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RE: Forget the future of workers. What about the future of consumers?
Exactly. The costs for the expensive stuff have been going up while incomes have not. This has been putting the squeeze on the American consumer for decades and it's only getting worse. We can't have a strong economy if everyone is only able to pay for the basics. It makes far more sense to provide everyone enough money to cover basics as a starting point, and let all income earned from paid work be discretionary income.
What I have found extremely troubling over the past couple of years are the mainstream long time retail stores -- Montgomery Wards, Sears, J.C. Penneys, etc., who are either gone for good or in serious trouble. Lots of other places, too, filing for bankruptcy protection, closing stores, posting dismal quarterly profits, etc. It all points to the possibility that people -- in huge numbers -- are simply running out of money.
There may be a desire -- a market -- for what someone has to sell ... but if there's no discretionary income to hand over to it ... absolutely everybody loses. Except those few who can live from their offshore accounts for the rest of their lives and never notice the change.