11 ms·

The labor share of income in the US is at its lowest post-war level

503 points by loughnane 3mo ago

pocksuppet 3mo ago
55%? Ew. We can get it even lower. I want my profits.
- smallmancontrov 3mo ago
  I am John Capitalism and I revoke the USA's permission to use my name until they crush labor share of income below 50%.
scrumbledober 3mo ago
it feels like every share of income is at its lowest except for the ultra wealthy.
- jagged-chisel 3mo ago
  The annoying/sad/infuriating thing is the ultra wealthy don’t have “income.” Technically, according to IRS rules, much of what they experience (housing, food, etc) should be classified as income. But their lawyers and accountants help them keep that looking quite low.
  - Schiendelman 3mo ago
    I used to think this - but when I talked to a tax lawyer friend and we walked through the steps they take, usually they're just deferring taxation that does end up getting paid by an entity eventually.
    - toomuchtodo 3mo ago
      If they donate the wealth to their own foundation to continue to hold close and control, it doesn't get taxed. If they borrow against the wealth at low interest rates until they die and the basis is stepped up ("buy, borrow, die"), it doesn't get taxed. Certainly, deferment is a component, but there are obvious examples of the very wealthy operating in a manner to avoid taxes entirely when they're able to (realizing the benefit of the wealth without having to realize a taxable event). Trust stacking is a recent fad as well, although I don't have enough data to say whether it is a material concern from a tax revenue perspective. Silicon Valley Is Obsessed with 'Trust Stacking,' and the IRS Doesn't Like It - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48727963 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48727963 - June 2026
      - Schiendelman 3mo ago
        The cases you're talking about are all delaying taxation, not eliminating it. Eventually someone has to draw that wealth - the foundation has to spend for public benefit to be eligible for 501(c)3 status, for instance.
        toomuchtodo 3mo ago
        How Elon Musk's secretive foundation hands out his billions - https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jan/23/how-elon-musks-secretive-foundation-benefits-his-own-family https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jan/23/how-elon-... - January 23rd, 2019 "Spending for the public benefit" has a lot of latitude.
        saghm 3mo ago
        I also don't think they addressed how borrowing against the wealth doesn't require any immediate taxes (and is often low interest, given how being a billionare means you get more favorable terms). There's nothing stopping someone in that position from just deferring taxes on the money they currently have, borrowing against it, and then investing that to turn into more money with taxes deferred even further so that they can use the proceeds to pay the previous deferred taxes and keep the difference.
        Schiendelman 3mo ago
        That requires their investments to keep going up in value. That doesn't last forever, the assets that people borrow against eventually need to be sold to pay back that loan. When they sell to make payments, those are taxable events.
        jagged-chisel 3mo ago
        How does it work if the loan defaults and those assets were used as collateral?
    - ck_one 3mo ago
      Capital gains tax is clearly lower than income tax. So why did you change your mind?
      - nickff 3mo ago
        Not the commenter you replied to, but one thing to note is that capital gains tax (at least in the context of investments in corporate equities) is applied after corporate taxes. Profits and reinvested earnings are taxed as profits, and they're two of the key components to valuing an equity. As such, when comparing income tax and capital gains, you should add the impact of corporate taxes. Incidentally, corporate taxes are why many small business owners pay themselves wage income, rather than doing stock buybacks or dividends.
        saghm 3mo ago
        If the income was earned through dividends, maybe this would be a reasonable argument. Most of the time stock just gets bought and sold by investors rather than the company itself though, so it's not clear why corporate tax would have anything to do with this. Sure, the stock price should somehow be tied to the actual value of the company, but for a while now it's been mostly indistinguishable from a Ponzi scheme other than a few companies that do sometimes decide to buy back some stock, which makes it slightly less sketchy but if the value is from the company buying it back, it's a lot closer to debt or a bond, which is not at all how anyone treats it.
        nickff 3mo ago
        I agree that in a bull market, many corporations are not purchased and sold at book value. That said, we are on the largest bull-run in history, so we shouldn’t treat this as the norm, and base all our long-term decisions on the current situation.
        saghm 3mo ago
        So if I'm understanding correctly, your argument is that it doesn't make sense to make people who make more money pay the same rate of taxes as regular people do because we should ignore the fact that they've been doing it for longer than ever before?
    - Psillisp 3mo ago
      Was your ‘friend’ Jeffery Epstein?
  - lotsofpulp 3mo ago
    Capital gains not being considered earned income is simply sensible use of terminology to categorize different ways of amassing purchasing power. For example, in order to carry out the linked analysis. It has nothing to do with the IRS or taxes.
    - scottyah 3mo ago
      Income goes straight to a person, capital gains is a little return from other people generating income. Basically a MLM lol.
  - smt88 3mo ago
    This report is only about wages, so even if the ultra-wealthy reported their real sources of income, they wouldn’t shut up as “labor” the way this defines it.
  - micromacrofoot 3mo ago
    even with this scam the top 1% of earners still have more annual income than ~75% of the population
- smt88 3mo ago
  It’s not. There are plenty of non-wealthy people who make money from things other than their labor. Small-time landlords are an example, as would be anyone who owns a small business and draws cash from profits rather than taking a salary.
  - contagiousflow 3mo ago
    > non-wealthy > landlord If you think these two things are compatible you need to talk to more people outside of your bubble.
    - opinion-is-bad 3mo ago
      [flagged]
      - b40d-48b2-979e 3mo ago
        being born into money is not a requirement to own several houses before 30. Do tell.
        scottyah 3mo ago
        Live in a poor place. There are plenty of cheap houses, but you do have to leave expensive areas (shocking, I know).
        bonesss 3mo ago
        So “landlord” and “commercial landlord living entirely off of passive income” are worlds apart. Buying a fixer-upper outside of town with high-school and early 20s grinding, renting out 3+ rooms to cover the mortgage for painful years, working 80 hour weeks, refinancing against that first house into another under-maintained property where you live in half while upgrading the other, ending up with a rental duplex and drastically reduced living cost, is viable by 30. Maximizing youth savings, first house programs, and primary residence rules create less punitive economics. It sucks and will let one learn why landlord is a pain in the ass job, and relies on sweat equity and modest lifestyle, wanting to commit to real estate, and non-ideal properties. Trade school or skipping college for early income and low debt make the numbers crunch easier. Investing consistently into the market in your 20s probably out performs it by 65, and a young bankers lifestyle is a joy of its own, but: owning property young is achievable for electricians, security guards, and janitors.
- scottyah 3mo ago
  [flagged]
  - deleted 3mo ago
    [deleted]
  - contagiousflow 3mo ago
    Source for this statistically?
    - shimman 3mo ago
      There is but you have to ignore the lived reality that Americans are struggling to afford healthcare, housing, utilities, education, and food costs all while the ultra wealthy are demanding the public invests trillions into vaporware.
      - gegtik 3mo ago
        maybe the disconnect here is the claim was about 'income' which in isolation of living conditions, perhaps continues to rise and thus by the most narrow and useless definition, the OP is incorrect
        shimman 3mo ago
        Things barely increasing after nearly 40+ years of being completely flat isn't the win that poster thinks it is, maybe if you're doped up on neoliberalism it sounds nice but everything else people need to survive are also increasing in costs massively.
    - scottyah 3mo ago
      https://equitablegrowth.org/u-s-income-data-for-2024-shows-the-top-10-percent-accrued-the-highest-share-of-income-since-2000/#:~:text=The%20bottom%2050%20percent%20of%20households%20also%20made%20gains%2C%20although,share%20in%20this%20time%20period. https://equitablegrowth.org/u-s-income-data-for-2024-shows-t... Bottom 50% is increasing income with the top 10%, it's the middle class that's declining in the last 5 years. This was a quick google search, so I'll ask you to provide a source that's contrary else your comment was purely rhetorical and made in bad faith.
- ux266478 3mo ago
  It's not necessarily limited to the ultra wealthy, but outside of a few key areas (as someone mentions, those profiting off of the inflationary spike, those in the real estate market, etc) it is more or less the case, yes.
- carlosjobim 3mo ago
  Not at all. The real estate share of income is probably at its highest among a lot of people who belong to the non-labouring class, but are far from ultra wealthy. But it's nice to have a scapegoat, isn't it?
  - idiotsecant 3mo ago
    If you belong to the 'non-laboring class' you are by definition the ultra wealthy. It's wild how much people are willing to slide goalposts to make themselves feel better.
    - scottyah 3mo ago
      It hurts the definition of the words when you use ultra wealthy to refer to the top 50%...
      - idiotsecant 3mo ago
        You think 50% of people don't labor?
        scottyah 3mo ago
        While about 50% to 60% of the adult U.S. population are active W-2 wage earners at any given time, the percentage that relies on labor exclusively (meaning they have zero capital income or assets to fall back on) sits right around 40% to 50% of working households.
        triceratops 3mo ago
        > 40% to 50% of working households Not people then.
        scottyah 3mo ago
        Are you arguing that the other people in a household are laboring, or do you think they're counting pets?
lbarrow 3mo ago
Interesting that most of the decline happened in the 2000s. The graph shows a large decline from ~2000 to ~2008 which continues after the GFC before going up a bit in the 2010s. The drop off since COVID is comparatively small.
kevmo 3mo ago
This is clearly heading in a direction where the USA is going to elect a huge number of socialists, who in turn are going to enact massive taxes on billionaires and break up the monopolies.[1] This is why I think the billionaire oligarchs are literally mentally ill. They've won the entire game. They control everything. They live like gods, they twitch a pinky and millions dance. But their response to all of this power is to seek even more of it, destabilizing the very system that has them on top. You would think self-preservation would kick in. The fact that it is not and that their greed knows apparently no bounds is going to lead to their extinction. For a long time I thought it was hyperbolic to say so, but no longer -- the billionaires are mentally ill. [1] https://work.news/post/project-2031/ https://work.news/post/project-2031/
