The 40 Year Slump: The Decline Of The American Job
The steady stream of Watergate revelations, President Richard Nixon’s twists and turns to fend off disclosures, the impeachment hearings, and finally an unprecedented resignation—all these riveted the nation’s attention in 1974. Hardly anyone paid attention to a story that seemed no more than a statistical oddity: That year, for the first time since the end of World War II, Americans’ wages declined.
Since 1947, Americans at all points on the economic spectrum had become a little better off with each passing year. The economy’s rising tide, as President John F. Kennedy had famously said, was lifting all boats. Productivity had risen by 97 percent in the preceding quarter-century, and median wages had risen by 95 percent. As economist John Kenneth Galbraith noted in The Affluent Society, this newly middle-class nation had become more egalitarian. The poorest fifth had seen their incomes increase by 42 percent since the end of the war, while the wealthiest fifth had seen their incomes rise by just 8 percent. Economists have dubbed the period the “Great Compression.”
This egalitarianism, of course, was severely circumscribed. African Americans had only recently won civil equality, and economic equality remained a distant dream. Women entered the workforce in record numbers during the early 1970s to find a profoundly discriminatory labor market. A new generation of workers rebelled at the regimentation of factory life, staging strikes across the Midwest to slow down and humanize the assembly line. But no one could deny that Americans in 1974 lived lives of greater comfort and security than they had a quarter-century earlier. During that time, median family income more than doubled.
Then, it all stopped. In 1974, wages fell by 2.1 percent and median household income shrunk by $1,500. To be sure, it was a year of mild recession, but the nation had experienced five previous downturns during its 25-year run of prosperity without seeing wages come down.
http://prospect.org/article/40-year-slump
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with much worse inequality and lack of freedom, started training some people in technical subjects, engineering, and the principles of cooperative work.
When they went to work for companies they found that it wasn't helping them, so they bought a paraffin stove factory with money borrowed from their neighbors, and began the Mondragon Cooperative.
Go read about how big that is, and how much better they have done than the rest of Spain. Their own college, their own banks, medical care, etc - they are even working with the Steelworkers here (though I think the principles of cooperative work are getting a little muddled).
Small, but there are hundreds of those efforts all across the country. Still a LOT to be done, but as people lose more and more, they have less and less to lose. Starting with just finding some like-minded people, cooperative groups are enabling people to walk away from the servitude they signed up for, and be happy with a little food, a good walk, fresh air, a place to live, a lot of learning, and a complete reversal of everything they thought they learned about the American Dream. That last one is the hardest part, believe it or not. 
"I saved a thousand slaves. I could have saved a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves".
H. Tubman.
Wall Street investors schemers and executive salaries?
