Why the Rich Are Getting Richer and the Poor, Poorer
Robert B. Reich, Why the Rich Are Getting Richer and the Poor, Poorer
Reich starts his exordium with a distribution of where American workers found themselves in the early 1990’s in reference to where almost all American workers were just 20 years before. Reich placed most of the workers that contributed to the economy during the Nixon administration as being in one boat, analogous to the famous quote by G.K. Chesterton, “We are all in the same boat, in a stormy sea, and we owe each other a terrible loyalty.” Under Reich’s distribution you were still in a lifeboat, but the sea state and your future could be rough or smooth sailing depending upon your chosen profession. To which boat one found his or her self was directly related to how they fit in to requirements of changing corporations. The first boat was filled with what Reich defined as routine producers, when all Americans were in the same boat in the 1970’s, corporations that employed the largest percentage of workers were nationalistic and pyramid like organizations, but by the 1990’s the corporations had transformed themselves into multinational web-like structures that had no allegiance to any single country. Their motive was to maximize profits for their shareholders by seeking the most advantageous arrangements to produce their products, or to streamline their operations.
Having established where individual workers found themselves in the early 90’s, Reich started a long argument of direction utilizing cause and effect to show how different segments of the American economy were affected by the changing requirements of these multinational corporations. Routine production jobs that were often large employers of unionized workers moved to where labor was cheaper, this directly affected the number of workers that belonged to unions and the number of supervisory personnel necessary for the smaller work force that remained in this country. The affect on American jobs was not only because of jobs being
Reich starts his exordium with a distribution of where American workers found themselves in the early 1990’s in reference to where almost all American workers were just 20 years before. Reich placed most of the workers that contributed to the economy during the Nixon administration as being in one boat, analogous to the famous quote by G.K. Chesterton, “We are all in the same boat, in a stormy sea, and we owe each other a terrible loyalty.” Under Reich’s distribution you were still in a lifeboat, but the sea state and your future could be rough or smooth sailing depending upon your chosen profession. To which boat one found his or her self was directly related to how they fit in to requirements of changing corporations. The first boat was filled with what Reich defined as routine producers, when all Americans were in the same boat in the 1970’s, corporations that employed the largest percentage of workers were nationalistic and pyramid like organizations, but by the 1990’s the corporations had transformed themselves into multinational web-like structures that had no allegiance to any single country. Their motive was to maximize profits for their shareholders by seeking the most advantageous arrangements to produce their products, or to streamline their operations.
Having established where individual workers found themselves in the early 90’s, Reich started a long argument of direction utilizing cause and effect to show how different segments of the American economy were affected by the changing requirements of these multinational corporations. Routine production jobs that were often large employers of unionized workers moved to where labor was cheaper, this directly affected the number of workers that belonged to unions and the number of supervisory personnel necessary for the smaller work force that remained in this country. The affect on American jobs was not only because of jobs being