- nairboon 3mo ago
  Remember Occupy Wall Street? Back then the oligarchs were somewhat scared.
  - deaux 3mo ago
    I too don't believe that GP's dream is going to happen, but the current momentum is much stronger than in the OWS days. Maybe it's less visible to some because the world has moved into online algorithmic bubbles rather than people camping in front of Wall Street. If they were more scared back then than they are now, it's not because the current momentum is actually weaker.
- imightbebatman 3mo ago
  I very much doubt that. There isn't enough class solidarity to pull it off. There will be a few who brand themselves as such. But actually seizing the means of production and handing them over to the people? -- The oligarchs will burn this country to the ground before they permit that to happen.
  - wqaatwt 3mo ago
    It would of course be lose-lose for everyone. But if a significant proportion of the population starts believing (rationally or not) that they have nothing left to lose it could be problematic.
jameslk 3mo ago
The submitted title is a bit sensationalist given the article’s conclusion: > Is this decline a distinct change from the recent behavior of the labor share in the U.S.? Along the two key dimensions we investigate, our answer is no. First, the labor share’s trajectory post-COVID broadly follows the cyclical patterns observed in earlier recessions, with a decline during the recovery phase that mirrors historical dynamics. Second, the decline in the labor share since COVID is driven primarily by within-industry changes rather than shifts in economic activity across sectors. Taken together, these results suggest that the post-COVID decline follows the same cyclical patterns as earlier recessions and is driven by the same within-industry forces, and they provide little evidence that it will evolve differently from past episodes. What I find more interesting is the sharp drop around the early 2000s
- loughnane 3mo ago
  I don't think so. Opening sentence is this: > The labor share of income in the U.S. is currently at its lowest-ever level in the post-war period. Agreed on the 2000 drop though. Would be interesting to read a retrospective on that.
  - imightbebatman 3mo ago
    Is it not the dot com bubble pop?
    - FloorEgg 3mo ago
      Or the world trade center?
nimbius 3mo ago
this is relatively unremarkable for those with an understanding of wage, labor, profit, price and capital. capitalism will always seek to reduce labor cost. during the epoch of neoliberalism it achieved great strides in this by reducing labor power through union busting by both thatcher and reagan in the UK and US respectively. it has also effectively curtailed any increase in the minimum wage for nearly 20 years as well as reduced protections, regulation and prosecution for wage theft and overtime pay violations which it maintains as exclusively as civil matters while ensuring theft itself from a merchant in turn is always a criminal matter through the primacy of private property. to learn more i recommend reading Marx's "Das Kapital," albeit its rather academic. Engels "wage labor" is also a good read to understand why housing is so persistently unaffortable but helps to understand why any other good or service slowly becomes so as well.
- simianwords 3mo ago
  [flagged]
  - abdullahkhalids 3mo ago
    > Workers enjoy highest living standards of any time in history. It's entirely possible for someone to be paid a lot in absolute terms, while at the same time paid very little relative to the value that they produce which is monetarily captured by their organization. The truth of the first does not invalidate the injustice of the second.
- aeternum 3mo ago
  Marx fails to imagine a world in which labor actually has little to no value. His worldview is primarily that capitalists 'steal' the valuable labor. However it doesn't seem that that is actually the world we are in. Instead the intrinsic value of human labor seems to be slowly trending towards zero. And it kind of makes sense, same has happened with oxen labor, horse labor, etc.
  - arthurptj 3mo ago
    Then why does every plumber I know own a yacht
mrtksn 3mo ago
And yet for some reason all the algorithmic pricing targets the laborers, when apps hunt for whales they target teenagers. Ridiculous. There is a need for proper pricing for the rich, i.e. Elon can pay a million dollars per meal. Someone is leaving money on the table.
- playorizaya 3mo ago
  Love this. Parking and speeding tickets should have income brackets, at least. In the early Internet I saw this thing, no idea if it’s true but it sounds good (someone can math check it), goes something like: A person pays $2 to play basketball on a public court. Michael Jordan gets paid $2k to play on the same one. A person pays $100 for basketball shoes. Michael Jordan gets paid $100k to wear the same ones. A person pays $40 to go see a basketball game. Jordan gets paid $400k to attend the same game. Michael Jordan makes about $5 per second. If Michael Jordan saved all his money without spending a penny for 250 years… He wouldn’t even have half as much as Bill Gates! It made me think differently about money and consumer spending.
  - mrtksn 3mo ago
    > Parking and speeding tickets should have income brackets, at least AFAIK in some countries this exist but my case is more capitalist oriented. Rich people obviously can pay more since they keep accumulating wealth. It is an obvious sub optimal pricing since the low and even middle class rent/mortgage and other services quickly approaching the most they can pay so they can’t actually save and make wealth.
    - playorizaya 3mo ago
      sub optimal for who? ;) A long time ago I was working for a mid tier founder up in Oregon. Pipe dream of a startup, no customers, no product. Money and vision, but no direction and the main problem was that nobody would ever tell him "No" (me included) - to everyone's great detriment. He would certainly fail at this endeavor... He was the main investor, after all. At some point we brought on web marketing help - he knew people at Nike. To my surprise, they actually partnered with us - Nike! He also co-owned a web design agency in Portland, so I started working with designers and marketers there. When I would travel there, he always set me up in the same hotel. Turns out (a year later), he owned it. He owned the damn laundromat next door, too, because it was adjacent to the apartment complex he owned. After literally 1 beer, we were now going to do a live, in person event in Portland - he knew people and could make it happen. He owned the building where the event would take place. At the event he started asking if I'd ever leave San Francisco, if I liked Portland. We started talking about rent and stuff. I find out he's a landlord there - owns several single-family homes (with awful cyclone fencing) and has tenants around Portland. He starts telling me prices etc. Asks me what people are paying in SF. We both laugh over how expensive SF is - sun shafts illuminating our amber beer glasses as we drink to... Idk what. What happened was I found out that he was rich as fuck, and owned the god damn town, and everything else. His startup was a joke and failed - but who cares, it was a frame in a movie. I cared about it more than he did. Sub optimal for who??
ThrowawayIP 3mo ago
Okay, so say AI & MBAs are successful in replacing the labor spend of corporations on every level? What happens to "the economy"?
- rglover 3mo ago
  It transitions back to a more feudalist state. The series finale to "you will own nothing and be happy." That is, if they're successful.
  - matheusmoreira 3mo ago
    Is there any reason to believe they won't be?
    - galleywest200 3mo ago
      The sheer number of people who would have nothing left to lose would probably fight back, literally, at that point.
    - rglover 3mo ago
      People tend to get excited when they can't eat and despite its timidity America is exceptionally well-armed. That sounds cute in a post drone strike world, but if the government attacks its own citizens like that, they'll have a hell of a time defending that position to the rest of the world. Humanity is usually slow on the uptake but eventually settles on "how about you just go fuck yourself" even if the party takes a sec to get going. Who knows. I think it's better to err on the side of optimism despite the grim outlook.
  - carlosjobim 3mo ago
    That has already happened. The entire industrialized world is feudal. Young workers who are experts in their fields working full time can't afford a simple home. Young business owners who employ several people full time can't afford a simple home.
- win311fwg 3mo ago
sigmoid10 3mo ago
Yikes. Good to know that labor shares used to rebound after crises, but since the 2000s and the dotcom bubble it has basically been downhill only. So don't expect any of this to get better unless we roll back technology to the last millenium.
- rafterydj 3mo ago
  Not technology - that's only downstream of politics. No political administration in my lifetime (!) has made policy decisions against the interests of tech monopolists. The closest we got was Lina Kahn's FTC.
- delfinom 3mo ago
  Technology isn't the problem. The problem is the generation in governing power through the last 2 decades has no problem burning down the country's future to maintain lavish retirement funds for themselves.
  - ux266478 3mo ago
    I think it's more nuanced than that. There surely are plenty of cases where that is the case, but it's also a natural effect of hyperfinancialization, which many really do believe to be a "net positive" for the stability it brings. There's also the natural tendency of consolidation and centralization of power, and the natural counter-balance to that has been suppressed. Then you have legislative incompetence, the general failings of scientific governance aggregating over time, and many other structural flaws that are deeply seated and long-running. We shouldn't just be pointing at the (very much real) stupid greed, there are many rotten components occurring simultaneously.
- MSFT_Edging 3mo ago
  It's not the tech but who sees the benefits. The issue at play is the monopolization and concentration of power. Ie, why can one guy who is insanely wealthy due to stock valuations take loans against that to pull various levers of power. We didn't elect him, we need a way to control that outsized influence.
- 3mo ago
clusterhacks 3mo ago
FTA's conclusion: "Is this decline a distinct change from the recent behavior of the labor share in the U.S.? Along the two key dimensions we investigate, our answer is no. <later> ... and they provide little evidence that it will evolve differently from past episodes." This conclusion seems to be against "this time is different" arguments. Should we be generally encouraged by similarity to past declines pre-2000 or bearish and think that there is more drop to come like the 2000-2007 and 2007-2019 periods they graph out? I guess there is no way to predict other than check back in after time passes.
- shermantanktop 3mo ago
  > I guess there is no way to predict other than check back in after time passes. Welcome to the dismal science of economics, where the rear-view mirror is crystal clear but the windshield is totally fogged up.
- downrightmike 3mo ago
  Bearish, they are already working as hard as they can to replace everyone with AI or at least Actual Indians playing AI
deleted 3mo ago
[deleted]
simianwords 3mo ago
I find this metric misleading. Where is the extra money going? To whom? Turns out most of it is not going to billionaires. Bulk of it is going to future investments. If we choose not to do that, we lose out on future gains.
