Quote:
Originally Posted by opendoor
Just to add on to what I was talking about above, these numbers show it in the most basic way:
WWII to 1980:
Real Per Capita GDP growth: 2.3% a year.
Real earnings growth among the bottom 90% of workers: 2% a year
1980 to present:
Real Per Capita GDP growth: 1.8% a year
Real earnings growth among the bottom 90% of workers: 0.4% a year
So in the first period, wage increases for most people tracked at about 85-90% of the economy's growth. Post-1980, they've only managed to be about 20-25%. So the vast majority of growth is going straight to the wealthy. Which makes trickle down economics so ridiculous. Pre-Reagan, the wealth was trickling down effectively, but since then it is increasingly being consolidated.
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You’re still using 1980 as the date of transition, when 1973 was when broad economic growth slowed dramatically.
The whole narrative that the golden post-war egalitarian society was ruined by Reagan and Thatcher relies on ignoring the 70s and how dismal they were for most people. It was the failure of the post-war economic model to sustain broad prosperity that paved the way for Reagan and Thatcher to gain power, not the other way around.