
4
You say that "in the past few years wages for workers toward the bottom of the income stream have been rising faster than wages for those toward the top." That's only true for the past few years. Since 1980 the income share of the top 1% went from 12% to 20%. The income share of the bottom 50% went from 20% to 12%. This is an astounding increase in inequality in the USA.
1
"In the first place, over the past few years wages for workers toward the bottom of the income stream have been rising faster than wages for those toward the top. If the bosses have the workers by the throat, how can this be happening?"
This, as well as this whole column, is patently false.
CEO pay has risen 940 percent since 1978, while typical worker pay has risen a measly 12 percent.
Rewarding productivity with pay? No. From 1979 to 2018, worker productivity rose by 69.6 percent, while worker compensation rose only by 11.6 percent.
Brooks is assuming trickle-down economics isn't a total sham. The truth is the share of corporate profits going to workers still isn’t back to where it was before the 2008 financial crash.
There is no getting around that the income gap is hugely out of control. 80% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck.
My opinion of David Brooks, who I use to until today thought of as an honest, reliable conservative has just gone out the window,
10
The statistics that Mr. Brooks selects to use are not the full picture. They make it look like the less skilled are improving faster than the wealthy and skilled. In point of fact, the opposite is true. A 24% increase in a salary of 20,000 per year is 5000 per year. a 10% increase in a salary of 250,000 per year is $25,000 per year. How long will it be before the 24% increase is greater than the 10% increase (and therefore the 24% increase begins to close the difference)? Do you dispute the systematic advantages that the wealthy have that makes improvement extremely difficult for the poor?
2
David brooks and economics. Sigh. Productivity grows in leading companies like Google and Amazon because they have economies of scale (and Amazon uses data on independent sellers to design house brands that decimate the independent sellers' businesses).
3
It is a superb column and SO true! It is the productivity gap!
1
Nothing to see here then ? Well, it tuns out Brooks is indeed a republican. To believe this article, one would have to ignore the entirety of information we know to be true of top salary pay and the gap differential in percent increase over time, of ALEC and the consolidation of lobby direction on corporate interests, of tax structures geared to favor wealth and corporation, really, just everything that points to what America has become: of and for the corporation and wealth. Class war and interests are real, and that's why they fight so hard to convince you otherwise, as winning against a team unaware of the competition is much more easy.
3
We get ourselves in a bind when we go to the extremes like "class war" and so forth. Fine, it's not a war, but CEO pay has skyrocketed over the last couple of decades whereas average worker pay has climbed modestly. If it's mildly adjusted over the last couple of years, it doesn't make much difference as we're taking huge numbers at the top, middling ones in the middle and minuscule ones at the bottom. C'mon, David, you're better than this type of argument which ignores both math and quality of life. The situations needs correction, big time. Whether the country will elect Sanders or a similar progressive amidst the propagandic shrieking of "socialism" (as if we don't already have the trappings of it) is another discussion--and in fact it's the more educational one we should be having.
4
i agree he's not a great candidate but if it's him vs Trump i'll vote for him.
“In the first place, over the past few years wages for workers toward the bottom of the income stream have been rising faster than wages for those toward the top.”
As I’m sure you have read, much of this is attributable to the increase in minimum wage in many states and localities.
2
"In the first place, over the past few years wages for workers toward the bottom of the income stream have been rising faster than wages for those toward the top. If the bosses have the workers by the throat, how can this be happening?"
Easy. By reclassifying those at the very bottom of the system -- Uber drivers per say -- as "independent" contractors or something similar. Or by ignoring those whose employment is tentative as best as they are forced to move from temporary position to temporary position. Because they change jobs so often they are likely to fall of the grid when it comes to recording employment stats. And then there's the long list of those who are citizens or legal residents, but who work illegally "off-the-books" simply because it's the best (or only) alternative they have.
The fact of the matter is that economic and employment stats are like any other. They can be made to prove anything you want, simply by redefining classes or changing definitions. Right now, as Republicans are doing the hiring and firing within the civil service, those without employment, those with inadequate employment go under-reported. Those who in desperation work off-the-record aren't recorded at all. It's the only way that those happy with the current imbalance of wealth and economic bargaining power can continue to assure the rest of us that everything is "just fine".
2
"No, Virginia, there is no class war."
That is true only insofar as there used to be a class war, which is now over. The rich won.
Globalization was a powerful tool that spatially decoupled capital from labor. Capital became globally mobile, leaving labor (i.e. living, breathing people) to eat crumbs.
7
Wow, Brooks is out of touch with reality. Inequality really is at an all-time high. People really are choosing between food and medications. Hospital and insurance CEOs really are getting rich while the rest of us can't pay our medical bills. Millennials really are drowning in college debt. Millionaires and billionaires really aren't paying their fair share in taxes. That is reality.
The benefits of this economy are going to the upper tiers of income. Wall Street is getting rich while Main Street suffers. All of this doesn't happen in a vacuum. It comes from policies that are bought and paid for by the rich. Something has to give somewhere ... and it will eventually. Unfortunately, there will be a lot of suffering until then. And that is what Sanders is trying to prevent.
7
This productivity argument sounds dangerously Darwinian to me: the "productive" deserve all their spoil as the "less productive" deserve their demise. Mr Brooks, it seems you are creating your own "Theyism": high vs low productive people. Mr Brooks, how would you price the "productivity" of a society (education, infrastructure, science, laws, and community [a favorite topic of yours]) that make it possible for the "high productive/successful" people to be so? Sanders and Warren may sound extreme, but could be the humanistic correction we need in this age of "winner-takes-all" run-away capitalism.
3
Good one David, It appears that a large segment of Democrats are getting ready to "lock and load", and if they pull the trigger the only thing likely to be hit is their own foot. It's dispiriting to watch it happening, esp. when the opposition is the clown in chief, who is beatable despite the resources at his disposal. To beat him is going to require the entire country, or at least a large majority of it, to unify behind a candidate that inspires them. He's got his 40% base that loves him despite everything we have seen over the last 3 years. 60% is up for grabs, Bernie, with all of his passionate righteousness will never move that 60%, maybe 40% and change, but that won't beat the clown. I don't know if the country, as strong as it is, can withstand 5 more years if his insipid leadership. The dismantling of everything we have stood for and aspired too, continues at a rapid pace, way too rapid. If the Democrats mess this one up they will have only themselves to blame. He is beatable, but they will have to bring a majority of that 60% to do it.
1
Just because wages are rising does not demonstrate that class based arguments are bunk.
There is a class war and it is over the machinery of the state and the state’s role in protecting the vulnerable from the vicissitudes of capitalism - whether wages are rising or falling.
In the US capitalism has been allowed to run away while the protections of the state have been systematically dismantled. Even in an era of rising wages such a phenomenon does more harm than good. Here is where we find the roots of both “Theyism”s to which Mr Brooks refers.
2
It's a standard conservative meme to (1) pick apart a liberal argument by saying "it's not this, it's that"... then (2) when liberals say "ok, let's work on 'that'", conservatives aren't interested.
3
David Brooks is failing to consider that class is an expression of more than “income” and “wages”. Class warfare is not the “billionaires” against “everyone else”, either; class and the class struggle is the fundamental difference of interests between (a) those who own the productive rescourves and must employ (and exploit) workers in order to be profitable, and (b) those who work with the productive rescources of their employers, and must do so to survive, as per the structure of capitalism.
This may be the golden age of “theyism”, but class is not just one of the plethora of identities that exist today—it is the basis of life, because production is what facilitates human survival. Class is how we organize our production, between owners and workers, and this organization favors the capitalist, owner of the machines and resources that allow production, because the worker is required to sell her labor to live. Thus, class is beyond income level alone; the ‘salary’ of the middle class worker can be close(ish) to that of the capitalist, but nonetheless, she is a worker whose labor produces value which is being taken, in part, for capital. Capitalism is not more or less “productive” than it has been in the past, its productivity is more diverse, hence exploitation is less obvious.
Raising “productivity” assumes there will be consumers to sustain it. With income inequality the greatest it’s been since the 1920’s and a student loans bubble ready to collapse, I’m not so sure.
"In the first place, over the past few years wages for workers toward the bottom of the income stream have been rising faster than wages for those toward the top. If the bosses have the workers by the throat, how can this be happening?"
Because states have been increasing minimum wages?
Anyway, the glaring weakness in your argument is in the squishy, imprecise reference to "over the past few years." No dates. No growth rates. And the intentional exclusion of decades of insane income growth rates for the highest earners. A few years of 3% wage growth for workers can't make up decades of rapidly increasing inequality.
Also, wages don't tell the whole story. Rich people are considered such because of their accumulated wealth. Wealth can be invested and deliver higher annual returns than one could expect from wage growth. It can also be passed to children, who can live off an inheritance without even earning a wage. Why are you leaving invest-able wealth out of equation?
And you say nothing about the cost of essential services and housing.
Sorry, but you can't disprove the "class war" theory with a few quips about productivity. It just makes you look like a sentinel outside the giant fortress the wealthy have erected to fight the war you believe doesn't exist. But you're out there waving a sword around anyway.
8
As Robert Reich points out, this column is riddled with inaccuracies that make Brooks' conclusions ridiculously wrong.
It's not true that pay at the bottom has outpaced that at the top: "CEO pay has risen 940 percent since 1978, while typical worker pay has risen a measly 12 percent."
It's also not true that more pay is the reward for higher productivity: "From 1979 to 2018, worker productivity rose by 69.6 percent, while worker compensation rose only by 11.6 percent."
If you can't even get the facts right....
7
Billionaire hedge fund managers and bankers are more productive than those who work outside the financial sector?
I don’t believe it.
When ordinary workers lose their jobs in deals that lavish massive rewards on the financial elite there’s no class warfare?
I hate the idea of class warfare, but a social contract between the wealthy and ordinary people doesn’t exist. It should.
1
David Brooks is appalled by the direction the Republican Party has taken and is a "never-Trumper," but he does not appear to have learned anything from the experience. There has indeed been a class war that has raged for several decades now, and the longer it is ignored or denied, the more intense and destructive it is going to become. The burning through of our resources and the concentration of wealth into fewer and fewer hands has completely polarized the country and made a President Donald Trump not just possible, but inevitable. The status quo that Mr. Brooks is so desperate to return to was simply not sustainable and is coming to a permanent end now, no matter who wins the Presidency or which party controls the government. The only question is whether what succeeds it will come from the authoritarian right or the populist left. Progressives realize, as Mr. Brooks apparently does not, that democracy cannot exist with this level of economic inequality -- even now, we have more the forms of self-government than the substance. Progressives realize, as Mr. Brooks does not, that the market will not solve climate change; indeed, it created the problem. Circumstances are about to force us to make many hard decisions, and if we are to have any chance of preserving our right to self rule, those decisions need to be made with the needs of ordinary people in mind, not the needs of an elite few.
4
To properly comment on this article, one would need to have actually read and perused the books and studies cited by Brooks, something that very few of us readers have ever done. However, there's something, otherwise, that does not necessitate to be based on things such as the author's knowledge and scholarship, and that is our undeniable and inextricable ability to determine--and feel-- the nature of surrounding reality, as we naturally perceive it. Therefore, otherwise, for a truer appreciation of the ontology of American reality, all we need to do is look around us and be justly appalled by the hellish misery and moral depravity and decay that engulfs the millions of Americans lives that-- because of such conditions-- suffer day in and day out thanks to the thinking, sentiment and conclusions arrived at by people such as David Brooks.
5
Guess Brooks forgot to read Marx. Capitalism RELIES on exploitation; of workers, resources, and the environment, to function. If a capitalist cannot exploit the labor force by extracting the "excess" value of their labor, they cannot turn a profit!
Also, this analysis completely overlooks how the wealthy have manipulated the tax system, government incentives, and other elements of policy to intercept public funds that otherwise may have gone to more deserving recipients. We have one whole political party captured by and dedicated to representing wealthy elites' and big businesses' interests.
5
One of David Brooks most insightful columns fairly presenting the major highlights of a large and complex economics literature going back more than a century. One has only to look at those economies that give “full rights” to their workers, e.g. socialist societies, and reflect on their differential standard of living with that of the booming U.S. to understand the merits of continuing our capitalist system. No where else in human history have so many secured such a remarkable standard of living as in the USA.
That we have numbers of billionaires ought not detract from that important observation.
1
@Peter I Berman
The U.S. economy is indeed "booming," but the fruits of that boom are being hoarded by an elite few. By any measure you may choose, the American middle class is shrinking. Wages remain stagnant even as the economy booms. Life expectancy has declined in the United States for three years running -- an unprecedented occurance. Surveys of the relative happiness of the population consistently find us at the very bottom of the list of industrialized Western countries. The "differential standard of living" you cite seems to be very much in favor of the social democracies that you deride. That we have "numbers of billionaires" does not "detract" from your observation that we have "such a remarkable standard of living" so much as it disproves it.
1
Europe, and that despite two devastating wars
The fact that capitalism is an effective system for creating wealthy countries should not blind us to its faults. It does grow economies as it creates successful entrepreneurs, but that doesn’t prevent those entrepreneurs from siphoning off greater and greater resources for their personal benefit. In fact, its entire design emphasizes that personal benefit as a means to of creating the incentives to engage in the difficult work of growing a business. It can, and does, reward selfishness, indeed that is seen as an essential factor in its worth. Yet that selfishness can, and does, sometimes cross a line into excessive indulgence, consumption for its own sake, or aggrandizement that increases economic power in order to also increase influence or political power. We can appreciate the value capitalism provides to our polity while also recognizing the dangers that allowing it to work unfettered can bring.
Some of the restraint needed should be accomplished by the actions of government: some. Some should also be provided by active social measures that emphasize the unseemly face of greed and provide a desire for capitalists to engage in charity work along with generous giving. Many capitalists, unfortunately, see any criticism as an attack that must be thwarted with a full-on response in kind. This battle isn’t the kind of centering mechanism we need. That notion of the importance of the public good does not prevent economic growth, but encourages it. Less vitriol, more good.
1
@Marshall Doris — Well said.
1
US capitalism today is like Joyce's expression "a sow that eats her farrow." We have companies such as the health insurers and pharmaceutical manufacturers that reinvest their profits simply to enrich themselves! Nobel economist Angus Deaton calls the latter process "rent-seeking." In a March 8, 2017, interview in The Atlantic, Deaton commented on the rich/poor gap in the US: "there’s all the equality that comes from redistribution (of wealth), but there’s all the inequality that comes from rent-seeking." We may describe our US economic system as democratic capitalism, but we need to acknowledge that parts of that system are broken, not working for most Americans. Bernie and his followers call for a proper role for government, a need for a humane socialistic component that regulates greed in our economy. At the 2019 launch of an IFS Review dealing with the subject of inequality in the UK and US, Deaton stated the obvious, "As it is, capitalism is not delivering to large fractions of the population.”
3
Wages for workers rose 1% per year and wages? for the wealthy rose 400%. Good math.
10
The problem with the thinking here is that it falls for "The Centrist Fallacy." Let's face it. Say it the way Bernie says it or say it another way, the middle class is a wreck. The only real issue in the whole mess is how much we will tax the rich. That's it. It needs to be a lot, lot more. There you go.
9
I am the matriarch of a large, diverse upper-middle-class family whose members have a range of work and financial success. My observation is that each of us has a different capacity to participate in the workplace. Sadly, deeply entrenched ideas in the United States of "pull yourself up by your bootstraps", Horatio Alger stories, the American dream, and the land of unlimited opportunity simply do not apply to everyone. Especially as more jobs are lost to automation, more and more of our community members will not have the skills to participate in the workplace. A just and caring society should figure out, at a minimum, how to provide adequate housing, medical insurance, food, and education for all its citizens. The rich will still be rich, but the poor will not need to be desperate or feel ashamed.
10
Nice thesis overall but the productivity argument doesn't explain why CEOs make so much more than the average employee - even, or perhaps especially, in the most productive companies.
5
This is indeed a clash of values.
It is unrealistic to believe that everyone in a society can or will ever be capable of high-skilled work. For a variety of reasons, many will never attain such high levels of skill or productivity. Does that mean they should live a hand-to-mouth existence? Republicans like David Brooks might think so, but most Democrats don't.
Lower-skilled jobs are still necessary, and the people who do them still deserve to have a decent life. The GOP is okay with all the rewards going to a few superstars while everyone else struggles to get by. We Progressives, and many more moderate Democrats don't think that's right. We want a society that works for everyone, whether they're a high-tech superstar or a waitress at the local diner, and we believe our society can get there. Democrats must not shrink from these values, no matter the challenges in getting there.
On the other hand, if the majority of Americans truly believe that only the top performers deserve health care, housing and food security, a good education, and a decent retirement, then the grand experiment really is over, and the Republic really is dead. We'll see in November.
8
@Nikki
The only disagreement I have with your comment is with your assertion that moderate Democrats join progressives in thinking it is not right that "all the rewards go to a few superstars while everyone else struggles." Like Mr. Brooks, I think centrist Democrats, the architects of neoliberal globalism, are just fine with our present system of capitalistic governance, just with a little less norm-smashing and yelling, please. The divisions between progressives and centrists in the Democratic Party are widening precisely because progressives are recognizing centrists as part of the problem rather than the solution.
1
This is what happens when liberal arts majors become pundits yet are mathematically naive. When there is a huge discrepancy in your comparative salaries you cannot use percent to make any credible conclusions. Suppose I make $20,000 a year and get a $2000 raise. That is an increase of 10%. If I compare my salary to a billionaire who made 1,000,000 last year and 1,005,000 this year that is a percent increase of 1/2 %. Yet the billionaire made 3,000 more the me! Therefore, Mr Brooks your initial premise that the lower classes salaries have risen faster than the rich is false and your conclusions are more Republican disinformation.
15
What does David Brooks mean by productivity? Superstar companies like Walmart and Amazon? Companies that can provide the cheapest goods in the fastest time? Haven’t Americans wanted to get more for less and haven’t Walmart and Amazon satisfied those desires? Does he really think that small, independent, neighborhood bookstores can compete with Amazon if they just hire more productive employees? Brooks likes to write books about morality. Doesn’t he recognize that a lot of the moral failing of this country involves greed? I think Bernie knows about this.
10
The question is can the middle class be organized politically into a kind of union with it’s own representatives to counterbalance the influence of the rich and super rich?
5
What David Brooks overlooks is the role government policy plays in the growing wealth gap between rich and poor: increasing tax breaks for the rich and decreased services and opportunities for the poor. This has nothing to do with business productivity or lack thereof -- except to the extent the wealth from that productivity buys influence in Washington. Sanders addresses that. Brooks apparently does not want to.
9
Although much of what David writes is true, I still believe the tax code is written to benefit the uber wealthy, in particular those that acquire that wealth as unearned, investment, income. Even the well educated high earners like doctors and lawyers can't take advantage of that and pay way more tax, as a percentage of their income, than the investors like Buffet and Romney.
4
Mr. Brooks makes his living writing feel-good pieces for the privileged and his intellectual contribution to this article is to ignore that a significant driver of low-end wage growth has been the upward pressure of living-wage requirements, not the recognition of overpaid CEO's their workers are more qualified than they were months ago.
The American Enterprise Institute's assertion is in direct conflict with the findings of the Economic Policy Institute and others which peg uncoupling of wages and productivity in 1979. Since then American productivity is up 69.6% and wages up just 11.6%.
Amazon raised warehouse wages because the spotlight was focused on Bezos' greed and it became a brand liability. Bezos was doing exactly as Brooks prases "increasing productivity, growing their businesses and offering great service." But clearly he was not sharing those gains with labor. This is the more common outcome as born out by the EPIs research and the growing unrest in American society.
