I'm going to post a chart you've seen a million times before (the myth of wage stagnation)

[Recursion]

Last edited Mon Jul 20, 2015, 11:56 PM - Edit history (1)

We've all seen this. We've all noted the year in question, 1972 or so, and come up with various theories about what happened then to cause the decoupling.

Now look at another chart:



And I don't have pretty charts for the next bit, so you'll have to go to the census website here, and look at three spreadsheets:

Table P-36. Full-Time, Year-Round Workers by Median Income and Sex White

Table P-36. Full-Time, Year-Round Workers by Median Income and Sex Black

Table P-1. Total CPS Population and Per Capita Income Black

Now look at what that tells you (all dollar figures below are 2013 dollars):

In 1972, the median white male income was $54,368 and in 2013 it was $51,535, a decrease of 5%. The white male workforce increased from 36 million to 50 million in that period (39% increase), or from 17% of the population to 15% of the population.

In 1972, the median white female income was $30,734 and in 2013 it was $41,262, an increase of 34%. The white female workforce increased from 7 million to 41 million in that period (485% increase), or from 3% of the population to 13% of the population.

In 1972, the median black male income was $36,715 and in 2013 it was $41,555 (the highest it had ever been), an increase of 14%. The black male workforce increased from 3 million to 6 million in that period (100% increase), or from 1% of the population to 2% of the population.

In 1972, the median black female income was $26,292 and in 2013 it was $35,460, an increase of 35%. The black female workforce increased from 2 million to 6.7 million (235% increase), or from 1% of the population to 2% of the population.

I want you to really think about that. Before the early 1970s, the only group that was seeing their income increase was white males; the work white women and people of color did wasn't even counted as "wages" on this chart (the increases of over 100% didn't for the most part reflect people who had been idle at home suddenly "starting to work" but the work they were doing starting to be counted as "jobs&quot .

Lumberjack_jeff is right, and I was reading those wrong, sorry. The gains for women and minorities from 1955 to 1972 were similar to their gains from 1972 to 2013. The real jumps there seem to have been over the course of the 1960s (which also undercuts the idea that the workforce expanded in response to decreasing wages rather than the other way around). But the stagnation still has only hit white males, and women and minorities still have a lot of wage catching-up to do.

The narrative of stagnant wages is strictly a narrative of the white male subsection of the country. The narrative of a shared prosperity in the period before the Great Decoupling is a narrative of the white male subsection of the country. Those higher wages could be paid to white men in the 1950s and 1960s because they were not being paid to women and minorities.

This isn't the fault of marginal tax rates (though we should raise the wealthiest for budgetary and incentive reasons). This isn't the fault of trade (though we should buy less crap from China and India). The narrative of economic stagnation over the past 40 years is precisely the complaint of white men who have for the first time in the nation's history had to share economic growth with other groups. We still don't have shared prosperity (female median income is 80% of male median income; black median income is 72% of white median income), but we are closer to it now than we were before the alleged stagnation.

The past rarely was as it is remembered, and this is an important example of that. If I'm skeptical of old solutions it's because I'm looking at their track record. I don't think we know what a genuinely shared prosperity in the US would look like because it hasn't happened yet, and if we need a New New Deal to get there, it's going to have to be so fundamentally and structurally different than the original one, to avoid the great disparities listed above, as to be nearly unrecognizable.

[PSPS]

1. LOL. "Before the early 1970s, the only group that was seeing their income increase was white males"

You may be too young to know this but, "before the early 1970's," a single wage earner could support a family complete with a yearly vacation and the occasional new car. Hence, women generally chose to stay at home to look after the kids.

[Recursion]

2. Yes, that is the middle class white male narrative

The truth for a whole lot of people was rather different.

[hedda_foil]

3. Rather, women were expected to stay home with the kids.

Working wives, in white, working and middle-class families were seen as forced to work because their husbands were poor providers for their families. Anyone who did not see this in action wasn't around that culture at at the time. It was pervasive.

[Recursion]

4. And women who worked as a housekeeper part time weren't counted in wage surveys

My mom would do piece work as a seamstress before she got a job; that wasn't highly paid and didn't put her "in the labor force".

[hedda_foil]

6. Absolutely. And teachers (the career track for girls too upscale to be "just secretaries" ) ...

Teaching was considered an appropriate job for young married women for a year or two before they retired.to have babies and stay home with them.

[geek tragedy]

7. This post is cringeworthy on so many levels. nt

[Emelina]

8. Sadly that is true. Now...

young people think they are doing great once they graduate from college with 100K in student debt, a part time job at a micro brewery and an apartment with three room-mates.

[KentuckyWoman]

64. You are mistaken - the actual world was NOT Ozzie & Harriet.

All but a few in my community growing up in northeastern Kentucky had multiple jobs in the family. The minute kids were old enough to work we did something, anything, to help bring resources into the home. It was even harder for any family that did not have a white male in the family.

