Sense from the president
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Last night insomnia meant I caught the POTUS SOTU
Included this interesting paragraph
POTUS wrote:Anyone claiming that America’s economy is in decline is peddling fiction. What is true — and the reason that a lot of Americans feel anxious — is that the economy has been changing in profound ways, changes that started long before the Great Recession hit and haven’t let up. Today, technology doesn’t just replace jobs on the assembly line, but any job where work can be automated. Companies in a global economy can locate anywhere, and face tougher competition. As a result, workers have less leverage for a raise. Companies have less loyalty to their communities. And more and more wealth and income is concentrated at the very top.
All these trends have squeezed workers, even when they have jobs; even when the economy is growing. It’s made it harder for a hardworking family to pull itself out of poverty, harder for young people to start on their careers, and tougher for workers to retire when they want to. And although none of these trends are unique to America, they do offend our uniquely American belief that everybody who works hard should get a fair shot.
The fact that Obama used the word workers at all is interesting, rather than the usual 'hardworking famillies' (although that does alo appear).
Even the President is worried by technological labour substitution.
Yes, I thought that there weren't supposed to be any workers in America as everybody (except the filfthy super rich) there is supposed to be middle class. Revealing slip of the tongue on his part.
That's not quite what he said, just that technology replaces jobs. This doesn't mean that technology creates wealth instead of workers, but that fewer works create wealth using the new technology. It's still human labour that creates wealth or, rather, fashions, using human made machines, materials that originally came from nature into useful goods and services.
ALB wrote:Yes, I thought that there weren't supposed to be any workers in America as everybody (except the filfthy super rich) there is supposed to be middle class. Revealing slip of the tongue on his part.I wonder if that is an effect of Sanders or maybe even subtle support for him?The speech also includes "Equal pay for equal work, paid leave, raising the minimum wage."Even this:
Obama wrote:But there should be other ways both parties can improve economic security. Say a hardworking American loses his job — we shouldn’t just make sure he can get unemployment insurance; we should make sure that program encourages him to retrain for a business that’s ready to hire him. If that new job doesn’t pay as much, there should be a system of wage insurance in place so that he can still pay his bills. And even if he’s going from job to job, he should still be able to save for retirement and take his savings with him. That’s the way we make the new economy work better for everyone.[/quote is closer to European style welfare statism and social democracy.Of course, a valedictory address is more or less pie in the sky, so maybe that's why he can range onto such topics. but also dealing with wealth inequality in the same speech is interesting.
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