Omitting that Trump also ran on economic populism and demonization of CEOs in his 2016 campaign makes for a convenient narrative, but the reality is that after Sanders was eliminated by the DNC Trump picked up Bernie's economic populist torch and ran with it. Many a pundit has argued this was the real movement behind Trump and that his failure to deliver on that is his weakness going into 2020. And why Sanders is the most frightening candidate for Trump, & both party establishments,
14
I think Brooks is right to point towards skill level as the basis of inequality. However his analysis fails to consider structural inequalities in the larger society which help produce these differences in the first place. For example, failure to read at grade level by fourth grade has lasting implications in individuals skill attainment. To try to remediate academic deficiencies at a late age is not the answer. The drop out rate at he community college level can be up to 75%, due largely to failure to grasp foundational academic skills. In order to prosper in the new and future job market children would need equality in educational and cultural experiences as well as nurturing of emotional and social development.
1
And that would require increased taxes, which Brooks would not support. His hypocrisy is transparent. As Mark Twain observed: “there are lies, damned lies and statistics.” Brooks and others use selective and myopic statistics to justify their more “genteel” form of class warfare, and then condemn others that are more direct.
And how have wages risen compared to investors' gains since the 2008 financial crisis? Let's see, in 2009 the minimum wage was $7.25. Ten years later, while Wall Street has soared, the minimum wage is at...$7.25
Hmmmm....
16
@Hank Linderman
"Ten years later, while Wall Street has soared, the minimum wage is at...$7.25"
That's not class warfare, that's class genocide.
re: the gap between "superstar companies and everybody else"
does it really count if the superstar companies -- amazon et al -- have been abusing their workers, evading taxes and regulations, and putting mom and pop shops out of business? small, local companies don't have such "luxury." they have to play by the rules. they have to treat their workers well. otherwise, they do go out of business. perhaps at that level, capitalism succeeds to some degree. but when you're up against these massive multinational corporations, which operate the way they do, it's not a fair game.
8
There are a lot of things I want to say in response to this column, but time is limited so I'll zone in on the biggest flaw:
Economists have absolutely no idea what constitutes productivity. Let me briefly explain.
In neoclassical theory, your wages reflect your net (or "marginal") contribution to your firm. If your marginal productivity is high, you get a high wage. If it's low, you get a low wage. This is called the marginal productivity theory. Later variations of this theory evolved into human capital theory, the idea that your wages reflect your individual skills and abilities (ie. "human capital"). I'm simplifying things for the sake of brevity, but that's the basic framework implicitly endorsed by David in this column.
But there's a problem here. What is productivity? Economists have absolutely no way of defining it separately from the very thing they want to explain: wages. They are reduced to a circular argument: productivity explains wages, but we first need to measure wages to know about productivity. A causes B, then B causes A! Productivity is difficult to compare in the real world. How do you compare the output of a farmer to that of a computer programmer?
David cited a few studies in this column. These studies just look at sales per worker and assume that this qualifies as productivity. But again, they have no way of looking at productivity apart from the firm's revenue, so they're just measuring revenue and calling it productivity.
11
Capitalist countries across northwestern Europe, many with social contracts built by Social Democrats, compete successfully every day in the global marketplace, often by exporting high value-added products.
They do not, however, allow the lion's share of the profits to accrue to a smaller and smaller percentage of people at the top.
They have decided together that all people should have access to health care, the best education they are capable of getting and that things such as child-care and pre-K programs benefit all of society.
A moderate right-of-center Christian-Democrat such as Chancellor Angela Merkel wouldn't dream of scrapping Germany's free university education system and exemplary apprenticeship programs. She knows they help sustain Germany's enviable track record exporting high value-added goods across the globe.
The U.S. clings to a far harsher model that vastly enriches those at the top (many of whom contribute little in terms of real productive activity) while leaving a vast underclass to fend for themselves against huge odds.
Conservatives continue to insist that the private system must get a piece of the action in every sphere of economic activity, including education, the prison system and healthcare even when that is shown to be less efficient.
Every country has flaws. But given a choice, I suspect well-informed Americans would opt for a more enlightened form of capitalism.
19
If us-them is too simplistic or controversial for Mr. Brooks, going to "productivity..." as a rationale is truly simplistic. Given the lack of unions to protect workers rights and the accumulation of wealth in the very top, it boggles me that Brooks does not want to see that kind of inequality. Yes, opportunities like education and training are vital and should be available to those who want, but the distinctions of class are centuries' old and are not disappearing any time soon. Rather than "shooting" the messengers, own up to the problems and try a more complex approach than harping on "productivity".
3
"In the first place, over the past few years wages for workers toward the bottom of the income stream have been rising faster than wages for those toward the top. If the bosses have the workers by the throat, how can this be happening?"
As a writer, it's your job to explore that very question because both are true. But because you didn't, I'll just add that while the federal minimum wage has stagnated, many states and large cities have increased their own minimums. It's not bosses that are making these decisions.
But then you go on to state that it's a productivity issue, that it's the workers who are actually responsible for their own criminally low wages. Great, fine, let's take that on its face and assume you're correct that productivity is a large contributing factor despite all of the evidence against your argument. Guess which candidate is the most adamant about providing education to those workers. It's still Sanders, wow!
You're also correct that many care more about social issues than the economic issues which actually impact them. That's exactly why Sanders is using this us/them fight. He recognizes the anger and resentment throughout America and is attempting to mobilize that for the greater good. And that's exactly why he'll win.
7
I disagree that aligning with Bernie Sanders is political suicide. What some older folks, Brooks included, don't see is that younger people's world view is very different from their own. The system is no longer perceived to be fair. Sanders may actually be one of two democratic candidates who are voicing the true sense of frustration of many average people. I believe Sanders to be the obly democratic candidate who can appeal to these people and win a general election against Trump.
Furthermore, let's not simply look at statistics about rising wages; let's look at people's experience as to ability to get by. A basic necessity, affordable health care, is just not there for everyone, and those who don't have it are increasingly at risk of financial doom. They are not thriving a little more as productivity increases.
9
This analysis does not address the issue of automation. In many cases businesses become more productive not because their employees are working harder or working smarter, but because they've replaced workers with technology. To glibly assert that the answer to that problem is better education is to ignore a host of complications.
Maybe the real issue us that we are not placing enough value on the things that would make life better for us all. For example, parks and walking trails require human labor and provide healthy entertainment for all, yet they are severely underfunded while businesses that exaggerate their potential benefits to a community are given large tax breaks.
3
David ignores a primary reason lowest paid workers are now seeing par raises: local governments have been mandating higher minimum wages.
Capitalism is the race to the top for efficiency and productivity, and a race to the bottom for costs, including worker safety and consumer protection. That is why we need democratic government and unions.
David seems to conclude that government should not be a check against pure capitalism. But that’s one leg of government defending the people from harm.
Socialism is not Stalinism. Many seem to forget that EU socialism offers many valuable solutions, should we only remove our blinders.
6
Not only are the wealthy in possession of a greater share of the country’s wealth than at nearly any other time, they are using that wealth to make laws that favor wealth concentration and regressive tax systems that transfer ever more wealth to ever smaller numbers of the ultra-wealthy, not to mention laws that virtually establish fraud and theft from the poor. How can we not be concerned about this? How can David Brooks frame this as normal and benign? Only by looking at a tiny part of the whole- ignoring the losses due to inflation, as one comment has pointed out, completely ignoring the insidious effect that money now has on our political system, only by ignoring the voices of people suffering in despair at the loss of housing, health and dignity that this system has brought about.
5
Brooks has separately written about the demographic time bomb that will wipe out the GOP in 10 years or so, as millennials take vote share from departing boomers. Millennials are not allergic to socialism or class war. So we might see change then, even on Brooks' own premises. But Sanders and Warren will be gone and I don't see much of a leadership pipeline behind their positions.
1
Somewhere in The New York Times's style book must be the phrase, "Whatever a pundit writes about America, it must be preceeded by at least (but not limited to) two grafs of condemnation of Donald Trump." And so, in an extraordinary piece, Mr. Brooks tells us that the president is guilty of some sort of sin--and then spend the rest of column telling us (never explicitly) that the administration has gotten something massively right.
Does something not quite add up here?
2
Brooks makes good points. But! The question not often asked is, does the economic system exist to serve the people, or do we exist to serve the economic system? Last time I checked, Capitalism is not God. We use out modified Capitalism because it is not as bad as other systems. Also, why is immediate productivity so worshiped? Its only the dollars per hour. The government has a great deal of influence on many prices which affect that. So that is a bit of misdirection. The system works by many rules, big and small. These rules strongly favor the accumulation of Capital. That's why we call it Capitalism. Various means of control must mitigate the extreme wealth disparities. Its a balancing act. Ultimately, human beings as well as the natural world are more important than an economic system. This truth is rooted in Ethics, in Religion, and in plain common sense.
Why does a financial person who exploits small differences in equity prices and gets rich elicit so much power and respect? How about teachers, doctors, construction workers, etc., people who produce goods and services? What about the whole rest of the natural world, without which we don't even exist?
8
"In the first place, over the past few years wages for workers toward the bottom of the income stream have been rising faster than wages for those toward the top. If the bosses have the workers by the throat, how can this be happening?"
I would love to see some qualification for this claim. Is Brooks leaning on wages rather than earnings, and does that not obscure the scale of wealth accumulation among the elite? Sanders and Warren recognize this subterfuge, it's the whole reason why their progressive agendas rest on a wealth tax as a foundation.
Hard to believe that anyone who lives in New York City could deny the existence of phenomenological inequity. It doesn't take a master of deductive reasoning to recognize that professional managerial class elites own homes while workers struggle to make rent on 300 sqft studios.
Would love to see the Elizabeth Bruenig response to this drivel.
10
Oh David,
The exploitation by the rich is not only in the economics of big business but in separate educational, housing, health care systems that deny access to those in most need.
.
