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Now do it comparing labor productivity and real wages.

• JumpCrisscross 1y ago
  > Now do it comparing labor productivity and real wages You’re moving the goalposts. You asked “how many points below inflation” recent wage growth has been. The premise is flawed. Wages have risen faster than inflation, massively over the last 50 years.
  • throwaway290 1y ago
    > over the last 50 years You mean 2 years? Here's a handy chart of average wage vs inflation in US https://www.epi.org/blog/average-wages-have-surpassed-inflation-for-12-straight-months/ https://www.epi.org/blog/average-wages-have-surpassed-inflat... It's kind of hovering above 0, too. Since this is just average wages, if you exclude CEOs who are earning 400x more than workers maybe it will not even be above inflation now
  • bumby 1y ago
    I did not ask “how many points below inflation.” That was a different poster. I’m trying to nudge the conversation towards a larger and more relevant context. Standard of living is what we ultimately care about; everything else is just a proxy for measuring it. To that point, the premise is sound. We should expect real wages to increase faster than inflation because labor productivity has also increased faster than inflation. But productivity and wages have been decoupled for the last 50 years, meaning those productivity gains are disproportionately allocated. In other words, productivity gains haven’t led to a proportional increase in wage-earner standard of living.