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I think you are discounting that the two things are directly related. Your take home pay is affected by the choice of your employer to spend money on the benef

I think you are discounting that the two things are directly related. Your take home pay is affected by the choice of your employer to spend money on the benefits. Over time, which is what we are talking about here, the choice of the employer to put money into benefits in order to create an attractive compensation package means they are not putting money into wages (assuming for simplicity that those are the only two buckets to consider). So wages can stagnate while total compensation goes up. Yes you can conclude from this that your take home pay is stagnant, what you can't conclude is that there hasn't been an increase in compensation. And if you are trying to determine if compensation is correlated with productivity gains (i.e. the original article) then you can't just pretend those benefits aren't part of the compensation equation.

pmiller2 6y ago
I never said there was not an increase in compensation (vs. wages). I am saying that's not relevant to the economic picture of the American worker today vs 50 years ago. To be perfectly clear: I don't care if "total compensation" has increased with productivity; what I care about is "Is the American worker better off today, in dollar terms, than they were in the 70s?" Again, I literally don't care what my employer spends its money on in this calculation, other than my paycheck, and discounts on things I would use anyway such as health insurance they pass along from bulk buying. So, you can't say, "well, if they didn't offer insurance, and instead passed along savings in your paycheck, then your income would increase." Yes, I still need to buy insurance, so only the discount I get from obtaining it via my employer is relevant -- my literal bottom line does not change. (Actually, my bottom line is worse in this scenario because I don't get the tax break, but let's just ignore that). And, if a benefit isn't something I would use (let's say a childcare allowance, if I don't have children), that also goes on the company balance sheet and could potentially increase my "total compensation," but literally does nothing for me, hence its value to me is $0. You seem to be talking past my point, which is that the American worker is getting screwed from all sides by stagnating wages and skyrocketing healthcare, housing, and education costs. In America, for most employees, those expenses come out of wages, so wages are what we ought to be concerned with.

pmiller2 6y ago

I never said there was not an increase in compensation (vs. wages). I am saying that's not relevant to the economic picture of the American worker today vs 50 years ago. To be perfectly clear: I don't care if "total compensation" has increased with productivity; what I care about is "Is the American worker better off today, in dollar terms, than they were in the 70s?" Again, I literally don't care what my employer spends its money on in this calculation, other than my paycheck, and discounts on things I would use anyway such as health insurance they pass along from bulk buying. So, you can't say, "well, if they didn't offer insurance, and instead passed along savings in your paycheck, then your income would increase." Yes, I still need to buy insurance, so only the discount I get from obtaining it via my employer is relevant -- my literal bottom line does not change. (Actually, my bottom line is worse in this scenario because I don't get the tax break, but let's just ignore that). And, if a benefit isn't something I would use (let's say a childcare allowance, if I don't have children), that also goes on the company balance sheet and could potentially increase my "total compensation," but literally does nothing for me, hence its value to me is $0. You seem to be talking past my point, which is that the American worker is getting screwed from all sides by stagnating wages and skyrocketing healthcare, housing, and education costs. In America, for most employees, those expenses come out of wages, so wages are what we ought to be concerned with.