In endless past posts, Cooper has fully supported us ImportingAPeasantry; the beneficiaries of that are not the middle class but those well above them. In fact, it’s a wealth transfer from the middle class to those who can afford such servants.

The next time you read Cooper using the same old weak argument to support illegal immigration or “reform”, think the whole thing through and ask, “cui bono?”

(Interesting sidenote: the author of the linked article is a “mini-Cooper” in his support for illegal immigration; details at the link.)

The same wealth vortex is creating a bigger, broader class of upper middle-class people who are immune from business cycle swings. Without them, downturns like the housing-bubble bust we’re now seeing would surely dip significantly deeper, and, hitting hardest the people least able to withstand it.

Income inequality is now at the greatest level since 1928.

This widening sector of high-wage earners who also have significant investment income are far less vulnerable to business cycle swings than average Americans are. As a result, they spend right through recessions, offsetting the effects for everyone.

The widening income gap certainly has social costs, but can we really be that sure they are greater than the benefits of widening overall wealth?

More important, do the critics here have any ideas on how to narrow the income gap other than by lowering them at the top?

It’s easy to say–universal health care, more education spending or more AFDC, but actually doing it and implementing it in an intelligent way is far more complex and daunting a task than many realize.

The issue of servility is also interesting. In Japan, the need for servility in the service businesses is embraced and accepted as “natural.” As a result, you get good service without paying a tip. Not saying this acceptance of hierarchy has no drawbacks, just saying too many Americans are too sensitive about servility for their own good.

Sounds like Woody and Jim R. and the other low-level Republican activists.

Anyway, what do you expect from a paper that was just bought by a Real Estate tycoon?

Are you saying he’s acting as if oblivious to this fact? Actually, in the article he quotes, it says

“This total doesn’t include illegal-immigrant nannies and gardeners or anyone paid off the books.”

Anyway, if you want to pick on somebody for being blind to abuses of illegal immigrants, you picked the wrong guy. That’s one of Marc’s major beats, and he does it better than anyone else I regularly read. (OK, I’m not yet regularly reading rosedog’s blog.)

What most of those illegal immigrants can’t do, because they typically lack the required language skills and other polished personal effects, is “make the lives of the principals … run as smooth as glass.”

Take it from me — it makes a difference. I help run a small hotel (in Tokyo, catering mostly to non-Japanese guests), and just tonight, I had to smooth over a conflict stemming in part from my (Japanese) wife’s limited English. This operation has gone from being a rather marginal operation to making us something like the kind of money you can now apparently make kowtowing to the rich in L.A. I think my native English skills make the difference.

Even though it’s at the budget end of the spectrum, the hotel involves much the same kind of work. I have to admit that I’d rather do this, though. Travelers expect some rigors — it’s the nature of travel, especially at the budget end of the market. But trying to make things “as smooth as glass” in people’s *personal* lives is a treadmill: you get the Princess and the Pea Effect. Or perhaps I mean the Pee Effect — standing under the urine flow, just to get the other kind of Golden Shower, the kind you can take to the bank. No thanks.

With knowledge-worker jobs leaking away, the U.S. may increasingly have an economy of the Servers and the Served. I don’t much like the sound of that — and I’m *in* the service sector!

On some other points:

“… a robust stock market …”

Nominally, but actually not showing growth in real terms.

“… the recent real estate boom …”

AKA real estate bubble. Property bubbles often follow stock bubbles, and this property bubble has been bigger (in overall valuation) than the stock bubble, which was the biggest one in PPP-per-capita terms since, yes, 1929. Bubbles always end. The question is how.

“… Bush’s 2001 tax cuts …”

which, in poll after poll, seem not likely to last the decade, if the voters have anything to say about it.

I can hear the sob stories now: “I used to be making 80 grand a year walking dogs in Bel Aire, but now I’m flipping burgers for minimum wage. And I haven’t even paid off the $13,000 I borrowed for that Fundamentals of Feudal Servility course, because I spent everything I earned trying to compensate for Life in Servant Hell!”

Enjoy what you can while it lasts.