The 99% are more well off today than at any other time in history. You only need to look at the costs of essentials (such as food) as well as luxuries (iPhones, kindles, big screen TVs, etc) to see how much Americans have prospered. See the article below for a quantitative analysis of what low income Americans can buy now.<p><a href="http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2011/08/young-americans-luckiest-generation-in.html" rel="nofollow">http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2011/08/young-americans-luckiest...</a><p>Capitalism matches products and services to consumer demand. Entrepreneurs find the gaps in current offerings or create completely new offerings that create demand. They find and execute on those ideals. Saying they don't create jobs simply isn't true. Saying they destroy jobs is not true as well. They may make industries more efficient thus lowering the costs and increasing the buying power of everyone. The US used to mostly be an agricultural workforce until the advent of farming machinery. Crop yields increased, labor costs decreases, food became drastically cheaper. People in those industries were forced to find jobs in new industries. Now manufacturing has gone overseas and now transitioning to robots following the exact same pattern as farming tech advances. That is the life cycle of capitalism.<p>As the markets become more and more efficient and technology enables more to get done with less than income will naturally be concentrated in smaller pools.<p>Final note: I am in favor of progressive tax rate structure and a drastically simpler tax code.
If entrepreneurs are any good, they destroy jobs. If you think about it, you don't really want a job as an end in itself. You only want it because the value you create can be traded for other goods/services you want.<p>If we want 100% employment, we need only have a government ditch digging program. We'd be no better off for it.