I wanted to see what % of the national income (GDP) went to wages over the last 40 years and surprise, surprise the trend is down (data supplied by Commerce & BLS):
Year Avg. Avg. Workers GDP %Pay/GDP
Hours Pay (000's) (Billion $)
1965 38.6 2.63 60963 719.1 45
1975 35.9 4.73 76798 1638.0 41
1985 34.8 8.73 97626 4220.3 37
1995 34.3 11.66 117260 7397.7 33
2005 33.7 16.13 133786 11734.3(2004) 32
The thing that prompted me to look at this was the debate on Social Security. I noticed that the long term trend for real wage increases was pegged at 1.1%/year while GDP growth is 1.6-2.0%/year depending on who you believe. This got me thinking, what happens to the difference between what workers get and what the economy over-all gets (the 0.5-0.9%)? My thinking was that if one divides the economy into two slices of one pie, with one slice being wages paid to workers and the other slice being income paid to the owners of capital, the long term trend is for workers to get an increasingly smaller share; and at infinity, the percent going to workers is zero if current trends continue.
With trends like this, it is not hard to see why corporations have so much influence in Washington and it is clear the future is not good on this score. The percent of the econony going to capital is not only important from an economic justice point of view but also from a practical political point of view as well since it is this money that buys influence at the Federal and State levels.
So, the above leads me to my question: What are practical ways to reverse this trend?
Chuck HVGreens (Ann Arbor, Michigan)