Poverty in a Great Economy

Despite Donald Trump's and Larry Kudlow's claims to the contrary, we do not live in a vibrant economy.  At least, 99+ per cent of us don't.

After the strong wage growth of the 1990s, real wages fell.  From 2000 to 2007, even though productivity increased by 16 percent, workers smack in the middle of the wage spectrum saw wage growth of only 2.6 percent.  Workers from the bottom 20% of the wage scale experienced a wage increase of a mere 1 percent. Worst of all, over the past decade, real wages flat-lined or declined for more than 70% of workers.

How to address this problem?  Here's what one economist suggested.

If you really want to get wages to grow broadly for everybody it means confronting power in the workplace.  [It means] confronting the fact that we have an economy geared toward creating huge corporate profits and rising stock prices, but not rising wages, and an economy constructed to give some people power and other people less power.

I'm reminded of the Strawbs ...