>And then we can talk about the distribution of the recent gains Ah, moving the goalposts. And irrelevant. The gains shown in the BLS [1] are median gains. I

>And then we can talk about the distribution of the recent gains Ah, moving the goalposts. And irrelevant. The gains shown in the BLS [1] are median gains. I just redid the data that you posted up through today (Time series CPIAUCSL [2] and AHETPI [3] from FRED like the author did). We're less than $1/hr off the all time high and trending upwards. We're higher today than 90% of all months back through 1964, and within 5% of the all time high. This doesn't seem like "rampant inflation in cost and deflation in wages over time", since the required rate to lose 5% over nearly 40 years is less than 0.13% compounded annually. That's miniscule. And it ignores all other factors that actually account for a lot of the change (like people getting more returns in the form of benefits and better regulations, which often lowers wages). Today I learned 0.13% is "rampant inflation". A large difference between then and now is we let minorities and women earn significantly more money than that high, while white men are earning less. Overall every income quintile is doing better. There is more competition for wages, which generally drives it lower, but the data us consistent with stable wages despite increased benefits and increased supply of labor. There is nothing supporting your claim of "rampant inflation in cost and deflation in wages over time". I rest my case. We're done. [1] http://www.bls.gov/news.release/wkyeng.t01.htm http://www.bls.gov/news.release/wkyeng.t01.htm [2] https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/CPIAUCSL/downloaddata https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/CPIAUCSL/downlo... [3] https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/AHETPI# https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/AHETPI#