- cool_dude85 3mo ago
  Who owns the capital for those future investments? Who will receive returns on those investments?
- wqaatwt 3mo ago
  Speculation or actual investment? Assuming that the allocation of capital is somehow aligned with what’s optimal for the economy/society seems naive
  - logicchains 3mo ago
    It's not naive, it's near optimal. The system rewards people who've done well at capital allocation with more capital to allocate, and takes capital away from those who've done poorly at it. And there's no better predict of future performance at allocating capital than past performance.
    - wqaatwt 3mo ago
      Well my point was that it might be optimal for the one doing the allocation and maximize their returns. That does not mean its optimal for the economy and society on the whole.
      - simianwords 3mo ago
        Actually it does mean it is optimal for the economy as opposed to a central planner who somehow has all the information and does planning with precision. These are mainstream views in economics.
        3mo ago
crossbody 3mo ago
What happens if large cohort of Boomers retires and stop working, instead living on their savings? Labor share of income drops. If you remove this effect, the labor share of income is flat - confirmed by last week's analysis in The Economist.
- em500 3mo ago
  Pertinent data: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SPPOP65UPTOZSUSA https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SPPOP65UPTOZSUSA
hash872 3mo ago
I don't have time for a longer comment, but AIUI this is mostly a statistical illusion caused by changes to US tax law- previously income that was attributed to 'labor' shifted over to LLCs/S corps for more beneficial tax rates. The doctor, lawyer, financial advisor, CPA etc. that in past decades would have had his/her income run through a W2 arrangement shifted to becoming a one-person corporation
- hn_throwaway_99 3mo ago
  Do you have any evidence for this, at all?
  - saghm 3mo ago
    They seem to conveniently not have enough time to provide that in the comment
  - cucumber3732842 3mo ago
    Sure matches my anecdotal experience. How much of an effect it has at the national statistical level I'm not sure.
  - hash872 3mo ago
    Sure https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/2013b_elsby_labor_share.pdf https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/2013b_e... https://home.treasury.gov/system/files/131/wp-107.pdf https://home.treasury.gov/system/files/131/wp-107.pdf https://eml.berkeley.edu/~yagan/LaborShare.pdf https://eml.berkeley.edu/~yagan/LaborShare.pdf
    - hn_throwaway_99 3mo ago
      Thanks very much for providing those sources. That said, it's a huge pet peeve of mine when someone makes a statement, and then provides sources to back up that statement, but the actual sources contradict their original statement. You stated "but AIUI this is mostly a statistical illusion caused by changes to US tax law- previously income that was attributed to 'labor' shifted over to LLCs/S corps for more beneficial tax rates." But then your very first linked article states "First, about a third of the decline in the published labor share appears to be an artifact of statistical procedures used to impute the labor income of the self-employed that underlies the headline measure." I think there is a huge difference between 1/3 (while still a lot and an important factor) and what you wrote, "mostly a statistical illusion", especially since other substantial factors proposed in that article are things like offshoring.
balozi 3mo ago
For what its worth Ross Perot had an ominous take on the effects of free trade back in the 90s with his "giant sucking sound" observation.
- imightbebatman 3mo ago
  The root of this started in the 70s as the New Deal coalition decayed and Keynesian economic theory fell out of favor among the elites. To be fair their were good reasons at the time to think it wasn't working either.
  - to11mtm 3mo ago
    Worth noting that the Bretton Woods system was -not- quite what Keynes wanted...
    - imightbebatman 3mo ago
      No, yea that's fair. I think he'd be even more confounded about the current state of affairs though. Just my read.
nradov 3mo ago
The actual labor share of income is significantly higher when you include employer contributions to employee health insurance premiums. Healthcare costs have been rising faster than overall inflation for decades, and while many of those costs are passed on to employees the employers have also absorbed a significant chunk. If we want to increase the labor share then we'll drive down healthcare spending. And no, there's no simple solution to this problem. The notion that something like "Medicare for All" would solve the problem is a total fantasy, disconnected from actual US healthcare economics. Any real solution will have to work on multiple angles including preventive care, PBMs, provider wages, rationing, drug prices, fraud, malpractice insurance, interoperability technology, etc.
- throwway120385 3mo ago
  Why wouldn't a single-payer solution work? The margin that the insurance companies take for themselves seems like a good place to start. From there it would spiral out to the third to half of time that all of the clinical staff spend just dealing with insurance issues and insurance billing.
  - dominotw 3mo ago
    insurance issues are provider and insurer going back and forth detrmining if doctors assessment of necessity is agreed upon. i am not familiar with universal system. In that system if your doctor thinks something is medically necessary then thats the end of it and its gets done?
    - nradov 3mo ago
      All healthcare systems have some form of rationing. Even if your doctor thinks something is medically necessary it can only get done if the system actually has capacity. In most countries where there is universal coverage with a single payer, certain expensive treatments have long waiting lists or are simply unavailable at any price. Thus we see wealthy Canadians coming to the USA as medical tourists and paying cash for procedures like MRI scans or joint replacements in order to avoid the queue back home. There are always trade-offs, it's just a matter of what we want to prioritize.
Karthick81 3mo ago
Could it be because the productivity is up?
noahbp 3mo ago
That most-recent spike during/post-COVID really puts into perspective just how unreasonable low-wage employers were to be so hysterical.
- tadfisher 3mo ago
  Highly suggest adding "hysterical" to your internal vocabulary filter.
  - beckon69 3mo ago
    Not OP. But respectfully disagree. Reads appropriate to me. "Related to or marked by Hysteria" https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hysterical https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hysterical Hysteria being "behavior exhibiting overwhelming or unmanageable fear or emotional excess" which seems to be exactly what OP was trying to say.
    - GlickWick 3mo ago
      The origin of the word is a bit darker than its meaning, unfortunately. It comes from the Greek word for Uterus. You can kinda fill in the blanks from there as to how it came to its modern meaning.
      - annodomini2019 3mo ago
        Let's add dumb, lame, sinister, grandfathered in while we're at it if we're litigating roots nobody thinks about on a day-to-day basis...
      - palmotea 3mo ago
        > The origin of the word is a bit darker than its meaning, unfortunately. We should all just stop speaking. The origin of too many words is problematic. Just think of how many were coined by racists and misogynists!
        3mo ago
TrackerFF 3mo ago
Obviously the solution here is for workers to also become shareholders.
- cool_dude85 3mo ago
  The US has historically been quite opposed to the workers becoming shareholders.
  - FloorEgg 3mo ago
    Except for all the companies that issue shares and options as part of employee compensation.
    - winfredJa 3mo ago
      this is mostly in tech. starbucks barista is not going to get any stocks
      - charcircuit 3mo ago
        The barista can buy $SBUX every payday. The inverse of sell on vest.
      - BJones12 3mo ago
        Starbucks sells its stock to its baristas at a 5% discount every 90 days through payroll deductions. https://www.starbucksbenefits.com/en-us/home/stock-savings/stock-investment-plan-sip/ https://www.starbucksbenefits.com/en-us/home/stock-savings/s...
    - izacus 3mo ago
      None of those gives voting shares to employees.
      - BJones12 3mo ago
        Every share is a voting share. There are a small number of weird cases (e.g. Meta super-voting shares limited to Zuck), but your statement is broadly false.
jcfrei 3mo ago
I think this is part of a long term development where technology and globalization slowly erode workers bargaining power. Basically you only build a factory in the US if you can keep labour costs low enough and the manufacturing automated enough so that you can still compete with other manufacturing hubs.
- tokai 3mo ago
  Other countries in the world have manage to keep workers bargaining power in the face of globalization and technological progress. I think in the case of US literally killing workers and union people is a huge part of why US workers lack power and why US unions are so impotent.[0] [0] see Battle of Blair Mountain and what work Pinkerton mainly did from its founding to WW2, as examples.
  - wqaatwt 3mo ago
    > Other countries in the world have manage to keep workers bargaining power Such as? They might have managed to maintain it for privileged subgroups of the workforce but not for the average worker.
    - tokai 3mo ago
      The Nordic countries.
- FuriouslyAdrift 3mo ago
  The longer graph (starting at 1947) shows the shift in 2001 on more startlingly https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PRS85006173 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PRS85006173 Corporate profit vs Labor income divergence (only up to 2018) https://fredblog.stlouisfed.org/2018/08/corporate-profits-versus-labor-income/ https://fredblog.stlouisfed.org/2018/08/corporate-profits-ve...
  - jcfrei 3mo ago
    Fascinating. The 2001 shift aligns well with China's entry into the WTO.
legitster 3mo ago
People are misreading the conclusion - the Covid related drop is normal and matches previous episodes, but the massive overall drop since 2000 is not. The situation on the ground is unchanged - the amount of labor being generated per person has not really changed, but the overall pie has grown massively around us.
- dozerly 3mo ago
  We have one of the worlds most prosperous economies, and half of the US is living in abject poverty while quality of life for everyone is decreasing.
  - taeric 3mo ago
    I'm going to go on a limb and say half of the US is not living in abject poverty? Nor can I get behind the idea that quality of life for folks is on the down trend.
    - dheera 3mo ago
      If you have negative net worth and the bank's money, not yours, is buying your food and housing, you are in abject poverty, just that the system is propping up your survival for a while. A lot of the US looks like they're doing great but fits into the category above. Non-poverty would look like: * You make enough money to pay for your own food, housing, and transportation in full, with enough buffer for emergencies, without needing to borrow a cent * You make enough money to be on trajectory to save up to pay for your own food, housing, transportation, and medical expenses in retirement when you are physically unable to serve the workforce
      - jmye 3mo ago
