Virtually all economists who have studied the
changing income distribution have confirmed what nearly everyone else knows. For
most Americans, living standards are stagnating and becoming more unstable. For
the bottom half, income is falling. And the prime culprit is not shifts in
family values or the work ethic, or even changes in taxes and social benefits.
Most of the problem is the erosion of wage and salary income.

From the early-nineteenth-century introduction
of steam power through the dawning of the age of the microchip
in the post-World War II era, real economic growth in America
averaged 3.8 percent per year. That meant economic output doubled
roughly every 19 years. Then after the 1970s, growth collapsed.
During the 1980s, growth averaged just 2.7 percent per year and
since 1989 only about 2 percent. At that rate, it will take nearly
36 years for gross domestic product (GDP) to double again.