Tb's insistence that a "rising tide lifts all boats" is nothing but a rephrasing of another equally discredited old rhubarb, that the wealth "trickles down". If wealth could indeed be created out of nothing, then it would not be necessary to seek out ever cheaper sources of labor, and continually to raise prices. In other words, in a positive sum game, this massive inflation of productivity we owe to our alleged entrepreneurial innovation could be simply plowed back into lower prices, higher salaries, shorter work weeks, higher standards of living, less unemployment, and no need to import workers and export jobs. And all this could be done with no threat to profitability.

Instead, we have seen a decline in real wealth, real income, and real standard of living for the last three or four decades, in spite of the much-touted increases in our productivity and efficiency. And the wealth that does remain has been indeed redistributed: upwards, to ever more affluent and smaller sectors of the population.

This is not a question of vigorous national ideological debate, except for maybe the TB's of this world. Those who actually benefit from this new economy are those who engineered it, they know exactly what they are doing and what it is doing to the rest of us; they are keeping it for themselves, keeping very quiet, and keeping out of sight.