The first one: real inflation-adjusted wages over the past fifty years:
The second one: Growth in productivity since 1964. (Wages are included also, but the wage numbers don’t match because this wage number includes public workers as well as private workers whereas the previous graph includes only private workers).
As you can see, somewhere around 1973 per-worker productivity kept going straight up as had been the case since WW2, but suddenly wages flattened out. The gap between productivity and wages went almost entirely to the top 10% as returns on investments or as wages for managers.
And finally, another place the money went:
This one needs almost no explanation. It’s too bad we don’t have good numbers from before 1990, because I suspect they would have made the current disparity look even more horrific.
There you go. Three graphs showing just how fucked we really are.
– Badtux the WASF Penguin
Aw Tux – –
You just hate ‘Merica.
bear
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Back in 64 or maybe 5 i worked for $.95 an hr which was the minimum wage or it may have been a $1.05. I had plenty of money for a teen because working 60-70 a week sacking hot feed in a quonset building with 90 temps and humidity you had nothing left to even want to play.
I think these numbers are accurate because if I had been getting paid $2.50 I would have really been rolling in it for sure.
A few years later sacked fish cake (soybean meal made into catfish food that was trucked down to your neighborhood and I believe they still make this and these kinda special machines must be close to a 100 by now) for 5 smacks cash an hr. It wasn’t worth it but that was a lot of money for the time.
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I think it was the French people that once showed us a way to change this?
w3ski
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w3ski, yeah, and that one only ended up with 40% of France’s male population dead once all the inevitable consequences were finished. I’d prefer to not do that, thank you very much. Especially since we have a better route to a revolution every two to six years, if we only cared to take it rather than continually voting for the richest/most corrupt candidate.
One Fly, nowadays they wouldn’t have hired you unless you were an illegal. They can treat the illegals like shit — make them work overtime for no extra pay, make them work without proper safety gear, etc. — and the illegals can’t file a complaint. Legal citizens like you, on the other hand, they tried jacking your paycheck you’d file a wage claim against them with the government. If they tried making you sandblast without the proper respirator to prevent silicosis, you could file an OSHA complaint. Mexicans… not so much, they can be threatened with deportation if they file a complaint. They’re disposable. There’s always another one to use and throw away.
Of course, nowadays with OSHA being gutted and many state employee protection offices being eliminated or barred from enforcing wage laws, that pendulum may be swinging. Yippee, now we *all* get to be illegals. Hurray!
– Badtux the Working Penguin
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I like to call ‘Right To Work’ states; “Slaves for the Right” states…I unfortunately live in one.
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