6
Anybody agreeing with this column should check out the Youtube of Rep. Katie Porter challenging Jamie Dimon, the billionaire heading J.P. Morgan, over how much a teller at his bank would earn. Porter showed how such a person, if she were a single mother and budgeting very carefully, would still end up owing $567 at the end of each and every month. It's not just the fast-food workers and Amazon employees who are underpaid. Something is very wrong with this country when such inequality is considered unremarkable.
11
Mr. Brooks, you lost me when you failed to recognize that one of the principle reasons wages are growing faster at the lowest income levels is because of the number of states that have adopted higher minimum wages.
7
There certainly is class warfare. It the owning class vs. those who have only there labor to sell on the market. Classic capitalism says that businesses exist ONLY to return profits to the owners. The Reagan revolution told businesses that paternalism was obsolete. Ever since working people, even college educated working people, have suffered while the owning people have amassed Robber Baron wealth and control over government.
PS Brooks asks why are the lowest wage employees seeing gains. The answer is government mandated higher minimum wages.
13
We need the trickle-up force of UBI. It won't solve income inequality, but it's an idea whose time has come, particularly with advancing AI technology. I think even those complaining about "theyisms" could get on board with a new approach.
5
Mr. Brooks leaves out a lot of relevant facts such as the working class wage increases have occurred in states that raised the minimum wage, the onslaught in the last 40 years against unions, less funding by states for higher education, the elevation of stockholder value over workers, the failure of the federal government to prosecute anti-trust laws and the flattening of our progressive tax structure. Mr. Brooks sees no class war because he is in the class that is winning and waging the war.
12
It is sad to see David Brooks step up to the plate and pretend that armchair macroeconomics is the proper way to gauge social justice. His analysis would be laughable if it's falsehood were not so destructive. Swing and a miss.
9
I am disappointed that Mr. Brooks does not do some basic Math. With his first statement he spreads the fallacy that those at the bottom of the income stream are somehow improving their situation faster because their wages are rising faster (percentage wise) than those at the top. It is really easy to increase your wages by 20% when you are only making $10 an hour, really hard to increase a Million +$ salary by more than 5%. Additionally, by not highlighting the effect of the shift in corporations away from being good stewards of society by paying workers reasonable wages, but claiming that their only responsibility is to shareholders, has done so much more to hurt the average worker in major corporations.
When too many families are struggling to manage their lives with two incomes and few benefits, there has been an extreme shift from what used to be considered the American Dream, the blame lies entirely at the feet of the capitalist corporate structure we currently accept.
15
David Brooks, Bernie Sanders is addressing the fundamental system rigging that has grasped the hold of both political parties after FDR. Bernie Sanders presents a vision that resonates with many Americans across the political spectrum. We live in an Oligarchy Corporate Socialist society and Bernie's argument that we should have a Democratic Socialist society that actually ensures a progressive tax system, unrigged electoral process, and social safety nets that have been under attack by both political parties. This idea goes back to our founding fathers like Thomas Paine. In conclusion, Bernie is as American as the American Pie and smear hit pieces like these will not resonate with the 99%.
12
I understand that David Brooks would be concerned with some of Bernie's rhetoric - the same rhetoric that does energize his substantial number of supporters- but I think that he is missing a more profound point. John Kenneth Galbraith over sixty years ago in his seminal work "The Affluent Society" wrote of a post War American that was great with the production of goods, but seriously wanting in the social infrastructure that would deliver a truly better life to the great majority of Americans. Galbraith wrote of growing income inequality, which is of course much more profound now then it was in the late 1950's. I am not a Bernie supporter (though I will be if he is nominated). Bernie is not a "socialist" in the common imagination but a Social Democrat similar to the party that, for many years, ruled the most dynamic capitalist country in the post WWII era. That is Germany, a country that has also taken seriously Galbraith's call for a balance between production, productivity and social needs. Galbraith knew that the achievement of one doesn't automatically achieve the satisfying of the other. As a staple for Econ 101 in Mr. Brooks' student days, I am sure that he read "The Affluent Society". Its a pity he doesn't remember it.
10
@Milliband
Good points. Many people nowadays should read Mr. Galbraith - his book on the Depression also (The Great Crash of 1929). Source material from a master economist.
["The Affluent Society" is credited with popularizing the term "conventional wisdom" also. (Galbraith) "sharpened its meaning to narrow it to those commonplace beliefs that are also acceptable and comfortable to society, thus enhancing their ability to resist facts that might diminish them." (wiki)]
2
We have had one populist firebug for four years burning bridges of communication and decency and inclusiveness and using incendiary language to stay in office. We do not need another one.
Bernie Sanders has been peddling his Socialist agenda forever and he is fundamentally another populist firebug with a zeal to burn down the existing system and replace it with his version of Socialism. He has achieved very little in his life other than becoming a senator from one of the smallest states in the USA.
The moderate Democrats have a much better chance of effecting change that will give true economic benefits to more USA citizens than Bernie Sanders ever will. And the idea of him as Commander in Chief of the military or him negotiating complex trade deals or bringing the country together is laughable. Let the old Bolshevik wave his firebrand as a Senator and elect a moderate Democrat as President.
1
Trump is not wrong when he says that coastal cultural elites have benefited more than others. So have larger cities that are not located on the coasts. This is a by-product of aggressive free trade policies that were implemented too quickly. Of course the coasts are going to benefit that's where the ports are located. The warehouses, the financial centers, etc. I don't think conservatives intended for the coastal liberal elites to benefit the most when they advocated for these economic policies. But that's exactly what has happened. The country is split between coastal economies and everyone else. And between the higher educated and the less educated. If you live in Elkins, WVa and have a PhD it's not helping you or Elkins. What's moving to SF going to do for Elkins. Nothing. There has been way too much obsession with inflation, cutting costs, investment, business and not enough on the results that actually benefit help. Big business itself is not going to solve our problems any more than the government can.
3
I don't necessary, for once, totally disagree with Mr. Brooks, however he totally misses the issue. The class warfare is being waged directly by the Republican Party-massive tax breaks for the wealthy/corporations; dismantliing regulations; opposing min. wage hikes; attacking unions; opposing every effort to provide healthcare to the poor and middle class; firing-up the working white class to hate everybody else. Of course, it's largely funded by wealthy interests.
Bernie is somewhat of a demogague-vitually all noise and little substance (miles better than Trump however). He and Warren are going to make it quite difficult to defeat Trump.
2
We need to remember, David was once on the other side. But he had some epiphany many years ago and became a conservative. For him to change back, even in the face of all the problems with income inequality that we have, David would look foolish. It would hurt his bank account and standing among his peers. So for these many years he has been grasping any any straw that would confirm that he made the right decision. Her proposes solutions that are just as impractical, but worse, long term when we have a problem right now.
I don't know why I even bother to read his rationalizations anymore.
5
This is actually one of Brooks' better columns. He is absolutely correct here. The only people who having a class war are the AOC/Sanders crowd who, through technology, found out how the other half lives and compared their own lives to the rich's and concluded that they were being shafted and deserve more. The problem with this group of progressives is that they only see the end result. They don't ever see the insane hours worked, family disputes over money, high divorce rates, high substance abuse rates, nasty sibling rivalries and other problems that the rich do experience. The progressives also don't see the money run out within 2 generations (I've actually seen that).
Ahh, so it's all about productivity.
Gosh, if we worker bees simply will work harder, smarter and faster, we can solve all of America's problems of inequity and maybe all of the other problems we collectively face.
Gee thanks, David. Your solution will surely appeal to Trump's spare-me-the-details-base voters, but the devil-is-in-the-details rest of us view it as simplistically ridiculous.
16
What about people doing absolutely necessary jobs that don't require much skill, like collecting trash? Personally I think they should be well paid for doing such an unpleasant job. Trash collectors improve the quality of life in a community. Hedge fund managers don't.
15
I shudder to think what would happen if Bernie should become President - he gives the rest of the Democrats a bad name, and makes easier for Trump to be reelected.
1
The election of Trump and all he represents is a "come to Jesus" moment for David Brooks. I'm just not sure which Jesus he is trying to get to. Trump challenges norms for everyone with a conscience.
1
Hey, Mr. Brooks, all I want for my children, really, is guaranteed medical insurance that pays their claims when they get sick or injured, no matter how sick or injured, and doesn't take a quarter of their modest paychecks while they're healthy and able to work. Sure, it would be nice if my 35-yr.-old, hard-working son wasn't still paying off his student loans (daughter finally paid off hers) and could use that money for a new car payment or a nicer apartment, maybe some day buy a home. Imagine that! If wanting and getting these things is "class warfare," I'm in the fight.
10
Okay, David. Given that the four Democrats in the lead seem inappropriate (two socialists plus one man too old and another too young), and given that Donald Trump also seems inappropriate, who are you for? How about the trailing Democrat contender, the senator from Minnesota. She seems rational and smart.
I am 86, almost 87, so I have no skin in the game. For the first time in my voting life I failed to vote for either candidate last time, I may live long enough to think about it this time. So, for whom?
Thanks for listening.
1
Tell ya what. I'll start working a little faster and harder when corporate America & the CEOS who run them start paying their fair share in taxes.
14
After the 2008 Depression, please help me understand how these productive, successful businesses and financial institutions have not contributed to a "Hillbilly Elegy", / "One percenters v. everyone else" mentality. To minimize Bernie's message is to forget that moderate Democrats have more than tried to play ball with the corporate right and its' legislative bought buddies in both parties. How did that go?
With the utmost respect, check your privilege,please, David Brooks.
9
Woe is me. Now the huddled, unwashed peasants think they should be earning enough money to survive or that their access to healthcare shouldn’t depend on the depth of their wallets? What is this world coming to?
16
Anyone who refuses to recognize the obvious and obscene class war in today's society has nothing of value to say, except to offer excuses to maintain the status quo and blame the victim.
13
Another "reasoned" argument from a old, affluent, privileged white guy (I'm one too!) telling the huddled masses why they should not believe their eyes and ears for what they know from living their own lives. Their lives has been deteriorating steadily since the Laffer Curve Regan Years.