        > You make enough money to pay for your own food, housing, and transportation in full, with enough buffer for emergencies, without needing to borrow a cent So you're saying I'm in poverty because I couldn't buy my house and my car outright? > and medical expenses in retirement You're saying I'm in poverty because I understand and intend to use Medicare? These are trivially poor definitions.
deleted 3mo ago
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macinjosh 3mo ago
The longer I participate in the economy the more it starts to feel like the end stages of a game of monopoly. There is nothing left to own unless you already are wealthy and the only way to get ahead is luck.
- luizfzs 3mo ago
  The 2 main differences between our economy and Monopoly is that 1) in ours, some people start with properties and more money in hand and 2) a Monopoly game takes less time to end.
ETH_start 3mo ago
I wonder if labor itself will become an anachronism in the age of AI. Perhaps the future economic landscape will be dominated by capital because everyone will own capital. You will command a small army of agents to do whatever you want. You will no longer need to work for someone. You own small businesses far more than you could possibly operate in the pre-AI era and they will mostly operate autonomously with minimal direction and some guidance from you.
- lesam 3mo ago
  Assuming your labour contribution to these agents is 'minimal': Why would you own them, instead of some well capitalized billionaire? To the extent that you do have capital, why do you assume that your 'minimal direction and guidance' would outcompete a full time specialist working for that billionaire?
  - logicchains 3mo ago
    It's basic economics; larger firms become progressively less efficient for the same reason that communist command economies are inefficient, because there's no internal price signals to guide resource allocation. So there's a natural cap on how big a firm can get (in information theoretic terms, there's a hard limit on the amount of information a centralized structure can process effectively).
  - ETH_start 3mo ago
    Assuming agent costs keep declining exponentially as they have over the last three years, why would everyone not own some agents? It's not like the number of agents is capped and the billionaires hoard all of them. I imagine it would be more like smartphones, where there were only 50 million smartphones after the iPhone was first released in 2007 and now there are something like three billion. They become more accessible and plentiful over time. Same thing should apply to agents. And in this world of abundant agents, what advantage does the billionaire have exactly over the non-billionaire? Their employees are less motivated than owner-operators, and they no longer have the scale advantage that large corporations used to have. Each individual can effectively operate like a large corporation, because each individual can have their own large synthetic workforce at very low cost. The scarce resource here then becomes uniquely human insights and real motivation, which entrepreneurs are always going to have more of than employees.
ghastmaster 3mo ago
The most interesting takeaway I see in the labor share percentage graph is the trend that labor share increases into the recession. Post recession share trends down for a bit. How much of the trend is due to employment trends vs. printing money for the wealthy to get their hands on it first(and profit) post recession?
bendbro 3mo ago
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- jmye 3mo ago
  [flagged]
newaccountman2 3mo ago
And the Republic response to this is "soc1lism bad!!"
- saghm 3mo ago
  Not even just Republicans, unfortunately. The generation of Americans who grew up in the Cold War were inundated with propaganda about how socialism would destroy America, and then go and say things like this https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/26/us/politics/moderate-democrats-capitalist-socialism.html https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/26/us/politics/moderate-demo...
  - newaccountman2 3mo ago
    Yeah. The boomers are a real problem.
    - fsckboy 3mo ago
      You say the boomers are a problem simply because they are old and the young hate the old (ageism), and because they have money and you want it, now. Boomers created everything you like about this world, including youth culture itself, "don't trust anybody over 30". Their predecessor generations, their parents and grandparents, believed comprehensively in things you despise. I know this because I hated the boomers when they were young, and you all sound just like them.
      - newaccountman2 3mo ago
        They are a deeply selfish and immoral generation on the whole who make excuses for evil and denigrate anyone tryin to do good. Just looking at their voting patterns makes it quite clear. Such a lame attempt to defend them by you lol--what makes you think money has anything to do with it? That's Boomer logic; IME, Boomers and right-wingers believe everyone is as self-centered as they are.
        fsckboy 3mo ago
deleted 3mo ago
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jmyeet 3mo ago
Now consider this against the rising productivity-pay gap that has been widening since teh 1970s [1]. The big picture here is increasing wealth inequality and that has been on steroids since the pandemic. The only shocking part to me is how people continually and intentionally don't see it or, worse, think they'll be unaffected by it so don't care. You see this on HN where so many people seem to think they'll be Jeff Bezos one day. But even if that's true, don't you want to live in a society where you don't need armed guards at your house and you don't need armed escorts to go anywhere? Because that's what we're heading towards. One of the problems with American society (in particular) being so car-centric is that it lets people insulate themselves from the rest of society more easily. In cities like NYC you're forced to see and deal with the less fortunate. You can't hide from it so easily. We don't need trillionaires. We need to raise basic living standards so people have food and shelter and we don't need to separate society into slums and armored compounds. [1]: https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/ https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/
- palmotea 3mo ago
  > The only shocking part to me is how people continually and intentionally don't see it or, worse, think they'll be unaffected by it so don't care. You see this on HN where so many people seem to think they'll be Jeff Bezos one day. Software engineers are a special kind of stupid: the kind that thinks they're smarter than everyone else.
jschveibinz 3mo ago
According to the article, automation (including software) and other technology "advancements" are important factors. I think it's becoming clear that we are reaching a point where UBI must be debated in Congress subsidized by something that doesn't wreck economic growth and probably doesn't target capital investment.
bdangubic 3mo ago
buy shares of companies with any excess money you have and your share will grow
chasing 3mo ago
By design, no?
- torginus 3mo ago
  Yes by design. Basically just by designating one part of the economy as non-productive consumption economy, and the other part as production economy, they create the justification for inflation - so that the government can have free money and take it from the stupid consumers by decreasing their wealth a little every year should they choose not to spend it, and give it (sorry, invest) to the nice productive entrepreneurial capitalist part of enconomy who will somehow reinvest it allegedly (read: mostly buy up shit the former half needs and sell it back to them at markup), the system has a direct wealth transfer mechanism that points from the poor to the rich, it couldn't be any more shameless and obvious if they tried.
Seattle3503 3mo ago
Are there hollistic analysis? I generate income with my labor, but I also save in retirement and investment accounts. On analysis like this that we typically see, are these two things competing? Are we really just seeing a rise in retirement savings?
nekusar 3mo ago
Well yeah. This is why we're calling end-stage capitalism. What's coming looks like technofeudalism. All companies are rent-seeking. Selling something is no longer a goal. Prices go up up up up up. Oligopolies and price fixing is normal. Monopolies are normal with little/no controls. People are getting paid a pittance to the work done. Unions are their weakest in a century. NLRB is basically frozen due to no quorum on the head board. Companies routinely scam and lie at multiple places in hiring pipeline. FTC does nothing. Neither party (Republicans or Democrats), save the DSA, fights for the American people. Its all coming to a head, and baskets, and guillotines. Anybody who studies history knows what kind of powderkeg this situation is. Its also the reason the Ancient Romans made panem et circunses (bread and circus) cheap or free. You get riots and revolts otherwise.
feverzsj 3mo ago
Because labors in China are extremely cheap. And they are getting cheaper and cheaper in last decade, despite the GDP growth.
- seizethecheese 3mo ago
  As a hardware founder, I’ve seen the opposite until very recently. Labor cost has been going up much faster than inflation, at lease in hardware assembly. Do you have a source?
- AngryData 3mo ago
  Chinas wages have been rising for decades and now many Made in China products are outsourced from China to produce. Your ideas about China feel a decade or so out of date to me.
lenerdenator 3mo ago
Equity should be a normal part of compensation for non-executive employees in addition to their wage/salary and benefits. There's nothing about being in the C-suite that magically endows one with motivation based upon stock price, but we pretend that there is.
ihsw 3mo ago
[dead]
otekengineering 3mo ago
isn't this the expected/intended outcome of the economic policy we've held for a generation or two? the capital/labor class gap increases when total returns on capital investment exceed total wages+redistribution to the labor class, and the gap shrinks when that's reversed. the market ~controls the capital gains and labor wages knobs, and society decides where to set the redistribution knob. the article investigating the post-covid drop and concluding that it's normal is an interesting rhetorical device. on one hand, relief that nothing crazy is happening. on the other hand, disappointment that we've accepted a growing inequality gap as normal. the gap was already at a post-war max going into covid, the floor gave out 20 years earlier and covid was just gas on the fire. advancements in automation and tax codes that benefit capex over payroll will continue to incentivize business to shift budgets from labor to robots.
rbbydotdev 3mo ago
Raise the minimum wage to ~$25-30/hr Before anyone says inflation, there will be more consumer spending and thus more cash flow in the middle and lower class
- smallmancontrov 3mo ago
  Sorry, growth mindset only applies to handouts for companies and billionaires. Those are the rules!
gcanyon 3mo ago
Is there a reason to think this is anything more than increased productivity? And that therefore the case has to be made that labor, more than capital, should benefit from that increase? I’m not saying that argument can’t or shouldn’t be made, just saying that “it was different before!” Isn’t the best argument.
shadow_it 3mo ago
right, so now more than ever... if you're not saving/investing you are falling behind.
fsckboy 3mo ago
there is no such thing as "labor share of income". It's a measurement you can calculate, but it means nothing tells nothing. in caveman times, labor's share of income was 100%. Do you want to live like that?

