{"id":190033,"date":"2010-01-13T22:34:00","date_gmt":"2010-01-14T03:34:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2010\/01\/13\/signs-of-the-apocalypse-16\/"},"modified":"2010-01-13T22:34:00","modified_gmt":"2010-01-14T03:34:00","slug":"signs-of-the-apocalypse-16","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2010\/01\/13\/signs-of-the-apocalypse-16\/","title":{"rendered":"Signs of the Apocalypse"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When &#8220;sensible centrist&#8221;, by which I mean that he some of his time trying to hew to the Washington, DC pundit consensus, Kevin Drum starts <a href=\"http:\/\/motherjones.com\/kevin-drum\/2010\/01\/vicious-cycle-stagnant-wages\">sounding like Leon Trotsky<\/a>, something is amiss:<\/p>\n<blockquote style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 153);\"><p>Like anyone, I&#8217;m pleased when I find someone to confirm my prejudices. And this is definitely one of them. Growth in a modern mixed economy is fundamentally based on consumer spending, and middle class consumers can increase their spending in only three ways: (1) real wage growth, (2) borrowing, or (3) drawing down savings. <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Only the first is sustainable<\/span>. So if we want the American economy to grow consistently over long periods, <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">we have to focus our economic machinery on median wage growth.<\/span> We&#8217;ve done it before, we can do it again if we&#8217;re smart, and the result would be good for everyone: the rich would get richer, the middle class would get richer, and the poor would get less poor. The alternative is booms, busts, and continued social erosion. So let&#8217;s be smart, OK?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>(<span style=\"font-style: italic;\">emphasis mine<\/span>)<\/p>\n<p>He&#8217;s right, but the fact that he&#8217;s bucking the &#8220;Beltway Boyz&#8221; on this is telling.<\/p>\n<p>Working for <span style=\"font-style: italic;\">Mother Jones<\/span> is good for Mr. Drum.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When &#8220;sensible centrist&#8221;, by which I mean that he some of his time trying to hew to the Washington, DC pundit consensus, Kevin Drum starts sounding like Leon Trotsky, something is amiss: Like anyone, I&#8217;m pleased when I find someone to confirm my prejudices. And this is definitely one of them. Growth in a modern &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[973,1003,1164],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-190033","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economy","category-philosophy","category-teotwawki"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190033"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=190033"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190033\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=190033"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=190033"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=190033"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}