“Now they tell us. A new report on the economy finds that productivity growth is at a 50-year low and that much of the positive talk about the nation’s financial situation in the last election, much of it coming from the administration, was a lie.”
US economy: No recovery, wages in reverse
Weatherman,
This is actually a good article because it shows the longterm trend line of wages.
Here are some things you might consider.
There are two economies. Economy 1 is for the wealthy elite, whose portfolios have seen unprecedented growth over the last 3 decades. Economy 2 is for the working class, which has seen frozen wages since the 70s, and sharp declines starting in 1999.
Here is the scary part. Prosperity at the top (economy 1) comes partly from the low wages at the bottom (economy 2).
So here are some things you might want to check out. Look at the trade and labor laws from 1945-1980 (when labor was given a decided advantage over capital, and working class wages/benefits were tied to economic growth).
Then look at what happened to the labor and trade laws starting in 1980, and continuing through Clinton to the present day. This is when we started to de-industrialize and allowed our noble capitalists to move production to wherever they could find the cheapest labor. This is when globalizing billionaires started getting their ties made in Mexico and their steel from China. The billionaires made higher profits by cutting the American worker out of the loop. Their economy did great, but the worker's economy died because they now had to compete with shoeless peasants in Taiwan for production contracts.
The post Carter economy witnessed the birth of the divide between Wall Street and Main Street.
If you want to understand the longterm decline of wages, you should go back to the choices we made starting in 1980. Study what happened to trade and labor laws from Reagan through Clinton. I had to write a college paper about Reagan's textile trade policies. It turns out that Nike investors make insane returns when their stuff is made for pennies in Taiwan. Problem is: when we shift production to Taiwan so that one group of Americans can live like kings, we end up destroying the wages of the working class.
You owe it to yourself to study this stuff carefully. Rather than citing topical articles and blaming everything on Obama, you should try researching this stuff. You might discover Obama is even more guilty than you originally thought, or you might discover that the seeds of globalization were planted a long time ago. You owe it to yourself to learn this stuff, especially which parties donors benefit the most by "flexible" labor markets.
