A new report finds that men in their 30s make less money than their fathers did at the same age, raising questions about deeply held notions of social mobility and the realities of the American Dream.
It's not just because they're typical Generation X slackers either.
In 2004, the median income for a man in his 30s was $35,010, the study found. Adjusted for inflation, that's 12 percent less than what men the same age were making in 1974.
There are several reasons for this trend. Here's four:
1. There are at least 12 million illegal aliens working in the US that were not present in 1974 (maybe the number is closer to 20 million if you go all the way back to 1974). According to Bush, they are doing jobs that Americans do not want to perform. The reality is that they are doing jobs that Americans do not want to perform for $5 to $7 dollars per hour. Big difference. Illegal aliens suppress wages: labor supply and demand, simple economics.
2. We have shipped hundreds of thousands (over thirty years probably millions) of relatively high paying manufacturing jobs overseas to places like China and replaced them with low paying service jobs. Comparatively, we now suck at making steel, but we are terrific at flipping burgers.
3. Failure of certain industries to innovate and adapt. The US automobile industry is a good example. rather than reinvest profit from the 60s and 70s back into innovation, too high a percentage got paid in dividends due to a slavish desire to please Wall Street. Operating income became the name of the game; and the report card came every 90 days. Innovation got shoved way into the background. Why? Because innovation usually takes longer to deliver than 90 days. Thus it became easy for Japan, Inc. (i.e., Toyota, etc.) to pound GM and the others. Also, the health care system in the US placed such a great burden on manufacturers that operating costs became uncompetitive.
4. Mediocre (poor is closer to the truth) business management. For example, Eastman Kodak at one time was actually a giant city within the city of Rochester, NY. It dominated the film industry worldwide. It made enormous profits and paid tens of thousands of workers excellent wages. But due to amazingly bad business leadership, it was blind sided by the digital camera revolution. Now Kodak is a shadow of its former self. Xerox is another such example. Instead of plowing profits back into the business to innovate new products and manufacturing techniques, it sat on its success and almost folded as a result. Polaroid, is yet another example, and the list goes on and on. The best business schools in the world, Wharton, Harvard, etc., produced a generation of portfolio managers, not innovators.