The only people that bought NEW cars and took vacations were the bankers, lawyers and fat cat business owners in the towns.

Whether the article is right or not..... you are still mistaken.

[raccoon]

78. And the average house was a lot smaller, had fewer bedrooms and bathrooms. And many families

had one car. And people didn't have near as much "stuff."

And perhaps most important, nobody (except maybe the 1%) rented a limousine to go to the prom.

Had you done so back in the day, everybody would've said you were crazy.

[mythology]

79. In what sense is the one time rental of a limo

More important than long term and much higher cost things like bigger houses and more cars per family?

Nobody takes out a mortgage to pay for the prom night limo. In terms of increased family expenses, that is a mere blip for the average family.

[raccoon]

81. It's a pet peeve of mine. nt

[Recursion]

87. Which leads to the conclusion that a single earner could support a family today

at a 1964 standard of living. Which is clearly true, since real median income today is higher than in 1964.

[Comrade Grumpy]

5. ALL workers are still getting screwed. Since 1972, productivity up 250%.

The biggest increase in wages for any demographic was 35%.

I think there's plenty of redistribution of wealth to be done.

Without pitting sectors of the working class against one another.

[PowerToThePeople]

10. Thank you.

I just love when our third way crew comes in claiming everything is great. "Capitalism is working great!"



Wages should be more than double their current levels across the board.

[Orrex]

19. ^^That

All of that.

[snot]

52. +1!

What you said.

{Edited to delete concern re- adjustments for inflation, since I now understand the 2013 figures take that into account.}

[Beartracks]

66. Thanks. The "aww, poor, whiny white guys" angle isn't an answer to the obvious wage problem. n/t

[Recursion]

94. No, it's not an answer, but it's a first step towards one

The first step here is recognizing that the wage stagnation has only hit the richest sector of the workforce, white males; other groups have seen significant income gains over the past few decades.

[PowerToThePeople]

95. Second step: outsourcing all jobs to low wage countries

Who are we to complain, who sit on top of the world income wise currently?

[Recursion]

97. Well, we're the ones who keep buying cheap shirts from Bangladesh

And, yes, global labor has been a factor in white male wage depression. As has opening the US labor market to women and minorities (which, you'll recall, had to be pried out of white males' flagpole-stabbing hands). Automation even moreso (several textile plants that left for Mexico in the 80s and 90s have reopened in the US, employing a tenth of their former staff but producing more than they were the first time around).

And, meanwhile, a lot of us on the Left are stuck repeating the mantras of FDR and Truman, despite the fact that their solutions were for a time when only white men benefited from economic growth, global labor couldn't easily compete with ours (for political and technological reasons), and automation wasn't remotely as advanced. We really needed three quarters of the adult population working to produce the food and stuff we wanted.

Those days are gone. There isn't enough work needing to be done that people are willing to pay for for everybody to have a high paying job. There's no future in jobs. We need to accept that fact and figure out a way to have a just and fair society without them.

[PowerToThePeople]

101. I do agree with you on

this

Those days are gone. There isn't enough work needing to be done that people are willing to pay for for everybody to have a high paying job. There's no future in jobs. We need to accept that fact and figure out a way to have a just and fair society without them.

I am willing to work towards a solution like universal minimum income or such to address these issues. I would prefer a socialist system, because long term even a universal minimum income will wind up a 2 tier society.

edit - but there is work to be done. It is just not work that gives the profits that the market demands. THIS is the real issue. Who drives society the people or the markets?

[Recursion]

104. Socialism (in the real Marx sense) is probably the best way to do a universal income

That is, every US business has as a default X% shareholder "the people". Dividend payments include that X%, and are distributed as a social dividend to every American. There's all kinds of questions this leaves (would they be voting shares? etc.) but it's a good place to start looking, IMO.

[PowerToThePeople]

108. Ok.

That is an acceptable start. The contrast of this post to others is slightly confusing. If this is truly what you believe in, maybe another way of stating it via your posts could be looked at. Your posts paint a very different picture.

[Recursion]

109. No, people just make a lot of assumptions about me. I've posted more about minimum income than trade

Guess which posts get attention?

My negative views on trade and the labor market in general are why I believe in a social dividend. I don't think there are band-aids for this, and I don't think it does any good to try to apply them.

[PowerToThePeople]

110. People pick up on right wing phrasing very easily here

It is much hated and rightfully so.

This post pitting white male workers against non white and female workers while leaving out the employer side of the equation is divisive and works against what we are trying to accomplish. It is the same framing the right wing does to continue to propigate oligarchy while the proles fight amongst themselves for the scraps they toss.