503 points by loughnane 3mo ago

pocksuppet 3mo ago

55%? Ew. We can get it even lower. I want my profits.

smallmancontrov 3mo ago
I am John Capitalism and I revoke the USA's permission to use my name until they crush labor share of income below 50%.

scrumbledober 3mo ago

it feels like every share of income is at its lowest except for the ultra wealthy.

jagged-chisel 3mo ago
The annoying/sad/infuriating thing is the ultra wealthy don’t have “income.” Technically, according to IRS rules, much of what they experience (housing, food, etc) should be classified as income. But their lawyers and accountants help them keep that looking quite low.
- Schiendelman 3mo ago
  I used to think this - but when I talked to a tax lawyer friend and we walked through the steps they take, usually they're just deferring taxation that does end up getting paid by an entity eventually.
  - toomuchtodo 3mo ago
    If they donate the wealth to their own foundation to continue to hold close and control, it doesn't get taxed. If they borrow against the wealth at low interest rates until they die and the basis is stepped up ("buy, borrow, die"), it doesn't get taxed. Certainly, deferment is a component, but there are obvious examples of the very wealthy operating in a manner to avoid taxes entirely when they're able to (realizing the benefit of the wealth without having to realize a taxable event). Trust stacking is a recent fad as well, although I don't have enough data to say whether it is a material concern from a tax revenue perspective. Silicon Valley Is Obsessed with 'Trust Stacking,' and the IRS Doesn't Like It - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48727963 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48727963 - June 2026
    - Schiendelman 3mo ago
      The cases you're talking about are all delaying taxation, not eliminating it. Eventually someone has to draw that wealth - the foundation has to spend for public benefit to be eligible for 501(c)3 status, for instance.
      - toomuchtodo 3mo ago
        How Elon Musk's secretive foundation hands out his billions - https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jan/23/how-elon-musks-secretive-foundation-benefits-his-own-family https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jan/23/how-elon-... - January 23rd, 2019 "Spending for the public benefit" has a lot of latitude.
        saghm 3mo ago
        I also don't think they addressed how borrowing against the wealth doesn't require any immediate taxes (and is often low interest, given how being a billionare means you get more favorable terms). There's nothing stopping someone in that position from just deferring taxes on the money they currently have, borrowing against it, and then investing that to turn into more money with taxes deferred even further so that they can use the proceeds to pay the previous deferred taxes and keep the difference.
        Schiendelman 3mo ago
        That requires their investments to keep going up in value. That doesn't last forever, the assets that people borrow against eventually need to be sold to pay back that loan. When they sell to make payments, those are taxable events.
        jagged-chisel 3mo ago
        How does it work if the loan defaults and those assets were used as collateral?
  - ck_one 3mo ago
    Capital gains tax is clearly lower than income tax. So why did you change your mind?
    - nickff 3mo ago
      Not the commenter you replied to, but one thing to note is that capital gains tax (at least in the context of investments in corporate equities) is applied after corporate taxes. Profits and reinvested earnings are taxed as profits, and they're two of the key components to valuing an equity. As such, when comparing income tax and capital gains, you should add the impact of corporate taxes. Incidentally, corporate taxes are why many small business owners pay themselves wage income, rather than doing stock buybacks or dividends.
      - saghm 3mo ago
        If the income was earned through dividends, maybe this would be a reasonable argument. Most of the time stock just gets bought and sold by investors rather than the company itself though, so it's not clear why corporate tax would have anything to do with this. Sure, the stock price should somehow be tied to the actual value of the company, but for a while now it's been mostly indistinguishable from a Ponzi scheme other than a few companies that do sometimes decide to buy back some stock, which makes it slightly less sketchy but if the value is from the company buying it back, it's a lot closer to debt or a bond, which is not at all how anyone treats it.
        nickff 3mo ago
        I agree that in a bull market, many corporations are not purchased and sold at book value. That said, we are on the largest bull-run in history, so we shouldn’t treat this as the norm, and base all our long-term decisions on the current situation.
        saghm 3mo ago
        So if I'm understanding correctly, your argument is that it doesn't make sense to make people who make more money pay the same rate of taxes as regular people do because we should ignore the fact that they've been doing it for longer than ever before?
  - Psillisp 3mo ago
    Was your ‘friend’ Jeffery Epstein?
- lotsofpulp 3mo ago
  Capital gains not being considered earned income is simply sensible use of terminology to categorize different ways of amassing purchasing power. For example, in order to carry out the linked analysis. It has nothing to do with the IRS or taxes.
  - scottyah 3mo ago
    Income goes straight to a person, capital gains is a little return from other people generating income. Basically a MLM lol.
- smt88 3mo ago
  This report is only about wages, so even if the ultra-wealthy reported their real sources of income, they wouldn’t shut up as “labor” the way this defines it.
- micromacrofoot 3mo ago
  even with this scam the top 1% of earners still have more annual income than ~75% of the population
smt88 3mo ago
It’s not. There are plenty of non-wealthy people who make money from things other than their labor. Small-time landlords are an example, as would be anyone who owns a small business and draws cash from profits rather than taking a salary.
- contagiousflow 3mo ago
  > non-wealthy > landlord If you think these two things are compatible you need to talk to more people outside of your bubble.
  - opinion-is-bad 3mo ago
    [flagged]
    - b40d-48b2-979e 3mo ago
      being born into money is not a requirement to own several houses before 30. Do tell.
      - scottyah 3mo ago
        Live in a poor place. There are plenty of cheap houses, but you do have to leave expensive areas (shocking, I know).
      - bonesss 3mo ago
        So “landlord” and “commercial landlord living entirely off of passive income” are worlds apart. Buying a fixer-upper outside of town with high-school and early 20s grinding, renting out 3+ rooms to cover the mortgage for painful years, working 80 hour weeks, refinancing against that first house into another under-maintained property where you live in half while upgrading the other, ending up with a rental duplex and drastically reduced living cost, is viable by 30. Maximizing youth savings, first house programs, and primary residence rules create less punitive economics. It sucks and will let one learn why landlord is a pain in the ass job, and relies on sweat equity and modest lifestyle, wanting to commit to real estate, and non-ideal properties. Trade school or skipping college for early income and low debt make the numbers crunch easier. Investing consistently into the market in your 20s probably out performs it by 65, and a young bankers lifestyle is a joy of its own, but: owning property young is achievable for electricians, security guards, and janitors.
scottyah 3mo ago
[flagged]
- deleted 3mo ago
  [deleted]
- contagiousflow 3mo ago
  Source for this statistically?
  - shimman 3mo ago
    There is but you have to ignore the lived reality that Americans are struggling to afford healthcare, housing, utilities, education, and food costs all while the ultra wealthy are demanding the public invests trillions into vaporware.
    - gegtik 3mo ago
      maybe the disconnect here is the claim was about 'income' which in isolation of living conditions, perhaps continues to rise and thus by the most narrow and useless definition, the OP is incorrect
      - shimman 3mo ago
        Things barely increasing after nearly 40+ years of being completely flat isn't the win that poster thinks it is, maybe if you're doped up on neoliberalism it sounds nice but everything else people need to survive are also increasing in costs massively.
  - scottyah 3mo ago
    https://equitablegrowth.org/u-s-income-data-for-2024-shows-the-top-10-percent-accrued-the-highest-share-of-income-since-2000/#:~:text=The%20bottom%2050%20percent%20of%20households%20also%20made%20gains%2C%20although,share%20in%20this%20time%20period. https://equitablegrowth.org/u-s-income-data-for-2024-shows-t... Bottom 50% is increasing income with the top 10%, it's the middle class that's declining in the last 5 years. This was a quick google search, so I'll ask you to provide a source that's contrary else your comment was purely rhetorical and made in bad faith.
ux266478 3mo ago
It's not necessarily limited to the ultra wealthy, but outside of a few key areas (as someone mentions, those profiting off of the inflationary spike, those in the real estate market, etc) it is more or less the case, yes.
carlosjobim 3mo ago
Not at all. The real estate share of income is probably at its highest among a lot of people who belong to the non-labouring class, but are far from ultra wealthy. But it's nice to have a scapegoat, isn't it?
- idiotsecant 3mo ago
  If you belong to the 'non-laboring class' you are by definition the ultra wealthy. It's wild how much people are willing to slide goalposts to make themselves feel better.
  - scottyah 3mo ago
    It hurts the definition of the words when you use ultra wealthy to refer to the top 50%...
    - idiotsecant 3mo ago
      You think 50% of people don't labor?
      - scottyah 3mo ago
        While about 50% to 60% of the adult U.S. population are active W-2 wage earners at any given time, the percentage that relies on labor exclusively (meaning they have zero capital income or assets to fall back on) sits right around 40% to 50% of working households.
        triceratops 3mo ago
        > 40% to 50% of working households Not people then.
        scottyah 3mo ago
        Are you arguing that the other people in a household are laboring, or do you think they're counting pets?

lbarrow 3mo ago

Interesting that most of the decline happened in the 2000s. The graph shows a large decline from ~2000 to ~2008 which continues after the GFC before going up a bit in the 2010s. The drop off since COVID is comparatively small.