Thanks for nothing, David. We have all of your kind of reasoning that we need from the leader of the rest of your band of denialism and bait-and-switch: The Lying Corrupt President.
Political pressure in raising the minimum wage is why blue collar income is raising. Not by the goodness of oligarchs who run America--run it into the ground.
9
Of course, such defenses of capitalism always run afoul of defining the basics such as "productivity." Who is more productive--a parasitical Wall Street manipulator whose shenanigans suck out money for the 1% and drive the system into a recession, or an aide in a nursing home who sits beside someone without relatives dying of Alzheimer's and provides the only love and comfort that person gets? I know where I would put my money if I were able. The system is rigged to define productivity as rapacious zero-sum short-term money manipulation rather than the serving of important human needs.
8
Thank you Oriflamme, well said.
1
This was in 2006. It's gotten a lot worse since then.
“There’s class warfare, all right,” Mr. Buffett said, “but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”
9
The fallacy Mr. brooks is that all you consider is money! You advocate this rat race that kills young executives or their families because they have no time to devote to their homes and children. What about quality of life? Even middle class and working class people have weeks of vacations in most European countries, a support system for working mothers, secure healthcare etc. That is neither socialism nor welfare. It’s the human right to live a decent life in ademocratic country, which is not not only devoted to productivity, gettin more money and consumption!
5
I am disappointed in David's article. He usually shows a more balanced and objective viewpoint. Here he does not seem to have his feet on the ground, in the real world.
4
A shift is needed is needed after decades of voo doo economics that gifted the uber wealthy and fleeced the poor and middle class. That obscene culture needs to be dismantled, claimed from their cold, clinching hands, as their cowardly eyes dart back and forth from savings accounts to secret Cayman Island bank accounts; as their hoarding hands gather shabby chic couches for their yacht; as their third house sits empty, decorated with security cameras; as their Teslas silently glide form Whole Foods to the Winery to the downtown suite; as their 5k handbags are tossed aside ; angry now, their culture threatened, their culture being attacked! at war!...Brooks says. Please.
4
First I would ask Dave have you always been from a family that has money to take care of your needs? If the answer is well yes then I would say then you just can not make that call. I believe you just don't understand what it is like to make the choice to eat or pay your insurance, so the least the upper crust can do and should do is back healthcare for the rest of us. You see there will always be the rich and powerful people, some security dealing with conditions we have no control over healthcare for all would help paid yes by those that have so much they must be forced because otherwise they just do not care.
3
More transparently false equivalence Mr. Brooks? I guess you have been sleeping during the last fifty years it has taken for the Republican party to morph into the John Birch Society. The billionaire class has taken more wealth for themselves and they have employed the Republican party to change the laws and legal interpretations to allow the billionaire class to have out-sized influence on our political system. Their corruption of our courts has allowed racist state legislatures to manipulate our electoral process in order to perpetuate Republican control.
2
Curious from what Ivory Tower this was written? Wow this is actually scary. David doesn't realize that the wages for the poorest workers is going up because Bernie Sanders and others are pushing for an increase in the minimum wage to $15. That and a lot of immigrant workers who were paid way less are now being replaced with workers who are being paid more. What a bizarre column.
4
David Brooks seems to be less able to understand the pragmatism of socialism as a need to remedy the shortcomings of the impoverished classes of people, and stuck in conservative thinking without change. New thinking never seems to occur to him. Ideas of conservatism existed unabated in Victorian times and one need only read a few Dickens novels to understand the horror of what conservative thinking brings about. People are not born with a sense of personal responsibility, but have it inculcated into them. They do not possess it, so forcing them to rely on it will fail, proven to be true over generations. We must interfere in some lives in order to give them the tools that they need to become self-responsible, since it is not in the genes.
Conservative thinkers continue to act as if babies drop out of the womb with all of the knowledge they need, and we know this is bogus, backward thinking. It has been tested. If David Brooks would do one thing right in his life, he would tout Planned Parenthood in every column and shout about family planning from every soap box he could climb on to, since unplanned children in poor families, among the intellectually deficient masses 'out there,' is at the root of every social problem in the world. Overpopulation causes the climate change, due to the over-demand for energy, and the population grows the demand. David Brooks is just one more intellectually vacuous conservative who stops thinking at the limits of his conservative convictions.
2
An essay with a key premise of productivity without any mention of automation? And that is just one of many of Brooks' fallacies.
2
When Trump gets re-elected, God help us, we can thank Bernie, again.
1
Mr. Brooks’s writing is set at the “Spin Cycle”: how do we spin the data so they come out favoring the status quo? Would it that he could write at a “Soul Cycle” setting, one that considers the welfare of people, not corporations.
3
Mr Brooks,
I invite you to dine with me in your favorite NYC restaurant to discuss your article.
I am significantly better educated than you are in economics, political science, logic, political philosophy and in particularly game theory, my Harvard doctorates subject. I am wealthy and have a family all educated at Harvard and Yale. I ran a highly successful business at the firm that produces Treasury Secretaries en masse, including the current abomination.
We can discuss Marx and John Rawls. We can talk about democratic socialism, Eduard Bernstein and evolutionary socialism. We can talk about Alec Nove and feasible socialism. We can talk about Sweden, Denmark and Norway. I spent much time with the Wallenberg business Investor, Statoil, AP Moller- Maersk at the highest levels advising them in strategy, enterprise risk management and capital structure optimization. All within a social democratic context.
If you are up to it, please respond and we’ll figure out a time and place.
Sincerely.
5
Unfortunately, some people don't want to put in the effort to become more productive and more valuable to our economy. If you are lazy or incompetent, you need another solution.
+ The DOW:
2017 – 19819.78
2018 – 23,062.40
2019 – 28,583.44
– Gain of 44.2%
Median Household Income:
2017 – $62,626
2018 – $63,179
2019 – $63,688
– Gain of 1.6%
Mininum Wage:
2017: $7.25
2018: $7.25
2019: $7.25
21
"No, Virginia, there is no class war."
David Brooks, who usually preaches the value of character, is now conflating those who support a candidate he doesn't like with children who believe in Santa Claus.
It appears that he has given up on civility and is now pursuing a Trump-esque strategy of divisiveness.
3
Brooks, as usual, takes on the framing of the Oppressor, where it's always the peasant's fault.
There IS NO class war because, oh my, what would we in the upper class DO should the riff-raff actually catch on to how we've robbed them for generations?
There IS a class war, Bernie's on the side of the oppressed, and there's a whole lot of us.
Enough to outvote the elite and their sycophants?
Perhaps. Stay tuned...
6
All of this reasoned response, and none of it necessary.
The pattern of all David Brooks columns is simple: by the end of the essay, rich people turn out to be right, and everyone else is wrong. Sometimes he has to strain and do some intricate logical flip-flopping, but he always comes to the same conclusion. Find me a column of Brooks where this is not true.
2
“Communism forgets that life is individual. Capitalism forgets that life is social, and the kingdom of brotherhood is found neither in the thesis of communism nor the antithesis of capitalism but in a higher synthesis. It is found in a higher synthesis that combines the truths of both.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.
3
Mr Brooks, "Corporatism" is not "Capitalism". It is a malignant tumor in "Capitalism".
9
One thing you failed to point out, Edward Lazear's findings failed to mention that wage increases failed to keep up with inflation!
Must have been an oversight on your part?
2
Great. Brooks has undermined his own aim by further stoking a class war.
1
dave, there is no class war. the rich have won. its over. middle america values trump class??? middle america has demonstrated they have no values. its an identity front posing as patriotic christians. the progressives are just looking for a few crumbs. and from your article, me thinks you are okay with being somewhat more generous with the crumbs. thank you
1
Trump’s arguments make sense, Just look at higher education, Crazy liberal profs run the place and that is why more and more so-called educated white voters, their former students are going left,
But Brooks destroys Bernie’s arguments, period.
When the minimum wage in our state of Pennsylvania is still $7.25 per hour, how can an employee gain from their productivity? Please read "Capital in the 21st Century" by Thomas Picketty, and this opinion in your newspaper https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/15/opinion/democracy-inequality-thomas-piketty.html.
You persist in hanging onto some vision of working America that has gone the way of pensions, health and other benefits and safety protections for workers. Go out and talk to workers in Pennsylvania and Ohio.
3
If there is no class war, please explain why the fired president of Boeing got a $60 million golden parachute.
5
@David J. Krupp
Thank you, David! Your example is exhibit A with what is wrong with executive pay and income inequality in America. A CEO should be compensated based on the value of his services and managerial skills to help a company grow and profit. In the past year the stock price of Boeing has been as high as $440, currently the stock is at about $332 a share. In other worlds the firm's market cap has decreased by 25%.
On what planet is it reasonable, ethical or moral for an executive to reduce the value of a corporation by tens of billions dollars to walk away with a $60 million dollar severance package?
"The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don't. You have no choice! You have OWNERS!."
GEORGE CARLIN
8
What is Brooks producing, exactly? Are we paying him?
8
Thumbs up, we’ll stated!
Have you bothered to notice all the people living under the freeways and beside railroad tracks? Looks like a class war to anyone that has eyes.
“There’s class warfare, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.” - Warren Buffet
5
David may change his tune when the Times replaces him with a "Brooks" AI algorithm representing the distillation of his body of work, literary style, and Google/Facebook/Amazon profile. Capitalism only exploits workers until it can replace them entirely.
3
Thank you David Brooks for having the courage to write what the majority of NY Times readers will consider heresy. No surprise that virtually all the NY Times picks pillory your piece. Bernie's rants are text book socialist theater delivered with the appropriate level of anger and arm-waving, demonizing the faceless corporation and the evils of capitalism. Refreshing to read a thoughtful piece as opposed to another partisan rant reverberating the unfairness of economic success in the socialist echo-chamber.
Mr. Brooks has once again angered me. He endorses all the downsides to unfettered "crapitalism" , and is blind to the pain of the people . He reveals all the tone death aspects the 1% live by.
