“Focus government policy like a laser on improving the wages of the middle class, and reductions in income inequality will follow.”

No, they probably won’t, and if we learned anything from the Depression, it’s how not to economically “fix” things using massive government intrusion in markets (labor and otherwise). The likely outcome of any “laser focus,” i.e. artificial increase, on wages is increased displacement of workers at current wage levels, and probably increased unemployment.

Absent from the entire discussion, at least the left-wing, hype-driven, pseudo-economic journalism outlets, is the fact that inflation has been extraordinarily low until recently. Maybe “middle class” (and lower level) wages haven’t kept pace with inflation, but they’re probably not far behind, since inflation has been practically nonexistent over the past 5 years.

I haven’t heard Krugman yelling that wages have been dropping, but he may have said something that stupid and I just missed it.

But given that the whole reason all our raises are supposedly illusory is because of inflation, what kind of idiot thinks that allowing inflation to become even BIGGER would be a GOOD thing for the middle class?

In D&D, there are neat little absolute rules for everything. Monsters have X offensive abilities, Y defenses, and Z loot. Once you get so many points, you advance a level. If you get poisoned, if you make your saving throw, you live.

Of course, this is totally unrealistic. In real life, few things are absolute. For every action, there is a reaction.

People who call for the government to increase wages seem to believe that the great Dungeon Master in the White House can simply decree that from now on, red dragons will have 20,000 gold pieces of treasure instead of 10,000, without any other prices changing.

Progress inherently takes risk, its scary, but necessary.

A reading:

“In political economy, one may observe the attempt to study and devise social systems without reference to man.

Political economy was, in effect, a science starting in midstream: it observed that men were producing and trading, it took it for granted that they had always done so and always would — it accepted this fact as the given, requiring no further consideration — and it addressed itself to the problem of how to devise the best way for the ‘community’ to dispose of human effort.”

(Ayn Rand — 1965)