Re: Krugman v. Mankiw

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/22/greg-mankiw-and-the-gatsby-curve/

What Krugman and most (not all) progressives seem to miss (as usual?) is what a difference heavy middle class bargaining power in the labor market and muscle in the political forum would have made to the current outcome of all the gains in productivity going to the top 1% and the everything that can be looted will be looted society (e.g., Chicago parking meter deal -- not to mention how the Chicago Tribune was looted by its own management).

If this country had happened to have instituted legally mandated, sector-wide labor agreement in post WWII years, like much of Europe, Wal-Mart would not be killing the previously middle class labor contracts of American supermarket workers by moving their un-unionized labor into food marketing, etc., etc., etc., ad infinitum.

Right now the relative bargaining pressures of labor and ownership in this country resemble a toothpaste tube open at the top: squeeze the bottom, pressure equalizes in the middle (really only in the 90-97-98-99 percentile area fully) which keeps its relative share of overall income and everything else comes out the top.