Travis
Quoting Chuck <lbo at hvgreens.org>:
> Fellow LBO'ers,
>
> 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)
>
>
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