This Labor Day, the vast majority of Americans who need to work for a living still have a long way to go before they recover what they have lost over the past four decades. The real (inflation-adjusted) median wage is only about 10 percent above what it was in 1979.
As economist Dean Baker has noted, we can also see part of this transformation of the United States into a more shamefully unequal society if we look at the distribution of national income between profits and labor. If not for this redistribution from wages to profits from 2000 to 2016, the average worker would have an additional $4,000 per year in annual income.
This historic redistribution of income and wealth was the result of choices made by our political leaders and decision-makers. They chose to maintain higher interest rates ― and levels of unemployment ― than necessary. They subjected workers to increasingly harsh international competition while protecting highly paid professionals and CEOs. They increased protectionism for patent holders, including pharmaceutical companies who charge tens of thousands of dollars for cancer drugs that would sell for a small fraction of these prices in competitive markets. They changed labor law so that unions’ bargaining power would be reduced to levels not seen for most of the twentieth century.
The Trump administration claims that workers’ long night is over, as evidenced by the current headline unemployment rate of 3.9 percent; and that they are responsible…