3
Amazing. David Brooks gives a Tory hurrumph retort to to two salient facts about American inequality: the American welfare state is but a skeleton and poor Americans are the poorest of all as a kleptocratic plutocracy grabs everything.
2
Wages? Only serfs get paid with "wages."
"Bosses," to use Brooks's term, get paid with equity growth, cash bonuses, deferred compensation . . . the list of executive perks goes on, as anyone who has actually ever worked in business knows.
Yes, there has been some wage growth at the bottom. But anyone who is a VP or higher at a major company receives 50% or more of their compensation in equity, not wages. And the value of that equity in recent years had grown WAY faster than wage data reflects. So these old-timey metrics on which Brooks is basing his analysis are useless.
I fear he is right about Bernie though. Ask any millennial what they think of the policies of the McGovern administration. That they won't get the joke prove's Brooks's basic point better than anything Brooks actually says in this column.
1
Well, well, I really don't think that Bernie Sanders advocates socialism, i.e. socialism in the way it is talked about by Fox News and generally in the GOP.
In terms of wealth accumulation, I believe something like 90 % of all new wealth has gone to the richest 1% of the American population during the last 35 years.
This is a huge problem, especially if one pairs it with Citizen United. The playing field is so severely rigged that the basic functioning of the American democracy is threatened.
What Bernie wants is some kind of Scandinavian social democratic project. Then we are not talking dogmatic socialism à la Stalin and the Soviet Union, we are talking a mixed economy and expanded welfare systems.
Brooks is dead wrong.
10
I haven't seen anyone mention that will the average productivity of the American worker has increased 70 percent since the late seventies the average wage has increased only 12 percent. https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/
The fact is that the most economically powerful Americans have by hook and by crook pocketed most of the gains in our economy's productivity. For example, laws and regulations called for by industry, the Chamber of Commerce and others have decreased the ability of workers to join together at the workplace to advocate for higher wages. Laws have been passed forcing workers to take their complaints to an arbitrator picked and paid for by the employer. Often they have also flagrantly violated labor laws with little consequence. Laws ensure that workers earnings are taxed at a higher rate than capital gains. The list literally goes on and on.
2
You've got to be kidding. "In the first place, over the past few years wages for workers toward the bottom of the income stream have been rising faster than wages for those toward the top. If the bosses have the workers by the throat, how can this be happening?"
Because CEOs are now earning 300 times more than their workers -- not 30 times more, which used to be the norm -- while workers' wages have not risen substantially for 30 years. We have reached a point of absurdity in terms of income inequality, and hoodwinked workers are finally, finally, after all these years, realizing that the trickle down economy has not benefitted anyone but those inhabiting the top percentiles. They are finally starting to organize and protest. It is going to take a huge grassroots movement to alter our path, though. The downward trajectory of the past decades has hit bottom and we are jouncing across the surface of a vast and deep crater. People are finally fed up. In 2019 I earned less than I made at my first job out of college in 1989. There is nowhere to go but up. All around me, educated people my age are finding themselves out of work, struggling to get by on multiple gig jobs, or laboring for the same wage they earned 30 years ago, only this time without any health insurance benefits. You are out of touch with the reality of many, many people, David. Get out of your little circle of pundits and go talk to some other people for a change.
3
@Allison
Try 450 times. I have to continuously update my data too, as this appears to be exponential.
1
@Allison oh, don’t waste your breath and strength in David Brooks! Those sorts are provocateurs who’s whole livelihood is to peddle nonsense on behalf of certain communities.
I'm 53 years old. In my life, I've watched the Democratic Party move rightward ever since Reagan and in that time the wealth gap has grown through tax cuts to the wealthy and corporate hand outs. I am not afraid of medicare for all, or other proposals to help balance the scales and help Americans stay out of poverty. Medicare for all is not as radical as the very concept of medicare when it was created. It's been a strong program and it is more cost effective than private health insurance companies. The problem with Sanders is he makes a lot of sense. We can improve the quality of life for all Americans, not just predator billionaires. And we can address the climate crisis, but this too will take funding and an advocate who is not afraid of change.
5
Winning or losing the election is of paramount importance, but the fact that Americans do not understand what is happening and thus continue to vote like trees in a forest for the axe because it is made of wood, remains a truly distressing matter.
America is a capitalist country. It's government whether democratic or republican, is capitalist, and all policies are executed for the benefit of the interests of capital. Thus public policies created with good intentions (perhaps?)- e.g. health initiatives such as medicare, medicaid, the ACA - always succumb to ever increasing economic extraction by private concerns feeding at the public teat. Insurance and drug prices are important factors in the incredible 18% GDP cost of health in the US, but both are overshadowed by the cost of service itself.
If we measure gains in productivity in terms of how few people can generate maximal private financial capital, failing to take into account the stripping of social capital that backing such policies entails, then we are headed into a very unpleasant place. Mr. Sanders may not be electable, he may be overly invested in the invective of the industrial era, but he is right in this respect: the game is rigged.
2
I think the explanation here is undermined by the observation that automation is driving increases in productivity. And since the productivity gap (between humans and machines) will only grow larger, human productivity will be increasingly of marginal practical significance. That sounds depressing. But aren't the ideas presented here looking backwards instead of forwards?
1
David Brooks speaks like it's possible for a person to just work harder and eventually earn the billions and billions of dollars that belong to the CEOs of Amazon and Facebook and such. The fact is, there are people in this economy who have way too much money, and there is basically no way for the rest of us to compete with them. That's a rigged system. Not everyone gets a fair shot, David. If we can do something to make it more fair, we should.
3
I agree with David Brooks that Bernie Sanders is trying to sell smoke and mirrors bosterred by a phony "Class War." Sanders is a lifelong politician with fewer accomplishments than a high school class President. But the sad truth is that the world is divided into two group: Those going somewhere and those going nowhere. It starts with parents not caring about their children education and moral upbringing. I don't mean religion but the morality of the individual. It starts which parent who believed that people with a good education are elitists and somehow inferior. It starts with the feeling that "I am entitled you are not." This is what the Conservivice Christians preach and the Republican Party sells. On the other hand the far left preaches that if you are not well educated, not wealthy, not "environmentally" committed you are the enemy. Both sides a terrible wrong.
@Jeff
Well, how about receiving a $90K helicopter bill because your wife threatened a heart attack with a second child, after learning her mother was ill and wouldn’t meet the child. $90K? You people ought to be in jail!
1
If Brooks wants to make the argument that workers are more productive and are therefore getting better compensated, it's a wonder that he stated the figures he did.
Between 1989 and 2017 skilled and unskilled workers wages went up between 20 and 30 percent? Well between those same years inflation went up 50%
An increase in worker productivity means an increase in worker wages? Perhaps the most famous graph showing the immensity of this falsehood is omitted. And for good reason, it shows that since the 1980's increases in productivity have been historically decoupled from rising wages.
Brooks is making the same argument that the robber barons of old made, namely: things are better now than they have been, so don't think things could be better than they are. There's a reason Trump was elected and Bernie is popular, and it sure isn't because the evidence that our economy is working for everyone is self-evident.
2
I always enjoy Mr. Brook´s thought-provoking opinions. The central argument of this piece seems to be that capitalism encourages higher productivity and that is the holy grail of our earthly existence.
If one accepts that and reads on, the solution includes, to paraphrase him:
"The real solution, therefore, is... by having better schools and better vocational training, ..., by making sure superstar businesses don’t use lobbyists to lock in their advantages."
Aren't those precisely two of the issues which Senator Sanders is trying to address?
6
Mr. Brooks, your Ayn Rand is showing.
11
David writes: "As Michael Strain of the American Enterprise Institute puts it, capitalism is doing what it’s supposed to do. It’s rewarding productivity with pay, and some people and companies are more productive. If you improve worker bargaining power, that may help a bit, but over the long run people can’t earn what they don’t produce."
The obvious problem is what to do with the people who are less productive through no fault of their own. Capitalism is fine if all we care about is productivity. I'm not entirely opposed to capitalism, I just don't want us to forget about humanism. That's why I consider myself a Rawlsian Socialist
@Matt Mullen
The fact he uses the American Enterprise Institute as a reference tells you everything you need to know. The institute is basically an economic think tank for the American conservative movement.
The current economic state of America has totally repudiated the theories of "Trickle Down Economics." Tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations simply do not trickle down, which is one of reasons we have economic inequality in America. Another reason is that the return on capital has become significantly higher than the return on labor. That is a fundamental paradigm shift in economic fundamentals of the American economy due to globalization and technological advances.
David Brooks is also being intellectually dishonest when he discusses wage growth. He uses wage growth vs. productivity growth to justify his premises.
Anybody who studied economics knows that wage growth should be adjusted for inflation to properly evaluate it. People who are familiar for wage growth in America know for the past 30 to 40 years inflation adjusted wage growth has been flat for all American wage earners except for in the top 20%.
1
Sounds like a rehash of the old toothpaste conundrum justifying capitalism and meritocracy: there are twelve brands of toothpaste on the store shelves. After a while there are only six and so on. Apparently the market filtered out the losers and only one product or service survived and flourished. No mention of waste or losers punishment.
I’m not a Bernie supporter but he consistently and clearly screams and hammers on the themes of disproportion and promotes ideas and ideals. Medicare for all, free college, convert military funds to infrastructure, a green deal.
Respect.
2
typical David Brooks covering for the far right. The reality is any one who has associated with normal working class American has seen the war on them from the monied interests. The slashing of wages, the destruction of the compact that used to mean growing productivity meant increased pay. The elements like student debt, and the undermining of the Consumer Protection bureau.
3
David,
"In the first place, over the past few years wages for workers toward the bottom of the income stream have been rising faster than wages for those toward the top. If the bosses have the workers by the throat, how can this be happening?"
Thanks for the question. I know owners who wish they could pay more but the business competition and their desire to be successful is often at odds with that desire. This dissonance leads to what has become rationalizations prevalent in this culture to justify the historically low wages. The owners I know don't want to anybody by the throat.
