[quote=CA renter]
Some would contend that it was never the unions that “priced us out of the market” because it was those unions that provided the *customers* of those businesses that had union labor. It was a virtuous cycle: well paying jobs produced wealthier employees who were customers of the companies who provided those well paying jobs. Once the corporations decided to get greedy and grow their profits at the expense of their workers and customers, they began the steady destruction of their customer base.
.[/quote]

From a Marxist perspective, this is an internal contradiction of capitalism which inevitably undercuts the conditions of its own existence. Put simply, capital destroys or circumvents all barriers to serve it’s goal of accumulation. Well-paid labor is such a barrier, to accumulating capital, that inevitably will be destroyed.

What you are seeing is not a planned event per se, but the natural flow of capital accumulation and gimmicks to delay and hide it’s effects. The dramatic increase in debt-based consumption, over the past four decades, was to counteract the systems own contradictions — which essentially created more problems and scapegoats when you think about it.

Of course, we had plausible sounding rationalizations for every step we took that put us in the corner we are in.

So, both, you and SDR are correct, in a sense, and that is why it is a contradiction.