Greenspan Says Solution to Inequality is to Lower U.S. Wages

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan has been in the news lately trying to pretend he's had nothing to do with the slow-motion economic meltdown America is currently experiencing in the housing, job and labor market. But he is still the same old Alan Greenspan -- the one who opposes the minimum wage, and wants to drive wages in general into the ground. In fact, he admitted as much in a recent interview on Democracy Now!.

At about 39 minutes into this clip, you can hear him say this:

"We ought to be opening up our borders to skilled labor from all parts of the world because if we were to do that we would increase the supply of skilled workers that our schools have been unable to create and as a consequence of that we would lower the average wage of skills and reduce the degree of income inequality in this country."

Beyond his dishonest trumpeting of the Great Education Myth, notice that Greenspan's solution to economic inequality in America is to drive down the wages of the dwindling number of good-paying jobs that remain, by importing more foreign workers who have no basic rights to bargain for good wages, and who are thus paid much less than American workers in the same jobs.

Alan Greenspan: One of the truly great class warriors of his time.

(h/t Progressive Geek)

Cross-posted from Working Assets

Comments

[dadw5boys]

"supply of skilled workers that our schools have been unable to create"
You mean NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND is not creating the Skilled People needed in the workforce?
WOW
You mean the TEACHERS were right all along?
The Teachers said you would BORE the hell out of kids by Teaching to the test and killing art programs.
Will they did!

[mrcontinental]

It's all by design dad.

[americanwhocares]

Greenspan is a joke, just like Bush, but they cause untold misery to hard working people. I have yet to figure out why people that have been hurt by republican policies continue to vote for them, like the 62 percent of souther white rednecks. Funny thing is, they don't even have dental insurance to replace all their missing teeth.

[nippersdad]

As a southerner I wholeheartedly disagree! Our teeth are much better than they used to be!

[oldpotsmuggler]

Kind of the opposite of a Buckminster Fuller, and his "Billion Billionaires" theory of social organizing. If we channel human ingenuity with the stated goal of making a high quality of life available for all of us, the resources of the planet, including human intellect, are great enough to allow that to happen. The first prerequisite is the awareness and acknowledgement on a broad basis that this is a goal that we can and do want to work towards.

Now, if we would rather, slavishly, leave our welfare to the mysterious workings of market forces, then it is very likely that the Greenspan point of view would be where we would end up at.

Or we could continue to follow the Bush/warmonger approach to human affairs, eventually killing enough of the population that there is plenty of everything for the survivors.

[KenTao]

Hey, oldpotsmuggler!

Thanks for bring up Bucky Fuller, one of the few humans one can point to and say, "Now, there goes a true Earthling!"

Earthlings Unite!

[sedalia066]

Greenspan continues to dispense the KoolAid in hope that some will believe and raise the standard of living for those who profit off low paid workers. This is too sad for words. If we need anything in this country it is higher paying jobs and lowered profit margins for mega-corporations. Some measure of reordering along those lines could benefit the entire nation.

[cynicalgirl]

Please help me understand this. How can lower wages reduce the degree of income inequality? I can't think of a rational explanation.

[KenTao]

That's because it's not rational but here's the general idea: if more people make less money then more people will be earning money closer to the average wage. It's called Voodoo economics. Also, it follows the age old truism: the rich get richer and the poor have babies. In the meantime, in between time, aint we got FUN?!

Earthlings Unite!

[TheOtherMaven]

The wickedest twist in that joke is that "Voodoo Economics" is a term coined by Greenspan's idol and mentor, Ayn Rand.

(No, GHWB did NOT coin it - he, or more likely one of his speechwriters, just swiped it without crediting the source. Typical.)

[sonofsamstone]

I'm guessing that Greenspan is thinkng we can ALL be low wage workers (except of course for the exectutives) -from burger flippers to IT professionals- and everything in between.
See, this way the income inequality is stratified between CEOs and Everyone Else, not stratified between CEOs, middle managers, professionals, burger flippers and landscapers. Two levels of income, not several.

[milo9]

Every citizen should be made aware of Greenspan's stated economic philosophy. It will make sense of the coming economic hard times.
And why is Andrea Mitchell represented as a unbiased voice on numerous media outlets?
It would be comforting to think that she is shunned on the cocktail circuit, but I doubt it.