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]forjusticethunders
(1,151 posts)the wages of people who weren't white males could easily have kept pace with the wages of white males without causing wage stagnation - it would have just required that capitalist firms accept that their profits were going to decline in the long run (not disappear, decline), and that executive compensation remain at rational levels. It would also have likely required maintaining a high top tax rate in order to fund government and create jobs.
Your premise is pretty much the fundamental premise of white racial resentment and how it's been used by the right for 40 years (actualy 400 years considering the economic basis of slavery which came *prior to* race) - it's dem gosh darned blacks and Hispanics and women and gays taking food off our table, not our rich CEO backers sucking wealth out of society with their tax cuts, deregulations, and bonus packages! You pretty much accept that economic prosperity for whites, blacks and everyone else is impossible, because restructuring our economy to serve the working class (which includes POC) is impossible in the face of 1% and 0.01% retrenchment.
Also one thing you miss is that mass incarceration in the 80s and 90s essentially took millions of POC particularly black males, out of the averages. If you add incarcerated POC to the numbers and give them an effective wage of 0, then suddenly the narrative falls apart.