[Recursion]

114. I live and work in a city where 10,000 people die from waterborne illnesses every year

and I make a ton less than I could in the private sector doing some embedded systems work for an NGO that is trying to distribute workable water filters to cut that down to 6,000 per year (that's a pie-in-the sky goal, sadly, and I don't think we're going to reach it this decade). So I get impatient with Americans (whose median income is about twice what I make, and whose median income is about 10 times the median income in Mumbai, which is a "rich" city by Indian standards) complaining about having simply maintained over the past 40 years a lifestyle that is an impossible dream for about 80% of the world. I just want to scream "You have clean ****ing water! Consolidate that. Make sure you'll have that in 20 years. Because that's not a given." And then particularly to hear it from the segment of America that has been and is still doing the best (that is, the white men who are the only ones who saw stagnant incomes over the past 40 years) is particularly galling. (Think about that for a second: white men have had stagnant incomes for 40 years and white women haven't. White women still only make 80% of what white men do.)

This is a resource-constrained world, and the only resources that aren't particularly constrained are human labor and ingenuity. And there's about 4 billion hard-working, ingenious people in the developing world who are going to do everything they can over the next generation to claw back the absurd amount of other resources that we have hoarded to ourselves. And we're buying the shirts they make because they're $4 cheaper at WalMart. Well, there's a lot of things I blame WalMart for, but not that. Consumerism is America's religion, and it's probably going to get a wake-up call pretty soon.

But the 4 billion hard-working, ingenious people in the developing world are in for a surprise, too, because as they develop their wages go up, like ours did -- and, yes, the past 30 years have seen the largest reduction in world inequality in human history. More people have left poverty in that time than at any time in history. That's great. But as Chinese and Indian and Bangladeshi workers earn more money, the day when a robot is cheaper than they are gets closer, just like it did in the US (again: the US manufactures more today than ever before -- and we do it without those expensive employees).

I don't think there are easy answers to this, and I get impatient with people who preach them.

[PowerToThePeople]

116. You have some good points

I have to go to be going now, but may take this up again tomorrow.

[HughBeaumont]

120. Poverty isn't a competition.

Competitions have winners.

The only winner in this game will be the wealthy while the rest of us will be dead or dying. That's where your solution-void doomsday is going to lead us.

You say you have no patience with Americans; I have no patience for someone who has no concept of simple logic. I have no patience for a supposed Democrat carrying right wing water and spewing Charles Koch's benchmark of breakfast bugs and living in mud huts for why our impoverished aren't really poor and don't deserve help.

What, do you think places like rural Appalachia and many of this country's urban areas aren't experiencing the same lack of resources and funds you got going on in Mumbai? You think there aren't any people sleeping in the streets here? You think our infant mortality rate is hunky dory? I don't know whether that's just being willfully deluded or not as well traveled as you think you are.

This is why no one takes you seriously.

[Recursion]

121. Here's the world income distribution

The Federal poverty line for an individual is at about 90%.

And, no, comparing the poor of Appalachia to the poor here is simply stupid. There is no comparison between the struggles of the poor in America and the poor in the developing world, period.

In the US, we are all "the rich" in your scenario, even "the poor".

[HughBeaumont]

122. Hah ha ha, troll.

Come to my wife's job sometime and tell me there aren't any poor people in this country.

Tell our homeless people how awesome they have it compared to someone in Jakarta.

Tell your bosses Chuckles and Dave Koch "good luck" with selling that narrative.

[Beartracks]

119. I can see that. But even those gains have been below what they SHOULD have been.

I think the usual analogy is that women and minorities are now getting their own slices (congratulations!) of an ever-shrinking pie.

You've described, perhaps, how the "traditional" middle class demographic has gotten squeezed by one force: increasing competition in the job market from minorities and women. But they've also gotten squeezed by a second force: the Great Middle Class Undoing that's been operating for around the same span of time (30+ years).

Your OP kind of made it sound like wages are simply being spread around to more workers than before, so of course the traditional workers would notice they weren't getting raises, or something like that -- like this white male demographic was complaining because they just didn't realize they now had to share this huge pile of money with others.

But economic productivity has increased -- a lot -- and there was clearly a need for all these new people entering the workforce. But then... all the productivity gains went to the top, leaving ALL demographics in the work force waiting for the trickle down that never came.

So when white males observe that wages have stagnated, and cost of living has skyrocketed, and productivity gains are going only to the wealthy.... that's all still quite true. And, according to your initial analysis, that demographic has the most historical participation in the workforce to be able to fully understand how things have gone awry.

=================

[Rex]

107. All the RWing blah blah to avoid talking about Reaganomics.

The RWing LOVES wealth stagnation and working class salary stagnation! The OP is bunk

https://consortiumnews.com/2011/09/20/the-dark-legacy-of-reaganomics/

It may be political heresy to say so, but a strong case could be made that the greatest American “job creator” over the past 80 years has been the federal government – or put differently, the government built the framework that private companies then used to create profits and jobs.

This heretical view also would hold that it was Ronald Reagan’s deviation from this formula for success some 30 years ago that put the United States on its current path of economic decline – by starving the government of resources and providing incentives for the rich, through sharply lower taxes, to get super-greedy.

