TOO MANY AMERICANS?

A number of years ago, I read an article that said that countries like India and China could probably have economies that would provide 200 million people each with a decent living.  I don't recall what was behind this.  Though a total of 400 million people is an impressive number, it is a small fraction of the population of these two countries.  Well, now America has a population of 314 million and counting.  Have we arrived at a state where a large part of the population will continuously be a poor underclass?

Of course, America has had its poor all along its history.  Among other things, capitalism all but demands a stratified society.  You cannot have all employees of a company have salaries of a million dollars a year, for example.  If you did, products would be prohibitively expensive.  But does there come a point where the population has grown to a point where it exceeds the ability of the private corporative system to employ the bulk of the adult working force?

We may have arrived at this point in that corporate America is doing very well by way of profits, but the employed work force is growing slower than the work force supply.  After all, it is not the job of corporate America to grow jobs; it is the job of corporate America to make increasing profits.  Jobs are incidental to the system.  In fact, corporate America will do everything to minimize the the cost of the work force needed by them through things like automation or "off shoring" jobs to places with a cheaper work force.

At the same time, the government budgets are declining although we have been consuming our "seed corn" through inattention to our infrastructure that is slowly decaying.  To devote, say, $50 billion/yr to improving our infrastructure would not be excessive, but might employ as many as a million employees; yet the politics of our time opposes infrastructure programs though they are not useless endeavors such as having one shift dig holes and the next shift fill them in.  The country gets something valuable for their efforts in a more efficient and convenient nation, and even in an improved national defense.