But more simply might the "fast" rising of wages for low level workers be a function of just how little they were being paid? And might the incomes of those at the top be increased greatly by even a relatively small rate increase? The poor will still be left with income insecurity that is not felt acutely by other levels in our society.
The increase for the poor is insufficient and will remain so if capitalism remains unfettered. How can we adjust and use capitalism to make substantive changes. Is the trickle down we embarked on in the 80's really the answer? After almost 40 years of it I still see trickle down as an excuse for turning our attention away from the vulnerable.
I enjoyed your "look back" at the coming decade. Did you imagine a capitalism that at its heart put the vulnerable first?
You're right. Capitalism is doing what it’s supposed to do: rewarding those with capital at the expense of those who don't. One quick look at income and wealth inequality trajectories in recent decades makes that clear.
I agree that the cartoon us-versus-them stuff is harmful as rhetoric and super harmful when we elect a president who foists it on the nation. We do of course have plenty of real us-versus-thems, and we do even kinda have some that look like class distinctions, even if they are not so significant or do not play well in elections. In the interests of intellectual honesty this ought to be mentioned. Our lower class does for instance tilt strongly toward the same call-to-order phenomenon (when other lower class folks try to improve their lot) that lower classes all around the world exhibit. Our upper class does believe its kids are innately more brilliant and gifted than everybody else's kids, just as upper classes all around the world do. Our middle class does aspire, as middle classes everywhere do, to become upper class. Sometimes I think Sanders and his minions look a bit too much like the textbook demagogue and his minions. I will of course vote for Sanders if he is the nominee. He like all of the other Democratic candidates is worlds better than the elephant seal in chief.
1
Mr. Brooks says all will be fine by "having better schools and better vocational training...." Conservatives have been chanting this refrain for many decades, but tellingly resist actually implementing it. We have no reason to think this anything other than akin to the old "your check is in the mail" dodge, not to mention the reams of research suggesting a lack of worker training is not primarily what keeps poor people poor and wages for the middle class stagnant. The jig is up Mr. Brooks, and people want meaningful change now.
1
And there is Bernie Sanders’s class-war Theyism: The billionaires have rigged the economy to benefit themselves and impoverish everyone else. Umm...haven't they? Income inequality is roughly the same as it was before the Great Depression, DAVID:
https://www.nber.org/papers/w25462
https://www.gao.gov/assets/710/700836.pdf
https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/acs/news/data-releases/2018/release.html#par_textimage_copy
https://eml.berkeley.edu/~saez/saez-UStopincomes-2017.pdf
How much more data do you need, DAVID?
Is this your idea of American greatness?
9
Apparently you want to keep our cruel health care system. The insurance and drug companies can get away with anything. Why? Because people don’t have a choice. It’s often health care or death. In economic terms, that means health care has an inelastic demand curve. Demand remains constant regardless of supply. So prices don’t settle at the juncture of supply and demand. This does NOT fit with our free-enterprise, capitalist system. Don’t believe me? Ask your colleague Paul Krugman. I think he’d back my Econ 101 analysis. We need government single-payer, like all other civilized nations. Go Bernie!
4
So, it's only the laggard companies that are not as productive that explain why their employees' wages are stagnant?
But what if that cohort of companies happens to be very, very large -- and it seems to be. How can that fact remain unaddressed in a column like this??
Here is the PEW headline: "For most Americans, Real Wages have Barely Budged in Decades." (From 2018.)
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-us-workers-real-wages-have-barely-budged-for-decades/
You say "vocational training." Well, that sounds good.
But it doesn't answer the question as to why the market, i.e. capitalism, hasn't resolved this problem, if doing so would make both owners and workers so much more money.
Maybe the government should get more involved to give things a boost? Who would support that? Maybe Bernie?
1
All I know is that I don’t want Trump to be reelected and I’m growing alarming concerned that the Democratic Party doesn’t have a solid unified plan to achieve that goal. Remove Trump from office, take control of the senate and hold on to majority in the house, and then we’ll talk
3
The problem here isn't that Bernie Sanders is wrong, it's that he's not the guy to fix it.
6
"...swing voters in the Midwest care more about their values — guns, patriotism, ending abortion, masculinity, whatever — than they do about proletarian class consciousness."
Ah, I see. Thank goodness you don't engage in Theyism! Otherwise this might sound like the same tired claim that these people "vote against their own self-interest," and the blame you're reassigning might seem to fall on those very people, who apparently just aren't putting in enough effort to enjoy a booming economy.
The only Theyism I engage with is the kind I'm displaying right here — bewildered frustration with fellow liberals who refuse to believe there are real issues evidenced by the gig economy and nationwide homeless crisis. (Or those pesky Panama Papers.)
Swing voters in the Midwesta don't swing away from you because they care more about guns than putting food on the table. They do it because Democrats think the status quo is working, and expect the people left behind to gratefully vote for the candidate who will keep funding their food stamps. Republicans don't actually help, either, but they talk a great game about new jobs and opportunities for self-sufficiency. Guess which omega sounds more appealing!
I'm not a fan of Bernie, but it's high time the left actually acknowledges that the class strata is crumbling. If Americans all learn tech skills, the wages for those skulls will go down. That's how the market works, especially since the hardware is manufactured by children overseas.
2
I worked for thirty years in a high-tech industry. My wages increased on average about 3% annually. In the meantime, the CEO of the company bought three jet aircraft, built a hangar to house them, hired 2 pilots to fly them. and a mechanic to service them. Then he took flying lessons. Class war? What class war?
18
I grew up in the same area as Mr. Brooks. A rich white privileged area. I didn't realize how advantaged and lucky I was until I entered a profession that exposed me on a regular basis to people far less advantaged. Their economic pain, suffering and humiliation is real not an US vs THEM abstraction. That rightfully makes courageous leaders like Sanders and his base angry. He speaks truth to power, and truth to those like Brooks. Liberal elites are simply annoyed Sanders has pierced their comfort bubbles. My father grew up poor in the depression, but because of the kind of social programs Sanders is trying to revive, he had a bridge out of poverty. He ultimately became an auto executive, making about 20 times the workers in his factory. Now someone in my father's position makes 600 times what the workers make. We were lacking for nothing growing up, and did not need to make even more. My father found the growing pay gap between the have and have-nots obscene and immoral. It was not an Us versus Them issue for him. He had been both rich and poor and had friends and family in both camps. It was a matter of fairness and decency and living one's life in a way so as not to cause an unnecessary amount of pain in suffering in others, particularly in the many."No one needs billions' he used to say. I have never forgotten that, and neither has Sanders.
15
This analysis is spot on, David.
There's no singular reason that explains away the enormous complexity of wealth inequality in the United States. There's not an evil cabal of Wall Street Financiers acting as a fetter to working class ambitions.
One could argue that there's been maladministration that has exacerbated the wealth gap. Or one could argue that the rising rates of college tuition significantly hindered those who came from economically depressed households from maximizing their productive potential. These are valid concerns and are worth debating.
The fact is that the wealth gap is only going to broaden until we have a government able to fix the issue.
Pete Buttigieg, Joesph R. Biden, Amy Klobachaur, Michael Bloomberg, etc. are all cognizant and most importantly, empathetic to the very real problem of wealth inequality in the United States.
Why would we vote for the most radical candidate of them all when we have amazing moderates that can appeal to the big tent coalitions?
I won't vote for Bernie or Elizabeth Warren. I think it's foolish to insert another populist into the Oval Office. If anything Mr. T's should have taught Democrats is that antagonistic populism is a subversive force in our political culture. Democrats MUST win in 2020, or bye-bye democracy.
3
If capitalism is so meritorious and good, why the wealth gap?
5
No matter how fancifully David Brooks slices it, the stagnant wages vs. the near exponential income growth for the top tiers is not a fallacious story created by the left. The first chart in this report by the Pew Research Center here tells the unvarnished truth:
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-us-workers-real-wages-have-barely-budged-for-decades/
In constant 2018 dollars, the wages have barely changed since 1964; they've been in the $20-22 range for over fifty years. Other charts in this report tell even a more distressing story: the wage increases, such as they are, have not even kept up with increases in the cost of benefits.
The growing income gap between the top and bottom tiers is neatly summarized here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_inequality_in_the_United_States
These charts tell the truth in a way Brooks's thousand-word article cannot.
6
It's not that the billionaires have rigged the economy to benefit themselves and impoverish everyone else. It's people with money, political and economic power that have convinced many to pursue a super-charged version of trickle down that is not trickling to large numbers of folks. Since 1980 the country has had 3 massive tax cuts. By DESIGN the biggest benefit has gone to the wealthiest since yes they pay more in taxes. But they are in turn expected to invest more and create more wealth and capital. They have done that except that the wealth and capital is not being distributed as much as promised or expected. If it were you wouldn't have massive income inequality. We now have stagnant wages and 2 % growth as a reward. Education and job training is not going to fix the situation. The economy is split between high skill/higher wage jobs and low skill/lower wage service and retail jobs. You educate away these low skill/low wage jobs. The economy is out of balance. Too much capital is going into finance and creating capital that doesn't spread and not enough into labor. The current economic models just don't work the way the should. They are based on an industrial dominated economy that no longer exists.
4
OK David, you are my favorite pundit by far and I propose you for President regularly. However, it borders on intellectual bias, at best, to say that workers are benefiting from pay increases on the low end of the wage scale without putting that into historical context. It's only Very lately that this has happened, and a great deal of the increase is due to legislation, not genrreous bosses. Please!
3
Brooks may be correct but, if us versus them worked so well for Trump, who's to say it won't work in the opposite direction?
Oh, and is it supposed to be good news that a handful of companies will dominate our economy? So if you don't land a job in the top-20, you're doomed. And the stock market will follow, with 90% of the gains coming from 2% of the companies.
Of course it's easier to increase productivity with higher skilled jobs. How much faster can a man unload a truck or serve a hamburger? Over several generations, we could educate people to have higher level skills, but machines that are way more productive are here, now.
