The last time we hit this low point was in the Gilded Age, when the economic producers essentially revolted and forced governments to regulate against capitalistic greed. As you correctly identify, in the early 80s U.S. leadership figured out that if you issue debt more freely then you can get the economic growth of ‘household spend goes up’, ‘production and GDP goes up’,
and ‘foreign currencies weaken versus the dollar’ without having to force* corporations to pay out profits as wage increases against their will. One bonus outcome is that you end up with lifelong debtors who are forced to accept work circumstances that they wouldn’t have to accept if they still had wage negotiating power. Too bad about the demonization of unions in tech, eh?
* A tax on (gross revenue – wages – cogs) with rate (cpi + fedrate) ^ 0.9 would be an excellent start, with an exponential factor that halts ‘shift the tax to consumers through simple price increases’ — the more you earn, the more you have to raise prices, which raises inflation, which raises your future tax by more than your price increase; the more revenue you pay out as wages instead of shareholder dividends, the lower you can set prices, which lowers inflation, which lowers your future tax — and adding the FFER lever allows the Fed to perform their mission to control (price) inflation not only with banks but also with businesses. For example, (8% inflation + 4% fedrate) ^ .9 is ~14.8%, which is a completely acceptable surcharge for businesses having raised prices so high that it caused an 8% inflation year!