CAN'T ARGUE WITH RESULTS.

CAN'T ARGUE WITH RESULTS. Writing in The New York Times, David Leonhardt and Stephen Greenhouse have the crispest, clearest description of how sick our economy has become that I've yet seen:

The median hourly wage for American workers has declined 2 percent since 2003, after factoring in inflation. The drop has been especially notable, economists say, because productivity � the amount that an average worker produces in an hour and the basic wellspring of a nation�s living standards � has risen steadily over the same period.As a result, wages and salaries now make up the lowest share of the nation�s gross domestic product since the government began recording the data in 1947, while corporate profits have climbed to their highest share since the 1960�s. UBS, the investment bank, recently described the current period as �the golden era of profitability.�

And let's not fool ourselves into believing that the difference is made up in benefits; increases there have failed to keep place with inflation as well. The reason that the statistics on compensation haven't attracted more media alarm is that they've remained positive: the media reports mean compensations, where massive raises for the rich have kept the numbers positive, rather than median compensation, which has fallen.The culprit here is a simple lack of bargaining power on the part of employees. The pernicious fiction that corporations will happily redirect their profits into appropriate raises and benefit increases has been widely adopted -- we're now supposed to assume that whatever Wal-Mart or UBI is paying is exactly what they should be paying, and the willingness of workers to take those jobs is proof that the compensation is adequate. That, of course, is nuts. The balance of power between worker and employer has shifted radically in the employer's favor, and while folks still need jobs, the decline of unions and the rise of conservative (and neoliberal) regimes in government have allowed corporations to set the terms. Those terms, as you'd expect, prioritize executive salaries, corporate profits, and share prices, while seeking to keep labor costs as dirt low as possible. They've succeeded.

--Ezra Klein