In 1973, for the first time in U.S. history, median inflation-adjusted wages for men began to stagnate. Women's average wages continued to increase, but mostly because they have always been lower than men's...
http://www.census.gov/prod/2012pubs/p60-243.pdf
Forty years later and absolutely zero net progress in average (median) male wages:
A Funny Thing Happened Back In 1973.
Working wages diverged from productivity. The delta went to corporate profits:
http://www.epi.org/publication/ib330-productivity-vs-compensation/
Debt-adjusted, Wages Went Down
So policy-makers had 40 years to find a solution to this most important of all fundamental economic issues and what have they done? Nothing. Forty years of nothing. Actually, less than nothing. Because what the lying apologists for the status quo always leave out, is that on a debt-adjusted basis, the above chart is really a total illusion. Because in the interim U.S. total debt has grown by a factor of 300%, when taking into account , state, local, federal, household and corporate debt. We should thank the children and grandchildren for accepting a lifetime of poverty just to keep this generation's wages from collapsing.
Skydiving Without a Parachute
It's sad and pathetic at this juncture that the Idiocracy is using the Dow as its benchmark for economic well-being when in fact the Dow only goes up because wages are going down. With each new high in the Dow, billionaire wealth goes up and average working person economic prospects go down. It's been a zero sum game between wages and profits for forty years now. Yet, thanks to a forty year campaign of delusion, bullshit, chicanery, connivance, Faux News and Supply Side Economics, the morons at large have been brainwashed into believing that they are Dow billionaires i.e. who vote constantly against their own interests. Therefore, this all had to end with the Dow reaching a new high sustained by nothing but forty years of voodoo economics. And given that policy-makers have wasted literally every second of the past four decades, then instead of a gradual and managed lowering of economic standard of living towards the sustainable, instead this society has opted for a one time high to low crash landing, saved for the last possible second. It was inevitable that the phony "Kardashian billionaires" would HALO jump into economic oblivion without a parachute, while snapping pictures of themselves to post on Facebook.
