The article is full of inaccuracies. E.g They put a graph of Spain and salaries growing more than 10% in the real state bubble period. What they don't add is

The article is full of inaccuracies. E.g They put a graph of Spain and salaries growing more than 10% in the real state bubble period. What they don't add is the cost of living going up as well, specially renting a house or buying it, that went up 400% in lots of places. Now those salaries have gone down to their previous level(the graph does not include the last two years), but house prices had been sustained as much as they could with interventions like creating "bad banks" so free market could not do his job. Real state prices had gone down probably 30%, far from pre bubble plus real inflation levels. It does not matter if your salary goes up if inflation goes up higher. Productivity has increased dramatically over time, but taxes, debt and overspending by the government has grown more. About the top earners, this is what happens when you give free money to people in Wall Street. Stock goes up, and the percentage of wealth they have is enormous. But this is "paper money", and will last until stock goes down, and it will go down when interest rates go up, and this will happen soon, in one or two years.