The Productivity Problem

Jonathan Tasini

July 14, 2005

Jonathan Tasini is president of the Economic Future Group and writes his "Working In America" columns for TomPaine.com on an occasional basis.

One of the enduring myths of the American Dream is that if you just work hard, you will eventually reap your economic reward and get ahead. Corporate leaders, helped by politicians, still try to make that rhetorical argument as a way of hiding what they are really up to (Darwinian globalization, for example). But a startling, relatively ignored, shift has taken place that bears the seeds of an economic and political earthquake.