In Economics textbooks, wherein students must learn a theory of free enterprise capitalism that bears absolutely no relationship to reality, we are taught that workers work harder because productivity gains result in higher wages. Except they don't. Productivity by means of automation or outsourcing are but two obvious problems.
The deeper problem no one dares name is the structure of corporate capitalism itself. When profits are made, decisions about where to invest those profits are made by management (acquisitions? dividends to shareholders? moving work overseas? investments? wage increases?). Workers are not in the room. The company's board of directors in theory has oversight over governance on behalf of the entire corporation, but boards are management-friendly in more ways than one. Workers are a cost of production, not people who contribute to the company's success.
Workers or their union representatives are absent from the process of making fundamental strategic decisions about the company's future. They can only live with the decisions made by others about what to do with the profits their labor has generated. From the above chart, you can see how the class of management decision-makers (the subjects) has treated the class of workers (the objects) below them.
Germany, which by numerous metrics is doing better than we are socially and economically, has a capitalist system wherein workers sit on boards and share decision-making with management. We can't do that here in "the land of the free and the home of the brave" because that would be socialism.
Media voices (FOX, NBC and CNN alike) accuse Democrats of waging "class warfare" every time they bring up the modest idea that the rich might pay higher taxes, i.e., the same tax rates they paid under Clinton. It's all smoke and mirrors. The class war started years ago and as the chart above shows, it was won long ago as well.
