2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: (I'll regret this) starting around 1970, black wages started to rise and white wages started to fall [View all]Bluenorthwest
(45,319 posts)In this paper we document the economys continuing failure to provide real wage gains for most workers. his papers key findings include:
According to every major data source, the vast majority of U.S. workersincluding white-collar and blue-collar workers and those with and without a college degreehave endured more than a decade of wage stagnation. Wage growth has significantly underperformed productivity growth regardless of occupation, gender, race/ethnicity, or education level.
http://www.epi.org/publication/a-decade-of-flat-wages-the-key-barrier-to-shared-prosperity-and-a-rising-middle-class/
President Obama in Galesburg, Illinois:
"In the period after World War II, a growing middle class was the engine of our prosperity. Whether you owned a company, swept its floors, or worked anywhere in between, this country offered you a basic bargaina sense that your hard work would be rewarded with fair wages and benefits, the chance to buy a home, to save for retirement, and, above all, to hand down a better life for your kids.
But over time, that engine began to stall. That bargain began to fray. . . . The link between higher productivity and peoples wages and salaries was severedthe income of the top 1 percent nearly quadrupled from 1979 to 2007, while the typical familys barely budged."
That link provides much data and many charts and people who care about the people might want to read up.