If they are making 5x what they were when they were working, that is a pretty clear sign that wages are ridiculously low in this country and we need a raise.
We haven’t gotten a raise of real income relative to prices since the mid 1970”s. Up until then, our standard of living increased every year. We could buy more than we could the year before. Then it ended. Our wages have stagnated since then.
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tan...d-for-decades/
For most U.S. workers, real wages have barely budged in decades
After adjusting for inflation, however, todayÂ’s average hourly wage has just about the same purchasing power it did in 1978, following a long slide in the 1980s and early 1990s and bumpy, inconsistent growth since then. In fact, in real terms average hourly earnings peaked more than 45 years ago: The $4.03-an-hour rate recorded in January 1973 had the same purchasing power that $23.68 would today.
Productivity has soared. Those increased corporate profits have not been shared with workers, as they had been for decades after WW2. They have accrued to the pockets of the 1%.
The intoxicating lure of cheap Chinese and other overseas produced consumer products has kept our mouths shut on the issue. We were fooled into thinking that we were doing ok. Corporations didnÂ’t have to raise our wages, since we could buy cheaper and cheaper chinesium junk for the same paycheck.
The fact is that we were doubly screwed by that dynamic because not only does it depress our wages, but millions of us lost our jobs when production facilities moved to the other side the world.
The rich laugh at how stupid we are, when the working class actually bashes unions. They laugh all the way to the bank.
One of the most important rules of maintaining power is to ensure that those looking to move up and share some of it are turned against each other at every opportunity. Such is the case when you see workers in the south, the land of depressed wages, especially in those right-to-work-for-less states, protesting against unionization.
Or when you have one group complaining that another group has benefits that are “too generous” or “gold plated”. Such jealousy encourages a race to the bottom, rather than an increased standard of living.
Poor brainwashed fools, acting against their own best interest.
There is an old saying, something to the effect that “unions were so successful in raising the standard of living of their members that the members actually thought they were Republicans”
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Originally Posted by charger69
Reply With Quote
