To the Editor:
“Should Americans Work More? It’s Possible” (The Upshot, July 14) doesn’t address the fundamental question of why we need more economic growth than we have now.
Working more at substandard wages is not a recipe for a healthy economy or a healthy society or healthy people. What we need is a better distribution of income and wealth. That would allow more people to earn a living wage, more people to have more leisure time and more resources to enjoy it, and it would tax the environment far less.
What we need are fiscal policies and employment laws that ensure that both labor and capital get a fair share rather than capital’s getting the larger share, as has increasingly been the case for the last four or five decades.
ALAN MEISEL
Eastbrook, Me.
The writer is a professor of law and bioethics at the University of Pittsburgh.
Note from KBJ: This letter has nothing to do with either law or bioethics. The letter writer's opinion, therefore, is worth no more than that of any randomly selected person.
