These are easygoing, productive, and plentiful times. Can fair and accurate reporting make that real?
Would a point of view that people are being barraged by technology-driven unemployment, wage stagnation, and the breakdown of neighborhoods and families be accurate? Good reporting exposes invisible taking hands, hands that thwart diversity's potential by dividing white against black, urban against rural, and immigrant against indigenous.
Few dispute incomes rarely increase; but to be fair, improved quality achieved by automating manufacturing can be rationalized as spendable pay raises.
Tens of millions either have stayed impoverished since 2008 or still lack health coverage. But middle class citizens (ones who've escaped opioid overdoses) are prosperously bouncing back, perhaps by renting from the same financial interests that foreclosed their mortgages.
Sadly, barring a Medicare-for-all miracle, it remains realistic to say many are one cancer diagnosis away from bankruptcy.
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Even as demand rises for craft workers with trade skills, a relentless inertia suffocates overall wage growth. Overtime and bonuses alone are not tempting sufficient numbers of skilled workers to leave cities and work on major construction projects.
Business genius is unnecessary to see what tax reforms might do to hurricane recoveries at the crossroads where crumbling, neglected and critical infrastructure meets military buildup.
Until this year, the dollar index was rising and exports were gaining. What bent those curves? A fossil-fuel civil war seems already underway.
Congress, without regular order, cannot regulate the width of airline seats, much less protect consumers from robocalls, rein in predatory lenders, or rebuild potholed roads and leaky water mains. Feds tell states they're on their own, and states tell their counties and cities, "Congratulations!"
If local sales taxes fail and backlogged infrastructure maintenance bills cannot be spread across everyone, expect desperate scrambles for reliable revenue to use less fair and progressive measures.
Lars White
Duluth
