A friend once told me that the wealthy elite didn't want to just "roll back" the New Deal, they wanted to roll back the entire 20th Century. His point was that all the social gains of the 20th Century were granted to us in order to combat global communism, and that with the collapse of communism the wealthy elite are going it take it all back. I didn't fully appreciate his sentiments until recently.
The recent upsurge
in global piracy seems strange and exotic in
today's world, but in fact it is rather appropriate in the full
context of national events.
Below is a list of trends which show the 21st Century
is going to look a lot more like the 19th Century than the 20th
Century.
Big Labor
Can we finally stop saying "Big Labor"? Last
year labor
union membership had shrunk to 11.8% of the total
workforce and only 6.6% of the private sector.
You have to go all the way back to 1900 to
find such a small union footprint in the private sector.
Second Gilded Age
Along with the destruction of labor unions and the middle
class we've see a dramatic rise in inequality. The U.S. has
the worst
inequality in the developed world.
Inequality has hit levels not seen since the Robber
Barons.
"the cruellest of our revenue laws, I will venture to affirm,
are mild and gentle in comparison of some of those which the
clamour of our merchants and manufacturers has extorted from the
legislature for the support of their own absurd and oppressive
monopolies. Like the laws of Draco, these laws may be said to be
all written in blood."
- Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations