Ever-expanding expectations

In about 1926, the old Bolshevik and leader of the All-Russian Central Council of Trade Unions Mikhail Tomsky visited Britain. Despite his Marxist understanding of capitalism and the inevitability of socialism, and all his years of struggle for revolution for the Russian people, Tomsky was so impressed with the high living standard of the average British worker that he declared:

"I cannot see why your western European workers should be Communists. I do not see any possibility of revolution in the west."
(p. 402, Stalin: a political biography, Isaac Deutscher, my emphasis)

The goal of communism was to bring a better life and a higher standard of living for the regular worker - this had already been achieved without communism in Britain. Why should the British worker be a communist? Yet, it was just at this time that the Labor Party came to power in the UK -- perhaps the majority of Britains electorate were not communists, but they were advocates of some sort of socialism, and today in Britain, Europe and in certain pockets of the US, people demand that government give them more.

Yet, what was this standard of living that so impressed Tomsky that he would essentially argue that capitalism (read: markets) was giving the worker so much that he need not demand that government (read: socialism) give it to him? Well, the GDP per capita was $6,947. The average worker's income was probably less (GDP per capita would be an average of all income including the very rich, and does not represent a median but a mean).

But, to be generous, lets say it was $7,000. Can working people make $7,000 today? $7,000 per year is about $3.50 per hour. Even in the worst recession since the Great Depression, even the lowest skilled high school dropout can easily find a job at that wage (if state minimum wage laws have not killed off those jobs!) In fact, even illegal immigrants make more than $7,000/year on average.

Yes, I know that nobody is calling for communist revolution in America, and I know that this is a low bar of comparison: but still, think of it. One hundred years before Tomsky visited Britain only the wealthy elite had many of the things that he saw workers have in 1926, and when he saw how well off they were, he understood why they would not fight for communism and demand of government the redistribution of wealth along egalitarian lines. Today even those unprotected by any law, illegal immigrants, can expect immediately and without any skills, without even speaking the language, to earn more than those workers did. The median American worker earns more than three times that, and the median household income is seven times that.

Yet, if Americans and western Europeans do keep demanding more and more of government, in the way of entitlements, labor laws, bailouts and so forth, we may ruin the economy which has given us this high living standard and leave ourselves worse off in the end. (And in a tragic and ironic twist, probably see a radical turn afterward.) Why do we demand so much - and why are our expectations so ceaselessly expanding?