kevmo 3mo ago

This is clearly heading in a direction where the USA is going to elect a huge number of socialists, who in turn are going to enact massive taxes on billionaires and break up the monopolies.[1] This is why I think the billionaire oligarchs are literally mentally ill. They've won the entire game. They control everything. They live like gods, they twitch a pinky and millions dance. But their response to all of this power is to seek even more of it, destabilizing the very system that has them on top. You would think self-preservation would kick in. The fact that it is not and that their greed knows apparently no bounds is going to lead to their extinction. For a long time I thought it was hyperbolic to say so, but no longer -- the billionaires are mentally ill. [1] https://work.news/post/project-2031/ https://work.news/post/project-2031/

nairboon 3mo ago
Remember Occupy Wall Street? Back then the oligarchs were somewhat scared.
- deaux 3mo ago
  I too don't believe that GP's dream is going to happen, but the current momentum is much stronger than in the OWS days. Maybe it's less visible to some because the world has moved into online algorithmic bubbles rather than people camping in front of Wall Street. If they were more scared back then than they are now, it's not because the current momentum is actually weaker.
imightbebatman 3mo ago
I very much doubt that. There isn't enough class solidarity to pull it off. There will be a few who brand themselves as such. But actually seizing the means of production and handing them over to the people? -- The oligarchs will burn this country to the ground before they permit that to happen.
- wqaatwt 3mo ago
  It would of course be lose-lose for everyone. But if a significant proportion of the population starts believing (rationally or not) that they have nothing left to lose it could be problematic.

jameslk 3mo ago

The submitted title is a bit sensationalist given the article’s conclusion: > Is this decline a distinct change from the recent behavior of the labor share in the U.S.? Along the two key dimensions we investigate, our answer is no. First, the labor share’s trajectory post-COVID broadly follows the cyclical patterns observed in earlier recessions, with a decline during the recovery phase that mirrors historical dynamics. Second, the decline in the labor share since COVID is driven primarily by within-industry changes rather than shifts in economic activity across sectors. Taken together, these results suggest that the post-COVID decline follows the same cyclical patterns as earlier recessions and is driven by the same within-industry forces, and they provide little evidence that it will evolve differently from past episodes. What I find more interesting is the sharp drop around the early 2000s

loughnane 3mo ago
I don't think so. Opening sentence is this: > The labor share of income in the U.S. is currently at its lowest-ever level in the post-war period. Agreed on the 2000 drop though. Would be interesting to read a retrospective on that.
- imightbebatman 3mo ago
  Is it not the dot com bubble pop?
  - FloorEgg 3mo ago
    Or the world trade center?

nimbius 3mo ago

this is relatively unremarkable for those with an understanding of wage, labor, profit, price and capital. capitalism will always seek to reduce labor cost. during the epoch of neoliberalism it achieved great strides in this by reducing labor power through union busting by both thatcher and reagan in the UK and US respectively. it has also effectively curtailed any increase in the minimum wage for nearly 20 years as well as reduced protections, regulation and prosecution for wage theft and overtime pay violations which it maintains as exclusively as civil matters while ensuring theft itself from a merchant in turn is always a criminal matter through the primacy of private property. to learn more i recommend reading Marx's "Das Kapital," albeit its rather academic. Engels "wage labor" is also a good read to understand why housing is so persistently unaffortable but helps to understand why any other good or service slowly becomes so as well.

simianwords 3mo ago
[flagged]
- abdullahkhalids 3mo ago
  > Workers enjoy highest living standards of any time in history. It's entirely possible for someone to be paid a lot in absolute terms, while at the same time paid very little relative to the value that they produce which is monetarily captured by their organization. The truth of the first does not invalidate the injustice of the second.
aeternum 3mo ago
Marx fails to imagine a world in which labor actually has little to no value. His worldview is primarily that capitalists 'steal' the valuable labor. However it doesn't seem that that is actually the world we are in. Instead the intrinsic value of human labor seems to be slowly trending towards zero. And it kind of makes sense, same has happened with oxen labor, horse labor, etc.
- arthurptj 3mo ago
  Then why does every plumber I know own a yacht

mrtksn 3mo ago

And yet for some reason all the algorithmic pricing targets the laborers, when apps hunt for whales they target teenagers. Ridiculous. There is a need for proper pricing for the rich, i.e. Elon can pay a million dollars per meal. Someone is leaving money on the table.

playorizaya 3mo ago
Love this. Parking and speeding tickets should have income brackets, at least. In the early Internet I saw this thing, no idea if it’s true but it sounds good (someone can math check it), goes something like: A person pays $2 to play basketball on a public court. Michael Jordan gets paid $2k to play on the same one. A person pays $100 for basketball shoes. Michael Jordan gets paid $100k to wear the same ones. A person pays $40 to go see a basketball game. Jordan gets paid $400k to attend the same game. Michael Jordan makes about $5 per second. If Michael Jordan saved all his money without spending a penny for 250 years… He wouldn’t even have half as much as Bill Gates! It made me think differently about money and consumer spending.
- mrtksn 3mo ago
  > Parking and speeding tickets should have income brackets, at least AFAIK in some countries this exist but my case is more capitalist oriented. Rich people obviously can pay more since they keep accumulating wealth. It is an obvious sub optimal pricing since the low and even middle class rent/mortgage and other services quickly approaching the most they can pay so they can’t actually save and make wealth.
  - playorizaya 3mo ago
    sub optimal for who? ;) A long time ago I was working for a mid tier founder up in Oregon. Pipe dream of a startup, no customers, no product. Money and vision, but no direction and the main problem was that nobody would ever tell him "No" (me included) - to everyone's great detriment. He would certainly fail at this endeavor... He was the main investor, after all. At some point we brought on web marketing help - he knew people at Nike. To my surprise, they actually partnered with us - Nike! He also co-owned a web design agency in Portland, so I started working with designers and marketers there. When I would travel there, he always set me up in the same hotel. Turns out (a year later), he owned it. He owned the damn laundromat next door, too, because it was adjacent to the apartment complex he owned. After literally 1 beer, we were now going to do a live, in person event in Portland - he knew people and could make it happen. He owned the building where the event would take place. At the event he started asking if I'd ever leave San Francisco, if I liked Portland. We started talking about rent and stuff. I find out he's a landlord there - owns several single-family homes (with awful cyclone fencing) and has tenants around Portland. He starts telling me prices etc. Asks me what people are paying in SF. We both laugh over how expensive SF is - sun shafts illuminating our amber beer glasses as we drink to... Idk what. What happened was I found out that he was rich as fuck, and owned the god damn town, and everything else. His startup was a joke and failed - but who cares, it was a frame in a movie. I cared about it more than he did. Sub optimal for who??

ThrowawayIP 3mo ago

Okay, so say AI & MBAs are successful in replacing the labor spend of corporations on every level? What happens to "the economy"?

rglover 3mo ago
It transitions back to a more feudalist state. The series finale to "you will own nothing and be happy." That is, if they're successful.
- matheusmoreira 3mo ago
  Is there any reason to believe they won't be?
  - galleywest200 3mo ago
    The sheer number of people who would have nothing left to lose would probably fight back, literally, at that point.
  - rglover 3mo ago
    People tend to get excited when they can't eat and despite its timidity America is exceptionally well-armed. That sounds cute in a post drone strike world, but if the government attacks its own citizens like that, they'll have a hell of a time defending that position to the rest of the world. Humanity is usually slow on the uptake but eventually settles on "how about you just go fuck yourself" even if the party takes a sec to get going. Who knows. I think it's better to err on the side of optimism despite the grim outlook.
- carlosjobim 3mo ago
  That has already happened. The entire industrialized world is feudal. Young workers who are experts in their fields working full time can't afford a simple home. Young business owners who employ several people full time can't afford a simple home.
win311fwg 3mo ago

sigmoid10 3mo ago

Yikes. Good to know that labor shares used to rebound after crises, but since the 2000s and the dotcom bubble it has basically been downhill only. So don't expect any of this to get better unless we roll back technology to the last millenium.

rafterydj 3mo ago
Not technology - that's only downstream of politics. No political administration in my lifetime (!) has made policy decisions against the interests of tech monopolists. The closest we got was Lina Kahn's FTC.
delfinom 3mo ago
Technology isn't the problem. The problem is the generation in governing power through the last 2 decades has no problem burning down the country's future to maintain lavish retirement funds for themselves.
- ux266478 3mo ago
  I think it's more nuanced than that. There surely are plenty of cases where that is the case, but it's also a natural effect of hyperfinancialization, which many really do believe to be a "net positive" for the stability it brings. There's also the natural tendency of consolidation and centralization of power, and the natural counter-balance to that has been suppressed. Then you have legislative incompetence, the general failings of scientific governance aggregating over time, and many other structural flaws that are deeply seated and long-running. We shouldn't just be pointing at the (very much real) stupid greed, there are many rotten components occurring simultaneously.
MSFT_Edging 3mo ago
It's not the tech but who sees the benefits. The issue at play is the monopolization and concentration of power. Ie, why can one guy who is insanely wealthy due to stock valuations take loans against that to pull various levers of power. We didn't elect him, we need a way to control that outsized influence.
3mo ago

clusterhacks 3mo ago

FTA's conclusion: "Is this decline a distinct change from the recent behavior of the labor share in the U.S.? Along the two key dimensions we investigate, our answer is no. <later> ... and they provide little evidence that it will evolve differently from past episodes." This conclusion seems to be against "this time is different" arguments. Should we be generally encouraged by similarity to past declines pre-2000 or bearish and think that there is more drop to come like the 2000-2007 and 2007-2019 periods they graph out? I guess there is no way to predict other than check back in after time passes.