Andrew Yang may be the only one willing to say out loud that increased productivity generates increased unemployment. And by all indications, you ain't seen nothin' yet.
1
As soon as CEOs, boards and managers of corporations demonstrate that their decision making is based on benefiting workers and customers over shareholders then maybe I can accept the idea that modern capitalism isn't all bad.
1
David Brooks should talk to the worker bees at Amazon about what it has taken to make them more productive while, at the same time, it remains impossible for them to live on their wages. And that's just one example of rises in "productivity." Since Brooks is giving out reading lists, may I urge him to read Piketty's Capital? It proves him indisputably wrong-headed about who continues to benefit from capitalism. And it's not the workers, ever.
7
"The job of public policy is to make it easier for everybody to do what successful people are doing."
Really? The job of public policy is to help bad companies copy good companies? Many of the best companies have near monopolies, but it's not because they're evil - it's because they are just simply the best at what they do. Google essentially has a monopoly on search because it gets exactly what you're looking for the first time; are you arguing that congress should pass laws to help Bing be a better search engine? To what end?
2
The central fallacy of Mr. Brooks’s article is exposed in his last sentence: “Every time we increase productivity for one person, we all thrive a little more, together.”
This implicitly assumes that America spreads the benefits of increased productivity evenly across society, that the rising tide floats all boats, not only all yachts. As shown by many studies, the assumption has been demonstrably and quantitatively wrong.
Mr. Brooks also fudges the issue of what economic value we should place on jobs that are not “productive” but that we deem essential — many health care and geriatric care jobs, for example. How much more productive has Mr. Brooks become? How much will he and his colleagues add to national productivity statistics? Should American society shunt such ‘unproductive’ work aside?
Mr. Brooks raised legitimate questions about the American economy, but he sought to answer them with partial truths.
6
Corporations have stifled productivity by exhausting workers and choking wages, and the "great" recession gave them every excuse to go full throttle on exploiting this.
Now it's excepted as the American way.
We are now largely a gig economy. Running from job to job, with low wages, little to no benefits and ever increasing health care costs and basic cost of living expenses.
And the rich continue to get richer with adjusted tax laws and a myriad of ways to build and shelter wealth not based on income, but by knowing how to play the system, and the GOP is full on board to support this.
It is class war fare.
And it is gouging the average American with a slow, deep bleed.
Oh Mr. Brooks how you love to pontificate. That is your job.
But frankly, it's not productive in the slightest.
6
Its funny how the NYT Picks are always people supporting the columnists opinion, while the Readers Picks are always people in support of Bernie.
The funny thing about "facts" is that while you point our studies showing evidence supporting your weak argument, more evidence is available that competently blows your argument out of the water. Of course the NY Times (and any major organization) wouldn't want Bernie Sanders to take control. It would destroy their profits and leave shareholders angry.
There is in fact a class war, Reagan proved it with trickle down economics, and Trump just recently proved its still alive with his tax breaks for the rich. All we need to do is look at trends over the past 50 years of CEO pay versus worker pay. One goes up drastically and one simply stagnates at a disgusting rate. Minimum wage is finally rising in some places but it is still years behind where it should be.
9
"In the first place, over the past few years wages for workers toward the bottom of the income stream have been rising faster than wages for those toward the top."
This is because SOME localities are moving drastically toward a living minimum wage. It's not as though Capitalism or the Federal government are doing much to make it happen.
2
David Brooks has no idea about what it is like to earn a working class wage.
Sanders and Warren have given a voice to educated working class workers, people that many corporations would like to see just go away.
How about stock buy backs, that handy capitalist tool that enables fatter pockets of investors and shareholders, while withholding decent raises for the work force? How about shell companies and tax havens, more handy dandy tools? How about economy 101 which includes REAL wages---we all know that even with incremental raises, our paychecks do not keep up with inflation, housing costs, etc.
Please, let's not be so comfortable singing the praises of how the system is working, when the working have pretty miserable systems these days.
I have to smirk when I read some of David's opinions---writing about bobos in paradise does not take the pressure off of what should be an educated conscience.
4
First, the trend of the bottom half of earners salaries rising quicker than the top half’s is a very recent event. 2018 was the first time that had happened in years. A better indicator of income inequality would be the gap between the top 1% and the bottom 90% which is absurdly large and has been steadily increasing for decades. One reason for this is that people in the upper echelons of wealth tend to make more of their money, often a majority, through capital income, and the tax rate for capital gains is currently highly preferential. As for the bottom 90% who work to earn their less preferentially taxed income, the idea that “people can’t earn what they don’t produce,” is an oversimplification and an old talking point. Working harder does not mean you will necessarily get paid more or paid proportionately. The fact that both wages and productivity have risen during the same time period does not mean they are necessarily correlated.
Companies want to pay their low-level employees the minimum they can get away with in order to maximize profits. Labor is usually the biggest expense to a business which is why minimizing its cost is prioritized. Because low-level workers are unskilled or low skilled, and thus easily replaceable, companies don’t have to worry about another company stealing them with better wages. The main source of leverage that these low-level workers have against a company is the ability to unionize, which companies are constantly fighting to prevent.
2
Mr. Brooks' assertion that companies are not really exploiting their workers don't ring true when you remember Alan Greenspan telling Congress during the Clinton years that the best way to increase worker productivity was to keep them in constant fear of losing their jobs -- a practice I noticed even working in the public sector, when every three months I was required to write state officials and explain to them why I felt I deserved to have a job.
After leaving a state job for a private sector job, I thought I had finally found where I wanted to be -- a job I loved with people I liked who shared common goals. When the company was sold to a bigger corporation, everyone over the age of 35 was laid off and received only one month's pay as severance. The younger people were kept and made to work longer hours for lesser pay. Since then my age and credentials have made me un-hirable. No one wants to pay a decent wage to someone over 35 with a master's degree. I was forced into the gig economy, and now my income is unpredictable, ever-changeable, and I have no benefits to speak of at a time when I should be at the peak of my career. My knowledge, experience, and skills have value. No one wants to pay me more than minimum wage for them.
3
Brooks suggests here that he has been able to lift the veil that both sides ignore due to their predilection for what he deems “emotional satisfying” arguments. In this self-valorizing effort to be above both sides, he misses humanity entirely and reveals himself to be out of touch. For example, “superstar companies” is a really pleasant and fun way to describe what should be plainly called monopoly. Perhaps if he called things as they were, and did not spin them in such a way as to conveniently avoid harmful connotations then his argument would seem less flimsy. His attempt at poignancy in posing the question as to how worker’s wages at the bottom have been growing more than those at the top is grossly oversimplified, not to mention he provides no handy report as he does with his other claims. It mystifies me as to how he can disparage the vagueness of Lind’s book when his own unspecified propositions read like a child planning a vacation. He provides no way as to how one would prevent “superstar companies” from using lobbyists. Maybe if he thought for a moment longer he’d realize “more open and competitive markets” work directly against that. Above all, he shows himself to be someone who looks around and sees things as they are and finds them to be just. If you avoid emotions, I could see how that could be possible. Perhaps if he felt the realities of the working poor he would be less inclined to choose the apathetic pedestal.
2
Mr. Brooks believes we live in a republic. Obliviously, a victim of the state sponsored propaganda they tried to teach us in government class. There are people starting to realize that we are not a government for the people represented by people. Conversely, we are represented by corporations that have a profit agenda not a human agenda. All Mr. Brooks has to do is read the definition of republic; then see if the American government he writes about fits that definition. If he is honest he will see it doesn't. And that is why many people are voting for Mr. Sanders. Some of us don't believe the press's chosen candidates are legitimate because their candidates talk as if abandoning the republic is okay. America's policy is directed by corporations through bribed politicians. That is the "they' we refer to. Moreover, Mr. Brooks has shown many times this year that he is and battles for the "they".
1
If the companies doing well are doing so because of productivity and skills, why on earth do they need tax breaks and subsidies?
David Brooks commentary might be spot on but it's only relevant if all things are equal, which they are not.
Besides, it overlooks a crucial point about our society. There will always be people needed in low-valued, low-skilled jobs. And no, there aren't enough teenagers to fill those jobs. They provide services we all take for granted on a daily basis. Instead of suggesting they get more skills to get a better job, why not pay a living wage since we always need people in those positions.
Adjusted for inflation, the federal minimum wage should be $22/hr but it's $7.50.
2
Peacemaking in divided societies one of my interests.
Rather than capitalism as a basic system, we have capitalism on steroids greedy for constant progress, meaning increasing profit. Everything is financialised and bottom line is the only goal.It is devouring people's ability to thrive.
I suggest Mr. Brooks come out to Iowa, my voting state, where I am now and meet some ordinary Americans. They know they need to work two jobs to survive, that young families can't afford health insurance, that if they get sick or have an accident and cannot work they will need to choose between medication and groceries,or --as on woman told us--heating her house.
Weather is coming. So is Bernie. And he talks about "Us not me".
It may not be a war, but it is a struggle. Tell these folks it's a fallacy that the rich get richer and ordinary Americans are doing their best to survive.
1
Rhetorically, I understand the strategy here. Lump Bernie in with Trump as a dull and uninformed populist, then offer a few talking points, including a relatively unknown but buzzy economic term, and a few stats to add to the arsenal of those who have already decided they don't like him.
Logically, this point is poorly defended and disappointingly numb to real conditions that working people experience every day. For working people, the more pertinent productivity inequality is between those at the bottom of the wealth pyramid, and those at the top.
Labor built the capitalist economy; now labour is redundant and the machine and AI is ascendant. Labour costs the economy too much is profits the capitalist system needs to keep expanding. Either capitalism must learn to exist with checks and balances, or we find a new system. Which we won't, sadly.
Every major change that has happened in this country to further the rights of the marginalized has happened by rallying the people. This is Bernie’s message. Brooks and his ilk just can’t seem to figure this out. Or, they are scared of having to make their own sacrifices so the playing field may be equalized.
2