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Evening Must-Watch: Ezra Klein and Matthew Yglesias: Interview with Barack Obama: Teaser - Washington Center for Equitable Growth

Ezra Klein and Matthew Yglesias: Interview with Barack Obama: Teaser: Ezra Klein: How had we gotten to the point where we can have high corporate profits and businesses can be doing so well, but the workers don’t necessarily share in that prosperity? Barack Obama: Well, this has been at least a three decade-long trend. There are a whole bunch of reasons for that. Some of it has to do with technology and entire sectors being eliminated–travel agents, bank tellers, a lot of middle management. A lot of it has to do with globalization–the rest of the world catching up. Post-World War II we had just some enormous structural advantages because our competitors had been devastated by war and we had made investments that put us ahead of the curve–education and infrastructure. Those advantages went away at the same time that workers had increasingly less leverage because of changes in labor laws. You combine all that stuff and it puts workers in a tougher position. So some people who just control enormous amounts of wealth–we don’t resent their success, but, just as a practical matter, we’re going to have problems making sure that we are investing enough in the common good to move forward. Ezra Klein: Has this put us in a place long-term where redistribution becomes in a sense a positive in and of itself? Barack Obama: I don’t think that is entirely new. Relative to our post-World War II history taxes now are not particularly high or particularly progressive compared to what they were in say the late 1950s or 1960s. There has always been this notion that for a country to thrive there are some things that, as Lincoln said, we do better together than we can do for ourselves, whether that is building roads or setting up effective power grids or making sure that we have got high-quality public education or that teachers are paid enough. The market will not cover those things, and we have to do them together. Basic research falls in that category. That has always been true. Part of what has changed is that a lot of that burden for making sure that the pie was properly shared took place before government even got involved. If you had stronger unions than you had higher wages. If you had a corporate culture that felt a sense of place and commitment, so that the CEO felt a real affinity for the community to reinvest in that community and to be seen as a corporate citizen. Today what we have is quarterly earning reports, compensation levels for CEOs that are tied directly to those quarterly earnings, you have international capital that is demanding short-term profits, and so what happens is that a lot of the distributional questions that used to be handled in the marketplace through decent wages or health care or defined-benefit pension plans–those all are eliminated, and the average employee–the average worker–doesn’t feel any benefit…
#Matthew-Yglesias #Inequality #Ezra-Klein #Barack-Obama - equitablegrowth.org