Rather than continuing a half century of policies that made smart investments in research and development – along with maintaining a well-educated work force and a top-notch transportation infrastructure – Reagan declared “government is the problem” and built a political movement for deconstructing it.

[GoneFishin]

111. Thanks. I don't need to look at any charts to know the OP is bullshit. I live in 2015 reality and I

am old enough to know how things were before Reagan.

[CentralMass]

117. Yup.

[joshcryer]

9. Compelling enough for me.

Have a rec.

(Not sure what's so controversial about noting that we never had shared prosperity.)

[TM99]

11. I am impressed.

I hope you get the money you are worth for this type of propaganda.

You have found a way to attack progressives, the New Deal, and use two separate sets of graphs to make it look like you have facts to back up these attacks. Bonus points for getting in the racist and sexist components AND the NAFTA/TPP are both not so bad either bullshit. Though I must deduct some points because you did not use the words 'white privilege'.

Adjusting for any differences in wages between white males and minorities over the years, real wages are still down compared to productivity today, CEO pay, and corporate earnings over all.

Just because there has not been economic parity AND strong civil rights in the past does not mean we abandon economic policies from the past that will work in the present to create both social AND economic justice in the future.

[Scuba]

16. /\_/\_This right here_/\_/\

[tenderfoot]

53. Yes!

[tymorial]

57. Amazing.

I just love when objectivity and reason wrecks "evidence" created with the intent of "proving" preconceived notions and conclusions generated from emotionalism and feelings. People who engage in conclusion before research have no honor or integrity in my opinion.

[lumberjack_jeff]

77. Indeed. n/t

[Zorra]

80. It's insulting for Democrats to have this RW trash pushed on us day after day. nt

[CentralMass]

118. +1

[Marr]

90. +1

[GoneFishin]

112. +1. Thanks.

[B Calm]

12. What do you do for a living?

[Recursion]

14. UNIX administration

why?

[B Calm]

15. It's always helpful to know where you are coming from. If you worked an hourly labor job

I think your point would be different.

[Recursion]

18. It is hourly. My forklift days were years ago

if that's what you mean.

[B Calm]

20. The average UNIX administrator salary is $92,000, do you think that's what hourly employees

make on average?

[Recursion]

23. Do you think that's what I make, working for an NGO?

I've never made even close to that

[B Calm]

26. Just going with what Google tells me.

[KG]

13. I lulz'd.

again.

[Scuba]

17. Scott Walker would be so proud!

[pampango]

21. Looks like hourly compensation stagnated particularly from the mid-70's to the mid-90's,

then again from about '02 to '08.

Seems that the only periods since 1970 in which the rise in hourly compensation even came close to the rise in productivity was 1974-77 and 1995-02. The 1980's and early 90's were a particularly terrible period, as was 2002-08. There must be a lesson there.

Recursion, I must say that using charts and statistics to try to question that what people think they KNOW to be true (or false) about something, whether it is wage stagnation or climate change, is a perilous effort. If my view of politics and the world is tied to a certain set of beliefs, you will have a difficult time convincing me through charts and statistics that I need to make fundamental change in my beliefs.

I don't think we know what a genuinely shared prosperity in the US would look like because it hasn't happened yet, and if we need a New New Deal to get there, it's going to have to be so fundamentally and structurally different than the original one, to avoid the great disparities listed above, as to be nearly unrecognizable.

I don't agree. The New Deal set a standard for "genuinely shared prosperity" even though it did not reach women and minorities. I would argue that much of the divergence of hourly compensation from productivity came from the increasing abandonment of the New Deal. Resurrecting the New Deal and linking it to modern civil rights legislation, which did not exist in the 1930's and 40's, could produce a "genuinely shared prosperity" that includes minorities and women.

[mmonk]

22. I'm old enough to know middle classes wages have been on the decline

in terms of the value of the dollar and inflation over those years. Maybe young people of today haven't experienced what is has been like because it all has started to be faded history.

[Recursion]

24. "2013 dollars" means accounting for inflation (nt)

[mmonk]

25. I understand what the term means.

However, in the past, one wage earner could earn enough money to keep a family afloat without taking a second job. Today, two wage earners from a family are in many cases struggling to make ends meet. And that's even taking into consideration the pockets of purposely created poverty our system creates to keep wages low.

[Recursion]

28. I'm curious how that can be since real median income for men is higher now than say 1960

Actually that's an interesting question. Men were earning less in real dollars back when it was allegedly possible for one earner to support a family. I'll look in to that.

[mmonk]

29. You may want to check into costs not associated with the graphs.

Especially in housing and medicine. Thing is, we don't have the disposable income we used to have. I'm writing a book which will be titled, "Demand, The Forgotten Side of Economics". I was hoping to have it published before Christmas but due to personal circumstances, spring of 2016 is more likely now.

[Recursion]

31. Housing and medicine are factored into CPI though

So the inflation adjustments should account for that in theory.

