The conversation shifts toward wages
If I may indulge myself in a quick note at a busy time: today's lead NYT editorial marks a kind of watershed to me. Aptly titled Picking Up the Tab for Low Wages, it begins by noting the divergence between productivity gains and wage gains since the 1970s and then alleges a primary cause:
These dynamics are not inevitable. Low-wage employers, in particular, pay low wages because they can and the main reason they can is that Congress has failed, over decades, to adequately update the minimum wage and other labor standards, including rules for overtime pay, employee benefits and union organizing.
My thought is, here we are at last. The center of gravity in a national conversation over causes of inequality is moving swiftly from global hyper-competition and technology to education to tax policy and safety net programs to now, finally, labor policy . All of these factors are real, and all need to be addressed at once, but the fact is that our wage structure and the diversion of an outsized share of national wealth to management and shareholders are the result of political choices beginning, or accelerating, in the Reagan era.
You can feel the conversation shift to focus on the power imbalance between management and workers. Piketty's Capital in the 21st Century has a lot to do with it. Recent landmarks I can trace in my own reading include the screeds of billionaire investor Nick Hanauer (1, 2) , the Center for American Progress's recent report on inequality, which highlights labor law at the front of an appendix on recommended U.S. policy response to the trend (and which has been billed as a precursor economic plan for Hillary Clinton); a New York Times article spotlighting Denmark's $20 per hour fast food workers -- and of course, coverage of the recent spate of city-wide minimum wage increases and Democrats' embrace of a raise to $12 per hour by 2020.
Related:
Reagan Revolution rollback