shermantanktop 3mo ago
> I guess there is no way to predict other than check back in after time passes. Welcome to the dismal science of economics, where the rear-view mirror is crystal clear but the windshield is totally fogged up.
downrightmike 3mo ago
Bearish, they are already working as hard as they can to replace everyone with AI or at least Actual Indians playing AI

deleted 3mo ago

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simianwords 3mo ago

I find this metric misleading. Where is the extra money going? To whom? Turns out most of it is not going to billionaires. Bulk of it is going to future investments. If we choose not to do that, we lose out on future gains.

cool_dude85 3mo ago
Who owns the capital for those future investments? Who will receive returns on those investments?
wqaatwt 3mo ago
Speculation or actual investment? Assuming that the allocation of capital is somehow aligned with what’s optimal for the economy/society seems naive
- logicchains 3mo ago
  It's not naive, it's near optimal. The system rewards people who've done well at capital allocation with more capital to allocate, and takes capital away from those who've done poorly at it. And there's no better predict of future performance at allocating capital than past performance.
  - wqaatwt 3mo ago
    Well my point was that it might be optimal for the one doing the allocation and maximize their returns. That does not mean its optimal for the economy and society on the whole.
    - simianwords 3mo ago
      Actually it does mean it is optimal for the economy as opposed to a central planner who somehow has all the information and does planning with precision. These are mainstream views in economics.
      - 3mo ago

crossbody 3mo ago

What happens if large cohort of Boomers retires and stop working, instead living on their savings? Labor share of income drops. If you remove this effect, the labor share of income is flat - confirmed by last week's analysis in The Economist.

em500 3mo ago
Pertinent data: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SPPOP65UPTOZSUSA https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SPPOP65UPTOZSUSA

hash872 3mo ago

I don't have time for a longer comment, but AIUI this is mostly a statistical illusion caused by changes to US tax law- previously income that was attributed to 'labor' shifted over to LLCs/S corps for more beneficial tax rates. The doctor, lawyer, financial advisor, CPA etc. that in past decades would have had his/her income run through a W2 arrangement shifted to becoming a one-person corporation

hn_throwaway_99 3mo ago
Do you have any evidence for this, at all?
- saghm 3mo ago
  They seem to conveniently not have enough time to provide that in the comment
- cucumber3732842 3mo ago
  Sure matches my anecdotal experience. How much of an effect it has at the national statistical level I'm not sure.
- hash872 3mo ago
  Sure https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/2013b_elsby_labor_share.pdf https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/2013b_e... https://home.treasury.gov/system/files/131/wp-107.pdf https://home.treasury.gov/system/files/131/wp-107.pdf https://eml.berkeley.edu/~yagan/LaborShare.pdf https://eml.berkeley.edu/~yagan/LaborShare.pdf
  - hn_throwaway_99 3mo ago
    Thanks very much for providing those sources. That said, it's a huge pet peeve of mine when someone makes a statement, and then provides sources to back up that statement, but the actual sources contradict their original statement. You stated "but AIUI this is mostly a statistical illusion caused by changes to US tax law- previously income that was attributed to 'labor' shifted over to LLCs/S corps for more beneficial tax rates." But then your very first linked article states "First, about a third of the decline in the published labor share appears to be an artifact of statistical procedures used to impute the labor income of the self-employed that underlies the headline measure." I think there is a huge difference between 1/3 (while still a lot and an important factor) and what you wrote, "mostly a statistical illusion", especially since other substantial factors proposed in that article are things like offshoring.

balozi 3mo ago

For what its worth Ross Perot had an ominous take on the effects of free trade back in the 90s with his "giant sucking sound" observation.

imightbebatman 3mo ago
The root of this started in the 70s as the New Deal coalition decayed and Keynesian economic theory fell out of favor among the elites. To be fair their were good reasons at the time to think it wasn't working either.
- to11mtm 3mo ago
  Worth noting that the Bretton Woods system was -not- quite what Keynes wanted...
  - imightbebatman 3mo ago
    No, yea that's fair. I think he'd be even more confounded about the current state of affairs though. Just my read.

nradov 3mo ago

The actual labor share of income is significantly higher when you include employer contributions to employee health insurance premiums. Healthcare costs have been rising faster than overall inflation for decades, and while many of those costs are passed on to employees the employers have also absorbed a significant chunk. If we want to increase the labor share then we'll drive down healthcare spending. And no, there's no simple solution to this problem. The notion that something like "Medicare for All" would solve the problem is a total fantasy, disconnected from actual US healthcare economics. Any real solution will have to work on multiple angles including preventive care, PBMs, provider wages, rationing, drug prices, fraud, malpractice insurance, interoperability technology, etc.

throwway120385 3mo ago
Why wouldn't a single-payer solution work? The margin that the insurance companies take for themselves seems like a good place to start. From there it would spiral out to the third to half of time that all of the clinical staff spend just dealing with insurance issues and insurance billing.
- dominotw 3mo ago
  insurance issues are provider and insurer going back and forth detrmining if doctors assessment of necessity is agreed upon. i am not familiar with universal system. In that system if your doctor thinks something is medically necessary then thats the end of it and its gets done?
  - nradov 3mo ago
    All healthcare systems have some form of rationing. Even if your doctor thinks something is medically necessary it can only get done if the system actually has capacity. In most countries where there is universal coverage with a single payer, certain expensive treatments have long waiting lists or are simply unavailable at any price. Thus we see wealthy Canadians coming to the USA as medical tourists and paying cash for procedures like MRI scans or joint replacements in order to avoid the queue back home. There are always trade-offs, it's just a matter of what we want to prioritize.

Karthick81 3mo ago

Could it be because the productivity is up?

noahbp 3mo ago

That most-recent spike during/post-COVID really puts into perspective just how unreasonable low-wage employers were to be so hysterical.

tadfisher 3mo ago
Highly suggest adding "hysterical" to your internal vocabulary filter.
- beckon69 3mo ago
  Not OP. But respectfully disagree. Reads appropriate to me. "Related to or marked by Hysteria" https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hysterical https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hysterical Hysteria being "behavior exhibiting overwhelming or unmanageable fear or emotional excess" which seems to be exactly what OP was trying to say.
  - GlickWick 3mo ago
    The origin of the word is a bit darker than its meaning, unfortunately. It comes from the Greek word for Uterus. You can kinda fill in the blanks from there as to how it came to its modern meaning.
    - annodomini2019 3mo ago
      Let's add dumb, lame, sinister, grandfathered in while we're at it if we're litigating roots nobody thinks about on a day-to-day basis...
    - palmotea 3mo ago
      > The origin of the word is a bit darker than its meaning, unfortunately. We should all just stop speaking. The origin of too many words is problematic. Just think of how many were coined by racists and misogynists!
      - 3mo ago

TrackerFF 3mo ago

Obviously the solution here is for workers to also become shareholders.

cool_dude85 3mo ago
The US has historically been quite opposed to the workers becoming shareholders.
- FloorEgg 3mo ago
  Except for all the companies that issue shares and options as part of employee compensation.
  - winfredJa 3mo ago
    this is mostly in tech. starbucks barista is not going to get any stocks
    - charcircuit 3mo ago
      The barista can buy $SBUX every payday. The inverse of sell on vest.
    - BJones12 3mo ago
      Starbucks sells its stock to its baristas at a 5% discount every 90 days through payroll deductions. https://www.starbucksbenefits.com/en-us/home/stock-savings/stock-investment-plan-sip/ https://www.starbucksbenefits.com/en-us/home/stock-savings/s...
  - izacus 3mo ago
    None of those gives voting shares to employees.
    - BJones12 3mo ago
      Every share is a voting share. There are a small number of weird cases (e.g. Meta super-voting shares limited to Zuck), but your statement is broadly false.

jcfrei 3mo ago

I think this is part of a long term development where technology and globalization slowly erode workers bargaining power. Basically you only build a factory in the US if you can keep labour costs low enough and the manufacturing automated enough so that you can still compete with other manufacturing hubs.

tokai 3mo ago
Other countries in the world have manage to keep workers bargaining power in the face of globalization and technological progress. I think in the case of US literally killing workers and union people is a huge part of why US workers lack power and why US unions are so impotent.[0] [0] see Battle of Blair Mountain and what work Pinkerton mainly did from its founding to WW2, as examples.
- wqaatwt 3mo ago
  > Other countries in the world have manage to keep workers bargaining power Such as? They might have managed to maintain it for privileged subgroups of the workforce but not for the average worker.
  - tokai 3mo ago
    The Nordic countries.
FuriouslyAdrift 3mo ago
The longer graph (starting at 1947) shows the shift in 2001 on more startlingly https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PRS85006173 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PRS85006173 Corporate profit vs Labor income divergence (only up to 2018) https://fredblog.stlouisfed.org/2018/08/corporate-profits-versus-labor-income/ https://fredblog.stlouisfed.org/2018/08/corporate-profits-ve...
- jcfrei 3mo ago
  Fascinating. The 2001 shift aligns well with China's entry into the WTO.

legitster 3mo ago

People are misreading the conclusion - the Covid related drop is normal and matches previous episodes, but the massive overall drop since 2000 is not. The situation on the ground is unchanged - the amount of labor being generated per person has not really changed, but the overall pie has grown massively around us.

dozerly 3mo ago
We have one of the worlds most prosperous economies, and half of the US is living in abject poverty while quality of life for everyone is decreasing.
- taeric 3mo ago
  I'm going to go on a limb and say half of the US is not living in abject poverty? Nor can I get behind the idea that quality of life for folks is on the down trend.
  - dheera 3mo ago
    If you have negative net worth and the bank's money, not yours, is buying your food and housing, you are in abject poverty, just that the system is propping up your survival for a while. A lot of the US looks like they're doing great but fits into the category above. Non-poverty would look like: * You make enough money to pay for your own food, housing, and transportation in full, with enough buffer for emergencies, without needing to borrow a cent * You make enough money to be on trajectory to save up to pay for your own food, housing, transportation, and medical expenses in retirement when you are physically unable to serve the workforce
    - jmye 3mo ago
      > You make enough money to pay for your own food, housing, and transportation in full, with enough buffer for emergencies, without needing to borrow a cent So you're saying I'm in poverty because I couldn't buy my house and my car outright? > and medical expenses in retirement You're saying I'm in poverty because I understand and intend to use Medicare? These are trivially poor definitions.

deleted 3mo ago

[deleted]

macinjosh 3mo ago

The longer I participate in the economy the more it starts to feel like the end stages of a game of monopoly. There is nothing left to own unless you already are wealthy and the only way to get ahead is luck.

luizfzs 3mo ago
The 2 main differences between our economy and Monopoly is that 1) in ours, some people start with properties and more money in hand and 2) a Monopoly game takes less time to end.