[mmonk]

34. There are, I think, many factors such as declines in pensions for 401 K's and such for an example.

I feel, as I have experienced, that both housing and medicine have risen as a percentage of income, much faster than some may claim. About the only thing that leveled or even declined I believe, may be the costs of automobiles as a percentage of income. As Thomas Piketty wrote, some say economics is a science, but it really isn't. It's more of watching what works and doesn't and looking at numbers over periods of time. Even so, there are big differences in macro vs micro models when looking at nations, especially large ones.

[mmonk]

36. Also, the greater the income gap between the richest and the typical American family is,

the more skewed graphs and median figures become. Also, capital accumulation of the 1% for example, always seems to outstrip growth.

[whatthehey]

44. medians are not skewed by outliers. That's the point of medians.

list everybody in the country highest to lowest income in order. The median is the one exactly in the middle of the list. It doesn't matter if #1 makes $10Billion or $500,000, it's just a single place in the list.

[mmonk]

45. The 20:20 ratio is a much better way to determine the effects of income inequality in terms of

models.

[whatthehey]

48. Medians are not intended to show inequality

Since a median is a single number its use is exactly as displayed on the chart - to show relative movements compared to itself. Is the median wage in real dollars going up? Then we have an unskewed indication of rising wages in the economy as a whole. The billionaires at the top and the indigent at the bottom don't skew medians like they do means, but unless you do separate medians by quintile or decile you're not going to see anything to do with inequality. That doesn't make the holistic median wrong or useless, it just makes it useful for how it's used here - as a self-relative measure of, in this case, real income.

[mmonk]

49. The problem with just using standard median is it doesn't give a complete

picture of the factor of declining wealth for a majority of citizens relative to the economy of the time.

[mmonk]

51. Notice the drop in household median income from the collapse in 2008 to 2012.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_States#/media/File:US_Real_Household_Median_Income_thru_2012.png

[mmonk]

46. .

[ronnie624]

75. This is the over-arching issue.

The 'ownership' and control of the earth's resources, by a tiny fraction of the human population, for the purpose of self-enrichment; the foundational premise of capitalism. The trend toward greater concentration of wealth, portends some very negative implications for democracy and human civilization, that even some 'smart' people, simply cannot perceive. A lifetime of exposure to propaganda, is not easy to overcome.

[mmonk]

103. So right you are. Well stated.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

27. Yay! We can all EQUALLY be in poverty together!

I'd love to see everyone getting completely equal wages for work done, but I still want it to be HIGHER. Not for capital to simply drain all gains off to shareholders.

[Recursion]

33. They don't even drain off to shareholders anymore

Despite high profits dividends are a fraction of what they were in the 1960s.

[Tom Rinaldo]

30. So? At best this shows a time old employer tactic: "bring in cheaper workers"

Of course it is no more fair that women get paid less than men than it was for the Irish or Mexicans to get paid less then whites (or for there to have been slaves before that) The fact that some women are earning more now than they used to doesn't negate the overall pay discrepancy and the motivation of many employers to squeeze more and more profits from their workers while also increasing productivity and profits. For the tens of millions of American households that include both males and females seeking gainful employment, this is all a stagnation shell game.

[rock]

32. The early 70's

The time MBAs came to the forefront with their MBA handbooks clutched tightly and not a brain among them. All they knew was they had to figure how to grow the company by about 20% a year and knew nothing about how to run the company.

[Recursion]

85. There's probably something to that (nt)

[lostnfound]

35. Interesting perspective. So is the denominator in first graph total paid working hours?

I get your point that some of the higher paying jobs are now going to people other than white men, which might have suppressed wage growth that would otherwise have occurred.

But the working couple now is contributing double the working hours to the workforce compared to the single-income past. And within specific standard occupations that haven't changed much, haven't wages stagnated over the years? I.e, firemen, teachers, assembly line workers,

[Recursion]

38. Within specific standard occupations, generally no

Firemen and teachers earn a lot more in real dollars than they used to. But there are fewer of them as a proportion of the population (along with factory workers and others). There's a whole lot of new jobs that didn't exist 40 years ago (there were very few aestheticians back then, for instance) and those jobs don't pay very well for the most part.

[Starry Messenger]

37. You may not be aware of this--

There are men who have used these numbers here to "prove" that women entering the workforce is the reason the white male earning power stagnated.

But it guess none of this really matters, since you are hoping most of us get replaced by robots.

[Recursion]

39. It would be hard to argue that expanding the labor pool didn't push wages down

How could it not?

since you are hoping most of us get replaced by robots

"Hoping" is a weird way to describe the fact that I don't see a way to avoid it. But I'm pretty used to DU's very black and white thinking by now.

[Starry Messenger]

40. Meh.

Last edited Mon Jul 20, 2015, 01:33 PM - Edit history (1)

I'm a woman. It's unpleasant to be told I'm both the reason for the downfall of the middle-class single-earner family, and also that my job could be done better by a low-wage online service provider.

