In this Smart Talk video series, Andrew Mazzone interviews Dr. George R. Tyler and discuss the decline of economic mobility in the Unites States. Dr. Tyler is an author of What Went Wrong: How the 1% Hijacked the American Middle Class…and What Other Countries Got Right.
Economist George R. Tyler was appointed U.S. deputy assistant treasury secretary by President Bill Clinton in 1993. He subsequently served at the World Bank, as CEO of his own real estate investment firm and was a founder of a multi-million dollar Swiss medical R&D nonprofit. Mr. Tyler is the author of “What Went Wrong,” a book that seeks to determine why families in other rich democracies have continued living the American Dream that is now lost to many U.S. families.
What went wrong was that the lesson that were taken out of WWII on how to have a functioning economy were forgotten during and after 1980’s. The administrations between WWII and the 1980’s were sympathetic to labor unions, middle class people. They were also sympathetic with wage agreements made between large employers and union. This led to economic prosperity. The entire environment changed in the 1980’s especially during the Reagan administration when the administration was not sympathetic. There has been a sharp decline in the productivity growth rate since the 1980’s to wages due to new administrations that were not sympathetic to middle class prosperity and a transition in the attitude of executive suites.
The US. has become a low wage country with minimum wages $10/hour lower than countries like Australia and northern Europe.
There has been a decline in economic mobility which means that if is much more difficult for low-income/working class people to advance themselves in their own abilities and skills.
The income disparity in the US. has become quite skewed. To recover from this, first need to resolve the political inequities which has been responsible for the economic inequities.