Roughly 1 in 4 Americans is employed to keep fellow citizens in line and protect private wealth..

[Fumesucker]

A very interesting article about an actual liberal economist, Samuel Bowles, and his ideas.

http://sfreporter.com/stories/born_poor/5339/all/

Inequality leads to an excess of what Bowles calls “guard labor.” In a 2007 paper on the subject, he and co-author Arjun Jayadev, an assistant professor at the University of Massachusetts, make an astonishing claim: Roughly 1 in 4 Americans is employed to keep fellow citizens in line and protect private wealth from would-be Robin Hoods.

The job descriptions of guard labor range from “imposing work discipline”—think of the corporate IT spies who keep desk jockeys from slacking off online—to enforcing laws, like the officers in the Santa Fe Police Department paddy wagon parked outside of Walmart.

The greater the inequalities in a society, the more guard labor it requires, Bowles finds. This holds true among US states, with relatively unequal states like New Mexico employing a greater share of guard labor than relatively egalitarian states like Wisconsin.

The problem, Bowles argues, is that too much guard labor sustains “illegitimate inequalities,” creating a drag on the economy. All of the people in guard labor jobs could be doing something more productive with their time—perhaps starting their own businesses or helping to reduce the US trade deficit with China.

[Auggie]

1. That's so astonishing it's nearly unbelievable

It must include many in various kinds of supervisory capacity

[The Midway Rebel]

2. Somebody has to protect those vulnerable rich folks from us riff-raff

Thus the ever thickening "thin-blue-line".

[truedelphi]

3. My spouse was just saying that a cousin of his has

Full time employment - he is a Blackwater security person over in Iraq. The guy served three tours there first.

Sad when the only people assured of getting full time, high wage earnings are mercenaries.

[leftstreet]

4. Get back in your Free Speech Zone!

[Echo In Light]

5. A bro-in-law of mine is an IT 'spy' re porn, & he works at a MAJOR insurance Co

He's had to 'tsk-tsk' higher ups who could, he supposes, have his job by the day's end if they really wanted to push him - I guess their want of their secretive online doings is what keeps em quiet lol

[GreenStormCloud]

6. Reality check time. Does that look like the world around me?

No, it doesn't. I don't see 1/4 of the people around me working being guards.

[stray cat]

7. Anarchist party? Get rid of everyone who protects anyone?

[Fumesucker]

9. Shades of grey are remarkably difficult fot black and white thinkers to comprehend..

[NYC_SKP]

8. This percentage employed over time, the past century, would make for an interesting graph.

This doesn't surprise me.

I remember pondering some years ago that increasingly an American would either be working for the government, incarcerated, wealthy, or in servitude.

The middle class, with secure job and benefits, is a dying breed.

[Trillo]

10. K&R

I wonder how long it would take for the uber-elite criminals to hyper-inflate currency to the point where $250,000 was the new price of a loaf of bread.

According to Wikipedia, one year after the publishing of the Gini Coefficient, the Federal Reserve was created!

[applegrove]

11. Yup. USA is very close to Mexico on equality index. And rich people

are always at risk for kidnapping there. Why won't the rich understand that. It is better to pay taxes at 40% than live with medieval like insecurity.