>Gee who needs Mickey Kaus when we've got Nathan.
Low blow :)
>One common-sense definition of 'better' is that labor's
>share increased. Did it?
Didn't claim labor did better than capital in the 90s, since that is a complicated question. Inequality still kept increasing, so it's hard to argue that capital didn't do better overall. But the comparison to the 80s is interesting.
> The key is that wage growth accelerated dramatically for most American
> workers in the 1990s business cycle. Real wage gains for private-sector
> workers averaged 1.3% a year, from the beginning of the expansion
>mbs: Robert Bartley (WSJ; "The Seven Fat Years") would be proud.
-You don't measure gains "from the beginning of the expansion" (i.e., the
-trough) to the end of recession. You measure peak to peak.
It thought the problem with Bartley is that he measured from trough to peak?
The gains in the lower-end of workers is a good thing and worth emphasizing. Actually, one possible cause of these wages gains largely unmentioned was the more militant union organizing of the 1990s. Even though the unions did not gain large numbers, just the threat of organizing may have forced companies to raise wages to keep the unions out.
-- Nathan Newman