I guess I find your posts defeatist, and wonder exactly what your point is. You rarely answer me except to tell me you find my own solutions, like unionism, to be hopeless, so. Have a day.

I'm having an invasive gum exam today to examine the fallout from years of no dental insurance and very low wages, and I'm in a bad mood already.

[The2ndWheel]

43. The middle class single earner family was temporary

It's not just women entering the workforce. It's the whole world opening up. It's technological advancement. There was a brief period where everything sort of lined up just right when it was, I guess normal, but that's not a great word, for one person to be able to work and afford all those things 40 years ago.

And everyone is replaceable.

[Recursion]

115. ^^^ That

The single earner middle class family with the picket fence was the result of a ton of disruptions to the world economy. Every other industrialized country was prostrate after WWII. China and India were engaged in a counterproductive (at least in the short-term) form of economic centralization. Women and minorities were specifically excluded from the high paying wage work. All of those came unravelled in a couple of decades; that was not a "normal" we can realistically return to.

[The2ndWheel]

42. Well it is just a numbers game

Cars, solar panels, whatever, is expensive at first. Make more cars, solar panels, whatever, and the price goes down. I know we're talking about people and not items to buy, but if you add more people to the labor market, then that's going to do something to wages. Pool together more money from more people, and the cost of insurance goes down. Again, I know it's labor in the case of wages, but there's no reason the math wouldn't work the same. Add in the pressures from China, India, and anywhere else, and the increasing automation of everything, and why would wages keep up with productivity, if productivity increases with wages that don't keep up?

If there was an easy answer to any of this, it would've been figured out by now.

[Romulox]

56. LOL. Another hit from the Socialists...for Hillary??? club! nt

[Starry Messenger]

58. Pardon?

Where did I agree with the idea that we are all more prosperous? I await all of your OPs on the solution for wage stagnation, which I agree is a fucking serious problem, since the only reason I don't live in my car is my union. I'm sure all of your hard work organizing from that cafe' in Grosse Pointe will lead us all to deep insights.

[Romulox]

59. I just think that supporting the fabulously wealthy Corporate-backed candidate is the solution...

from a "socialist" perspective, of course!

(I have no idea what "cafe' (sic) in Grosse Pointe" refers to, however.)

[Starry Messenger]

62. You're right.

It's probably Hamtramck. Seems more you.

Obviously you don't do anything that requires a union. You seem vastly uninformed of the issues organized labor actually faces. You do you, though.

[Romulox]

70. I'm glad you know the names of several cities in Michigan, but this is all a bit random.

I have no idea what you think you know about me, where I live, or my union status. Nice rebuttal, though.

It's probably Hamtramck. Seems more you.

Class based insults, huh? (I'm probably poor, and hence live in Hamtramck? Or are you insinuating I am Polish? Or Arab? Just what are you saying? )

[Starry Messenger]

71. What were you proposing I rebut? I missed your point, except you object to my presence.

Your attitude? I'm sure that's a permanent feature and not worth my time. I'm sure when you drag up an actual argument about something, we'll all be cold and in the ground.

[Romulox]

72. I want to know what the Hamtramck insult is supposed to mean.

What is wrong with Hamtramck?

[Starry Messenger]

73. I didn't say anything was wrong with it at all.

I'm sure it's quite fun.

[Romulox]

74. You're not good at playing coy. Very lame. nt

[Exilednight]

41. This is easily explained.

Prior to the 1970s, college was not an option for many women or African Americans. Once the first massive generation of AAs and women graduated college, their wages significantly increased the wages of many demographics that were formerly lagging. For the first time in our history we had a new untapped source of educated workers. That number has steadily increased iver the years.

What your numbers and charts show is that corporate America took advantage of them and paid them less to do the same job even though they had the same qualifications.

The biggest thing you ignore is the fact that corporate America is still taking advantage of them.

[PowerToThePeople]

47. Imo this OP is pizza worthy

This could have come dirrectly from fox or rush. It is exactly the same bullshit the right wing spews about latin america immigrants taking jobs away from "good americans."

It is bullshit.

The only thing that can possibly be said is that the business community has, in the last 30 years taken advantage of women and minorities who have been joining the workforce in greater numbers by paying them less than they had been paying for the same jobs. This starts a race to the bottom effect which drags down all earnings.

It is the business community causing the stagnation of wages, not the entry of minorities and women to the workforce in larger numbers than previous.

[Romulox]

55. AGREED. It is time for a RIGHTWINGER to banned from DU for a change. nt

[LondonReign2]

63. Seriously. Pushing right wing ideas is apparently perfectly acceptable

so long as you take a measured, "reasonable" tone.

[Marr]

91. I agree. /nt

[lumberjack_jeff]

50. Your first bolded text is a non sequitur.

nothing about the data you've provided indicates that wage growth prior to 1972 was limited to white men. What you have shown is that since 1972, women have entered the workforce, and in the face of declining wages for men, it is easy to infer that this was for economic survival reasons.

