Do the Rich Capture All the Gains from Economic Growth?

I like how it frames the economy as this independent entity that we just sort of observe and hope for the best. Oh our divining rod produced these arbitrary statistics so the glass is half full guys!

In reality, though, the forces of human nature driving the economy don't change. Since the dawn of the surplus, there have always been a handful of kings and many serfs, and there probably always will be.

Should probably just burn them for fuel, right?

> And many of the most pessimistic studies about the fate of the American middle class ignore the fall in marriage and the increase in divorce since the 1970s and the effects that demographic change has had on the way we measure changes in household income

The right wing culture warrior says that if people got and stayed married they'd be better off. The left wing materialist says that if people were better off they'd be getting married more and staying together longer. Which is more likely: every young person got brain worms at the same time that made them want to not do monogamy/family things, or the stratum of society that has always tried to capture as much of its productivity as possible has made gains in its project?

As to the rest of it: I don't particularly care if the same exact individuals have effected a greater capture of the economic output of this country, I do care that as a whole the top Xtile captures a larger slice. That does, in fact, matter materially to me even though I'm imminently comfortable. I'll leave it to the real stats nerds to punch holes in the math.

Which is to say, that his articles must be taken independently. His opinions on other issues are not discussed, so it's easy to build a strawman about his other opinions.

That also means that we must point out the fact that this article is only a small subset of data, that really tells us only what the data was collected on.

I think that 1970 is used as a starting point because that's also when real wages started dropping relative to production output.

I'm don't think it's fair to blame US politics. I bet this is a universal phenomenon.

Many huge American companies have done super well as we move to a global economy - tech is a great example. There's more money to be made when you can start selling more iPhones to India and the development costs stay the same.

Whether this new global revenue wealth goes workers vs corporate pockets depends on the supply of labor. Does Apple mostly want to employ Americans? If so, these rich global companies need to compete for a limited supply of American workers - our salaries rise. Tech workers in the USA make much more money than other countries - we have many successful companies here all wanting American tech labor.

On the flip side , not all American labor falls under this category. If companies don't care if the labor is domestic or outsourced or immigration is easy (flexible supply), then American workers don't see much gain from these global companies making more global money - the new wealth is split between top American executives and developing countries..

Most companies fall into the latter category - which is why we've seen the income divide grow, the average American worker's wage stagnate, and developing countries wages grow.