So former Labor Secretary and last living Hobbit Robert Reich has been all talking about income inequality and why the recovery is so "anemic" in his opinion. Reich states that the post World War II economic boom improved life for everyone while claiming that the stock market boom of today only those on the top. There is one key factor he is not considering. Population.The population of the United States in 2010 was just under 309 million people in the post war boom of 1960 it was 180 million people. Taking a look at household incomes in 2010 we see that 50 percent of the country lives in households making over 50,000 dollars a year. This is equal to 86 percent of the total population in 1960. Looking further we see that 20 percent of all Americans live in households with an income over 100,000 per year. This number equals 34 percent of the population of the United States in 1960.
The reason for low wages is that there are more people than there are jobs. The growth of the population has outpaced the growth of jobs necessary to make society run. One need look no further than North Dakota where the population is so small that Walmart is hiring cashiers at 17.50 an hour to prove my point.
Just because there are more people does not mean that there will be more jobs. As I have pointed out time and again technological advances has made much of the past's human labor irrelevant. The economy is doing fine for the majority of Americans it just cannot support a population that has grown by 72 percent in the past 50 years. If only Bob Barker had encouraged people to spay and neuter their neighbors at the end of every Price is Right.