Luckily, I can provide the context you're trying to invent.



This is what has happened to men's wages in the last 50 years.

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/04/the-struggles-of-men/?_r=0

Why don't white men vote for us? As this thread shows, we consider their problems to be social solutions.

And while we're on the topic of declining wages, how about this analysis from the National Bureau of Economic Research?

The Effects of Immigration on African-American Employment and Incarceration

"The 1980-2000 immigrant influx, therefore, generally 'explains' about 20 to 60 percent of the decline in wages, 25 percent of the decline in employment, and about 10 percent of the rise in incarceration rates among blacks with a high school education or less."

Almost everybody knows that in the past 40 years, the real wages and job prospects for low-skilled men, especially low-skilled minority workers, have fallen. And there is evidence -- although no consensus -- that a rising tide of immigration is partly to blame. Now, a new NBER study suggests that immigration has more far-reaching consequences than merely depressing wages and lowering employment rates of low-skilled African-American males: its effects also appear to push some would-be workers into crime and, later, into prison.

"Remarkably, as far as we know, no study has examined if there is a link between the resurgence of large-scale immigration and the employment and incarceration trends in the black population," co-authors George Borjas, Jeffrey Grogger, and Gordon Hanson write in Immigration and African-American Employment Opportunities: The Response of Wages, Employment, and Incarceration to Labor Supply Shocks (NBER Working Paper No.12518). The authors are careful to point out that even without increased immigration, most of the fall in employment and increase in jailed black men would have happened anyway. Nevertheless, the racially disproportionate effects of immigration on employment are striking.

Changing technology, government programs, and a stagnant real minimum wage have all been blamed for the poor labor market performance of low skilled and minority workers. Another key reason, the authors show, is immigration. Using census data from 1960-2000, the authors trace the evolution of wages, employment, and incarceration rates for particular skill groups in the black and white populations. They then relate the trends observed in these variables to the increases in immigration experienced by each skill group. The observed correlations suggest that immigration is an important underlying factor influencing the observed trends. In particular, their analysis finds that a 10 percent rise in immigrants in a particular skill group significantly trimmed the wages of black and white men alike. For African-Americans, the decline was 3.6 percent. For whites, it was actually slightly higher: 3.8 percent. Beyond that, however, the black-white experience differed markedly, especially for low-skilled workers. Take employment rates: from 1960 to 2000, black high school dropouts saw their employment rates drop 33 percentage points -- from 88.6 percent to 55.7 percent -- the authors found in their analysis of census data from 1960 to 2000. The decrease for white high school dropouts was only roughly half that -- from 94.1 percent to 76.0 percent.

One reason, the authors argue, is that black employment is more sensitive to an immigration influx than white employment. For white men, an immigration boost of 10 percent caused their employment rate to fall just 0.7 percentage points; for black men, it fell 2.4 percentage points.

[Hissyspit]

60. +1

[TM99]

82. Terrific post.

Thank you for that linked information.

I am going to be using that for quite a few rebuttals these days.

[Recursion]

86. You're right, I had that part upside down. Will edit OP (nt)

Last edited Mon Jul 20, 2015, 11:52 PM - Edit history (2)

[lumberjack_jeff]

92. inaccurate.

From your first spreadsheet, Women's real income rose 36% between 1956 and 1973. Men's rose 52%.

Or were you expecting no one to verify your claims?

[Recursion]

93. Oh excuse me, only *half again* white women's income gains

You're right... huge difference

[lumberjack_jeff]

96. You were *only* off by a factor of two? A huge difference? YMMV.

But the rhetoric apparently does not.

[Recursion]

98. Fine, I'll edit to "significantly more than" (nt)

[lumberjack_jeff]

99. Don't stop editing yet.

Black women's real median income rose 135% in that timeframe. Black men's real median income rose 81%.

Inconveniently to your basic point, those black men have only seen their income rise 14% since then, and not at all since 1978.

From your links, of course.

Maybe editing is inadequate. A full rewrite of the op may be in order.

[Recursion]

106. You're right, I read that part completely wrong.

Too many spreadsheets open. Sorry, and I'll edit.

[lumberjack_jeff]

113. We're making progress, but we're not there yet.

"The narrative of stagnant wages is strictly a narrative of the white male subsection of the country."

Black men have seen their wages increase 1.2% since 1978. The social justice of reducing white men's wages has apparently also caused collateral damage.

[Romulox]

54. Another in the "PAY NO ATTENTION TO THE MAN BEHIND THAT CURTAIN!" series.

How pathetic.

[Marr]

89. Pretty much-- along with the standard divide and conquer appeal to identity politics and

not-so-subtle suggestions that anyone who complains about our corporatocracy must be a racist/sexist/whatever.

