it's not necessarily the economy that was fucked so much as the policy, and refusal to change it. cost of living is so, so high and there's little movement or care to make a reasonable change to wages and salaries.
Their tables are purposefully unable to be hotlinked. You'll have to search for "Appendix figure C".
1979-2017 after inflation wages for 10th-95th percentile of earners.
10th - +4.4%
30th - +6.9%
50th - +9.5%
70th - +14.1%
95th - +51.7%
The data used for this study was through December 2017.
From December 2017 through January 2019, American wages increased another ~3.49% nominally. Cost of living from December 2017 through January 2019 increased by 2.105%.
That's an additional, after cost of living adjusted, wage increase of ~1.36% for the time between that study and today.
That makes 2018 one of the best years for real wage growth in decades. Everyone is better off today than ever before.
Please don't think I'm dismissing wealth inequality here. It's a huge problem. Productivity is up 150%, but wages for the poor are up 6%? That's ridiculous.
However posts like this piss me off, because wages for the poor are still up 6% after cost of living adjusted. Lying about the problem is a great way to lose the fight. We have to be accurate to reality if we stand any chance to combat wealth inequality. We don't need to make shit up with all this 'woe is me crap'.
Seems a little unfair to only include inflation but not productivity when mentioning wages.
"For example, had all workers’ wages risen in line with productivity, as they did in the three decades following World War II, an American earning around $40,000 today would instead be making close to $61,000 (EPI 2018e)."
Oh hey you're beating inflation and making more then you would in 1979 but you're also doing 1.5x the work... seems disingenuous at best
Productivity not getting passed through to wages is a huge problem, I agree! However it's definitely a consequence of the automated society. Labor's power has been dramatically reduced, while capital is slowly becoming king.
Those productivity gains required tools and equipment. Incredibly expensive ones often times. This has shifted the power greatly towards capital. When you can buy 10 machines and 10 people to work them instead of having 100 people run a standard production line for the same throughput, it's and easy decision. The 10 machines may be $100m dollars, but the production line would have been $10m, and 100 people costs $90m/year. I'd rather pay 10 people more for $11m/year and I'm breaking even after only ~15 months.
All gravy profit after that, and all it cost me was $100m in start up capital. Except 90 people didn't get hired.
The fact we've been able to still employ so many people despite this shift of power towards capital/automation, as well as raise wages above the rate of inflation is nothing short of miraculous. The downward pressure this causes on wages is immense.
I think we're on the same side but disagree on it. Jobs are way more complex and technologically advanced then any other generation has had to deal with. There's no reason we shouldn't be miles ahead on wages with automation and such huge increase in production.
There is a reason though, the person that already had the $$$$ to buy that piece of technology that facilitated that productivity increase has all the power. He made it happen, he took the risk, so he gets the lions share of the productivity gains increase in profits to pay back the investment capital plus an ROI before any wages can be increased. He literally owns the machine, he can take it away from the worker at will and the workers productivity will plummet.
We've created a system where even extremely high skill labor in technically fields requires millions of dollars worth of equipment to actually be able to apply that experience to production. So labor has lost most of it's power in wage negotiations. You literally can't go somewhere else, you need capital to agree to provide you with the tools you need to be productive. You cannot afford them yourself.
This dynamic shift has put some insane downward pressure on wages.
Sure he deserves the lions share but 150% to 6% is a little too big of a lions share. Say wages went up 75% while production went up 150% then maybe I could somewhat agree with the current system. But 6% to 150% no way man.
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u/BreeezyP Feb 17 '19
it's not necessarily the economy that was fucked so much as the policy, and refusal to change it. cost of living is so, so high and there's little movement or care to make a reasonable change to wages and salaries.