{"id":12073,"date":"2012-12-04T23:30:10","date_gmt":"2012-12-05T04:30:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/yimcatholic\/?p=12073"},"modified":"2017-01-24T17:53:57","modified_gmt":"2017-01-24T22:53:57","slug":"capital-vs-labor-and-the-ruling-class-vs-the-rest-of-us-the-same-thing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/yimcatholic\/2012\/12\/capital-vs-labor-and-the-ruling-class-vs-the-rest-of-us-the-same-thing.html","title":{"rendered":"Capital vs. Labor and the Ruling Class vs. the Rest of Us = the Same Thing"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

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Folks are starting to take notice of this development. Catholic social teaching has always noticed it, especially since the time St. Thomas Aquinas was writing his summas<\/a>. \u00a0And the Church has been outspoken about just wages and the dignity of workers for some time now.<\/p>\n

Below is a short video of the fellows over at Yahoo! Finance<\/em> wondering if it\u2019s time for labor unions to make a comeback. Henry Blodget\u2019s graphs on income inequality (see below) were recently shared by Kevin Knight of New Advent<\/a>. Check out the discussion,<\/p>\n

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\u00a0<\/p>\n

Yep, there is the \u2018ol Costco vs. Walmart example, which was a meme I saw right before Black Thursday(?!)\/Friday after the Thanksgiving Holiday.<\/p>\n

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More on that here<\/a>. This all reminds me of a post I wrote back in January \u00a0which was chock full of economic graphs and charts<\/a>. Like this,<\/p>\n

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Fair is, as fair does<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But here are the two graphs that Henry Blodget and Co. spoke about above.<\/p>\n

1) Corporate profit margins just hit an all-time high.<\/strong>\u00a0Companies are making more per dollar of sales than they ever have before. (And some people are still saying that companies are suffering from \u201ctoo much regulation\u201d and \u201ctoo many taxes.\u201d Maybe little companies are, but big ones certainly aren\u2019t).<\/p>\n

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\"Corporate<\/a><\/div>\n

Business Insider, St. Louis Fed<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

2) Wages as a percent of the economy are at an all-time low.<\/strong>\u00a0This is closely related to the chart above. One reason companies are so profitable is that they\u2019re paying employees less than they ever have before.<\/p>\n

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\"Wages<\/a><\/div>\n

Business Insider, St. Louis Fed<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

What\u2019s wrong with this picture?<\/p>\n

What\u2019s wrong is that an obsession with a very narrow view of \u201cshareholder value\u201d has led companies to put \u201cmaximizing current earnings growth\u201d ahead of another critical priority in a healthy economy:<\/p>\n