[Hissyspit]

61. Oh, for christ's sake...

[Teamster Jeff]

65. Third Way Horseshit. Going All In with Rovian HRC campaign race baiting

[YoungDemCA]

67. Might also have to do with white men monopolizing "skilled" work for much of America's history

As exemplified by their domination of one of America's largest (and relatively conservative) unions, the American Federation of Labor.

The AFL initially allowed only skilled workers to join the organization. Unskilled laborers initially did not have representation under the AFL. The group also originally prohibited women, African Americans, and other racial minorities from joining the organization.

http://www.ohiohistorycentral.org/w/American_Federation_of_Labor?rec=835

Surely that has left a legacy in terms of economic and social disparities?

[KentuckyWoman]

68. I think you are partly right but have the chicken vs egg backwards

I think the powers that be started pushing wages down period and then looked for any excuse they could to pay someone less.

First they came up with quotas..... blacks could be paid less than whites. So to compete for jobs white blue collar workers had to work for lower wages as well. In response more women took "official" jobs in addition to the "unofficial" money earning tasks they already did.

By the early 80's when the fat cats could not figure out any more ways to shove down wages they started offshoring the jobs and closing plants in the USA. Told their "lazy" workers to get off their butts and go to college. Well what do you know..... 20 yrs later they are offshoring the college jobs too. Shock of shocks.

So I think you have it backward. The wages did not go down because of a higher work participation rate overall that included women. The women got into the official workforce in higher numbers because the wages for men had already been pushed down to the point households could not make it on one job.

Plus, you can say wages for white women have gone up but that is not actually right either. Women have pushed into more upper levels. I'm pretty sure if you look at the average earnings for any job that was dominated by white males and now shared with women the wages for that particular job description have gone down. The fat cats will use any excuse to pay less.

I rec'd your post. I think this is a good discussion to have. While the particular factiods in your OP are correct - having lived through this era I am convinced you have it backward.

Thanks for the OP.

[RobinA]

69. It Seems To Me

that your argument assumes that women have the same jobs they did in 1972, which in many cases they do not. Yes, women's wages increased because they used to be a secretary and now they are a marketing manager. So let's compare wages for like jobs and see in inflation adjusted dollars how much a marketing manager (or whatever) made then and now. Let's look at minimum wage in inflation adjusted dollars.

[Recursion]

84. No, I'm not assuming that. I'm assuming white men held a monopoly on higher paying fields

and that starting around 1970 or so those became increasingly open to women and minorities. With the result that female and black incomes have made impressive gains since those times (though still not enough to catch up with the advantages white males had carved out for themselves 40 years ago).

[Scootaloo]

76. Let's have some music to go with Recursion's post, courtesy of Eduard Khil

[HughBeaumont]

83. OH good. You've taken up with the Troy University set with this latest hilarity.

They carry the Koch Brother's losertarian water also.

First you go with relative privation fallacies and now divide and conquer straight from the bottom of the deck.

I'm just waiting for the next argument as to why the nightmarish progressive agenda of equality, distribution, shoring up the social safety net and shared prosperity is a false trail and we should just embrace laissez-fail.

[Octafish]

88. What Orlando Letelier said...

By the end of that year, the growing participation of the workers and peasants in the decision-making process, which accompanied the economic progress of the preceding two years, began to threaten seriously the privileges of traditional ruling groups and provoked in them more violent resistance. By 1973, Chile was experiencing the full effects of the most destructive and sophisticated conspiracy in Latin American history. Reactionary forces, supported feverishly by their friends abroad, developed a broad and systematic campaign of sabotage and terror, which was intensified when the government gained in the March Congressional elections. This included the illegal hoarding of goods by the rich; creation of a vast black market; blowing up industrial plants, electrical installations and pipe lines; paralysis of the transportation system and, in general, attempts to disrupt the entire economy in such a way as to create the conditions needed to justify the military coup. It was this deliberate disruption, and not the Popular Unity, which created any chaos during the final days of the Allende government.

SOURCE: The Chicago Boys in Chile: Economic Freedom's Awfull Toll

I brought it up, but I must not've used the right excerpts. Thanks for seeing where all this is going -- and coming from, HughBeaumont!

[Rex]

102. It is funny watching them admit to living in a plutocracy. The OP will turn

right around in a new thread and defend Corporate America. Nobody is fooled.

[Rex]

100. All that to avoid talking about Reaganomics.

But yeah white male, small group...you know a plutocracy, but now don't go getting all upset. Glad to see you finally understand what a plutocracy is and now maybe work on fixing it.

We can talk about Trickle Down economics and Voodoo economics all day - that totally destroyed the country.

YEP and you cannot stop us. Sad how far Marshall has fallen off the rails...

TPM was at one time better than a hit rag.

[Recursion]

105. Yes, trickle down fetishism was a big part of this

Lower taxes on businesses made labor relatively seem more expensive than profit. Easy fix for that: lower payroll taxes and increase capital gains taxes. Doesn't change the fact that a lot fewer person-hours of work need to be done now than 40 years ago.