ETH_start 3mo ago

I wonder if labor itself will become an anachronism in the age of AI. Perhaps the future economic landscape will be dominated by capital because everyone will own capital. You will command a small army of agents to do whatever you want. You will no longer need to work for someone. You own small businesses far more than you could possibly operate in the pre-AI era and they will mostly operate autonomously with minimal direction and some guidance from you.

lesam 3mo ago
Assuming your labour contribution to these agents is 'minimal': Why would you own them, instead of some well capitalized billionaire? To the extent that you do have capital, why do you assume that your 'minimal direction and guidance' would outcompete a full time specialist working for that billionaire?
- logicchains 3mo ago
  It's basic economics; larger firms become progressively less efficient for the same reason that communist command economies are inefficient, because there's no internal price signals to guide resource allocation. So there's a natural cap on how big a firm can get (in information theoretic terms, there's a hard limit on the amount of information a centralized structure can process effectively).
- ETH_start 3mo ago
  Assuming agent costs keep declining exponentially as they have over the last three years, why would everyone not own some agents? It's not like the number of agents is capped and the billionaires hoard all of them. I imagine it would be more like smartphones, where there were only 50 million smartphones after the iPhone was first released in 2007 and now there are something like three billion. They become more accessible and plentiful over time. Same thing should apply to agents. And in this world of abundant agents, what advantage does the billionaire have exactly over the non-billionaire? Their employees are less motivated than owner-operators, and they no longer have the scale advantage that large corporations used to have. Each individual can effectively operate like a large corporation, because each individual can have their own large synthetic workforce at very low cost. The scarce resource here then becomes uniquely human insights and real motivation, which entrepreneurs are always going to have more of than employees.

ghastmaster 3mo ago

The most interesting takeaway I see in the labor share percentage graph is the trend that labor share increases into the recession. Post recession share trends down for a bit. How much of the trend is due to employment trends vs. printing money for the wealthy to get their hands on it first(and profit) post recession?

bendbro 3mo ago

[flagged]

jmye 3mo ago
[flagged]

newaccountman2 3mo ago

And the Republic response to this is "soc1lism bad!!"

saghm 3mo ago
Not even just Republicans, unfortunately. The generation of Americans who grew up in the Cold War were inundated with propaganda about how socialism would destroy America, and then go and say things like this https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/26/us/politics/moderate-democrats-capitalist-socialism.html https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/26/us/politics/moderate-demo...
- newaccountman2 3mo ago
  Yeah. The boomers are a real problem.
  - fsckboy 3mo ago
    You say the boomers are a problem simply because they are old and the young hate the old (ageism), and because they have money and you want it, now. Boomers created everything you like about this world, including youth culture itself, "don't trust anybody over 30". Their predecessor generations, their parents and grandparents, believed comprehensively in things you despise. I know this because I hated the boomers when they were young, and you all sound just like them.
    - newaccountman2 3mo ago
      They are a deeply selfish and immoral generation on the whole who make excuses for evil and denigrate anyone tryin to do good. Just looking at their voting patterns makes it quite clear. Such a lame attempt to defend them by you lol--what makes you think money has anything to do with it? That's Boomer logic; IME, Boomers and right-wingers believe everyone is as self-centered as they are.
      - fsckboy 3mo ago

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jmyeet 3mo ago

Now consider this against the rising productivity-pay gap that has been widening since teh 1970s [1]. The big picture here is increasing wealth inequality and that has been on steroids since the pandemic. The only shocking part to me is how people continually and intentionally don't see it or, worse, think they'll be unaffected by it so don't care. You see this on HN where so many people seem to think they'll be Jeff Bezos one day. But even if that's true, don't you want to live in a society where you don't need armed guards at your house and you don't need armed escorts to go anywhere? Because that's what we're heading towards. One of the problems with American society (in particular) being so car-centric is that it lets people insulate themselves from the rest of society more easily. In cities like NYC you're forced to see and deal with the less fortunate. You can't hide from it so easily. We don't need trillionaires. We need to raise basic living standards so people have food and shelter and we don't need to separate society into slums and armored compounds. [1]: https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/ https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/

palmotea 3mo ago
> The only shocking part to me is how people continually and intentionally don't see it or, worse, think they'll be unaffected by it so don't care. You see this on HN where so many people seem to think they'll be Jeff Bezos one day. Software engineers are a special kind of stupid: the kind that thinks they're smarter than everyone else.

jschveibinz 3mo ago

According to the article, automation (including software) and other technology "advancements" are important factors. I think it's becoming clear that we are reaching a point where UBI must be debated in Congress subsidized by something that doesn't wreck economic growth and probably doesn't target capital investment.

bdangubic 3mo ago

buy shares of companies with any excess money you have and your share will grow

chasing 3mo ago

By design, no?

torginus 3mo ago
Yes by design. Basically just by designating one part of the economy as non-productive consumption economy, and the other part as production economy, they create the justification for inflation - so that the government can have free money and take it from the stupid consumers by decreasing their wealth a little every year should they choose not to spend it, and give it (sorry, invest) to the nice productive entrepreneurial capitalist part of enconomy who will somehow reinvest it allegedly (read: mostly buy up shit the former half needs and sell it back to them at markup), the system has a direct wealth transfer mechanism that points from the poor to the rich, it couldn't be any more shameless and obvious if they tried.

Seattle3503 3mo ago

Are there hollistic analysis? I generate income with my labor, but I also save in retirement and investment accounts. On analysis like this that we typically see, are these two things competing? Are we really just seeing a rise in retirement savings?

nekusar 3mo ago

Well yeah. This is why we're calling end-stage capitalism. What's coming looks like technofeudalism. All companies are rent-seeking. Selling something is no longer a goal. Prices go up up up up up. Oligopolies and price fixing is normal. Monopolies are normal with little/no controls. People are getting paid a pittance to the work done. Unions are their weakest in a century. NLRB is basically frozen due to no quorum on the head board. Companies routinely scam and lie at multiple places in hiring pipeline. FTC does nothing. Neither party (Republicans or Democrats), save the DSA, fights for the American people. Its all coming to a head, and baskets, and guillotines. Anybody who studies history knows what kind of powderkeg this situation is. Its also the reason the Ancient Romans made panem et circunses (bread and circus) cheap or free. You get riots and revolts otherwise.

feverzsj 3mo ago

Because labors in China are extremely cheap. And they are getting cheaper and cheaper in last decade, despite the GDP growth.

seizethecheese 3mo ago
As a hardware founder, I’ve seen the opposite until very recently. Labor cost has been going up much faster than inflation, at lease in hardware assembly. Do you have a source?
AngryData 3mo ago
Chinas wages have been rising for decades and now many Made in China products are outsourced from China to produce. Your ideas about China feel a decade or so out of date to me.

lenerdenator 3mo ago

Equity should be a normal part of compensation for non-executive employees in addition to their wage/salary and benefits. There's nothing about being in the C-suite that magically endows one with motivation based upon stock price, but we pretend that there is.

ihsw 3mo ago

[dead]

otekengineering 3mo ago

isn't this the expected/intended outcome of the economic policy we've held for a generation or two? the capital/labor class gap increases when total returns on capital investment exceed total wages+redistribution to the labor class, and the gap shrinks when that's reversed. the market ~controls the capital gains and labor wages knobs, and society decides where to set the redistribution knob. the article investigating the post-covid drop and concluding that it's normal is an interesting rhetorical device. on one hand, relief that nothing crazy is happening. on the other hand, disappointment that we've accepted a growing inequality gap as normal. the gap was already at a post-war max going into covid, the floor gave out 20 years earlier and covid was just gas on the fire. advancements in automation and tax codes that benefit capex over payroll will continue to incentivize business to shift budgets from labor to robots.

rbbydotdev 3mo ago

Raise the minimum wage to ~$25-30/hr Before anyone says inflation, there will be more consumer spending and thus more cash flow in the middle and lower class

smallmancontrov 3mo ago
Sorry, growth mindset only applies to handouts for companies and billionaires. Those are the rules!

gcanyon 3mo ago

Is there a reason to think this is anything more than increased productivity? And that therefore the case has to be made that labor, more than capital, should benefit from that increase? I’m not saying that argument can’t or shouldn’t be made, just saying that “it was different before!” Isn’t the best argument.

shadow_it 3mo ago

right, so now more than ever... if you're not saving/investing you are falling behind.

fsckboy 3mo ago

there is no such thing as "labor share of income". It's a measurement you can calculate, but it means nothing tells nothing. in caveman times, labor's share of income was 100%. Do you want to live like that?