thegreekdog wrote:Seriously though, wages as a percentage of GDP is a weird thing to compare.
No, I don't think it is. I think it's THE central issue, of which all others are just symptoms. It means that even though the economy is growing along a spectacular fashion, all the benefit is being corralled by the owners and not by the workers.
From the start of the Industrial Revolution to approximately the 1970s, capitalism brought steadily improving standards of living to both owners and workers. And then, things changed. The economy continued to grow (at least 8 years of every decade, with periodic corrections) but all the benefit flowed upward.
Today's worker is half as likely as his father to have a company pension plan. In fact, he's half as likely as his father to have any company benefits other than those that are legally mandatory. He's less likely than his father to ever pay off his mortgage, and less likely to be able to get his kids into university and help them break the cycle. All this would be understandable if the economy was stagnant or facing some horrible natural constraint, but it isn't.
