>Doug:
>> Still, your fundamental point is right - the share of the income pie
>> earned by "ordinary" workers (what the BLS calls nonsupervisory or
>> production workers, who are 81% of the private sector workforce) is
>> shrinking. High-income workers, upper-middle and senior managers,
>> whose pay conceptually includes a large portion that's a return to
>> capital, are getting more. Since the economy bottomed in late 2001,
>> wages and salaries for employees of "corporate business" (which
>> excludes proprietorships and small partnerships) are up 12%, and
>> pretax profits are up 85%.
>
>I think it is a rather different point. High income employees still earn
>wages so they would be included in the stats Chuck posted.
>
>Furthermore, treating all high income worker remuneration as return to
>capital is moot at best. It all depends on the source of income not the
>amount. A blue collar worker who is making a few thousand $ per year by
>buying and selling stuff on ebay is more of a "capitalist" than, say, an
>airline pilot or a physician whose earnings from work may reach six digits.
I didn't say "all high income worker remuneration [is a] return to capital." I said the incomes of upper-middle and senior managers include a large portion that's a return to capital. Airline pilots and physicians are highly skilled workers, not capitalists (unless the physician becomes a partner in a lucrative practice - then his social position becomes more like a capitalist). It's interesting to watch capital restructure the working conditions of docs - they're becoming like the mechanics of the 19th century, with capital trying to take away their autonomy as they Taylorize the work.
The figures Chuck (the non-zero Chuck) posted were a proxy for production worker pay; it's a technique for isolating it from the pay of managers and supervisors. The "wage and salary" numbers I quoted do include the pay of managers and supervisors - and even with that included, it's badly lagging profits. The wage/profit gap is the widest it's been in any expansionary cycle, in fact.
Doug