This from Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich

My response:

These are two different assertions.  Of course workers have the right to strike, just as corporations have a right to squeeze their employees.  This push-and-pull is intrinsic to a capitalist, free market, economy.

Yet it’s unclear that workers have a right to share in productivity gains, which have derived largely as the result of automation, the capital expenditures of which were born by the corporations, not the workers.  (I would also be loath to use the term “trickle-down” as it’s been proven so convincingly that wealth simply does not do that.)

If you want unregulated capitalism, this is the harsh truth of what you’re looking at.  And if you don’t like it now, you’re going to hate it in the future, as fewer and fewer jobs will require any significant amount of human labor.  That applies to building cars, but it also applies to filling cavities and performing thoracic surgery.

Take the protests in China, a horrifically repressive society, as a good example of what happens when 1.4 billion people learn that their lives suck.  The Chinese don’t have a First Amendment that protects their liberties, and in particular, their right to free assembly; these people are risking their very lives.  Yet the pressures have grown too great to keep them silent.

There seems no way out here, given that China is screwed economically.  Xi Jinping views himself as a 21st Century Mao Zedong, but his empire is under enormous pressure as companies like Apple pick up their manufacturing facilities and take them to Arizona.

If there is a path forward, it seems to me, it lies in the Green Economy, in which all stake-holders enjoy decent living conditions.  The world governments should look more like Denmark’s than they do the United States’ or China’s.  There is a huge opportunity to ensure our planet continues to be able to support life, at the same time, offering everyone a tolerable existence.