After seeing the cartoon regarding Bernie Sanders providing “big fat government funded ponies” I felt compelled to respond, As I approach age 70, I have often said that somewhere in those years I missed the obituary notices for common sense and logic. They, for the most part, are extinct. Throw curiosity in there too.

A simple Google search on “worker productivity v.s. wages post-WWII” will show a graph comparing productivity with wages from the 1940s to today. No advanced degree is needed to see that there is something wrong. Something changed drastically. After World War II through the early 1970s, the lines are essentially congruent. What happened during that period of congruency? The middle class exploded. We built roads, airports, schools and other public facilities. We paid teachers fair wages and our public educational system was the best in the world.

I could go on, but here is where the reader needs to try and resurrect common sense, logic and curiosity. Where did the money in the gap go? What drove wages to take a hard right and diverge from consistently increasing productivity, leaving wages, adjusted for inflation, unchanged for over 40 years? What might be different in our society today if wages had kept up with a steadily increasing productivity?

The cartoon is almost like victim shaming. As we approach trillion-dollar deficits, with corporations paying less in taxes than you and I, I ask again that citizens think a bit. How would our society be different with a fairer system for the distribution of wealth?

Herb Fox

Limerick

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