The value of your labor relative to housing is dropping every year too you know.
The notion of re-balancing forces is a nice simple story but the price of housing relative to income has risen nationwide for decades. There is a similar story for medical care and even food.
So yes it's fun to believe in the invisible hand and Adam Smith's 200 year old thesis. But the reality is that the value of all labor is simply being driven downward.
For that matter, Adam Smith was a great deal more aware of structural factors and the lack of sustainability that would result from unrestrained pursuit of wealth -it's salutary that he titled his most famous work 'The Wealth of Nations' rather than 'The Wealth of Corporations.'
Smith was keenly aware of the dangers of mercantilism and WoN is anything but an argument for unrestrained capitalism. Indeed, the second most observation in the book, after the one about the fact that butchers and bakers are motivated by self-interest rather than generosity, is that “People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.”
The notion of re-balancing forces is a nice simple story but the price of housing relative to income has risen nationwide for decades. There is a similar story for medical care and even food.
So yes it's fun to believe in the invisible hand and Adam Smith's 200 year old thesis. But the reality is that the value of all labor is simply being driven downward.