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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jfdlsjfd" data-source="post: 9798177" data-attributes="member: 42856">You didn't understand what I meant by compensating. Most got a slight increase, and the large increase for the happy few is bigger than the loss experienced by those who lost.Even the bottom 10th percentile rose by 6.5% (inflation-adjusted). So even the poorest household had an increase, even if it is small (though I wouldn't sneer at a 10% increase in wage myself). The only group who actually lost were the one you mention later (the bottom group of men falling by 7.7%, yet it was more than compensated: both the average increased and the median increased (so other got a larger increase than the decrease the losing group experienced). It didn't hugely compensate, but it didn't lead to a reduction overall, so it was more than compensated.What's striking is the comparison with the 41.6% of the top 10 percentile. They got a large share of the "more than compensation", and that's when redistributive policies should or should not apply -- which isn't the topic of this board. I'll restrain myself to point out that there is a demographic target group that benefited greatly and have the means to contribute to wealth transfers, in case one think those are useful.The figures you quote just illustrate what I wrote earlier: it's not the technical progress that made people poorer. On average, people are earning more. Detroit (low income male) workers earns less, but Silicon valley (high earning males) earns much more, and the lack of transfers makes make the first target group poorer.Duh, they don't say otherwise. They mention a different metric. I was speaking of average wage, you quote hourly wage for the median, top 10th and bottom 10th percentile. Average wage can increase while hourly median wage decrease if people work more (more people doing full-time jobs over the period) and, more importantly, if the top wages increase significantly quicker. The top 10 percent increased by 41.3% and the top 1% by 138%. Both measurements are enough to drive the average up above the median value.Whether it is more useful to look at the mean or median value for the discussion at hand is open to discussion (and the aggregate wage value would be the most interesting), but you can't state that they say otherwise when they say that a different measurement shows a different value.Agreggate wages:[ATTACH=full]421986[/ATTACH]Adjusting for inflation, the aggregate wages went up by 129.7%. The population increased by 52%, so the wage shared by the population increased by 85%. Nothing contrary to the figures you quote -- which is expected, since I guess both the Federal Reserve and the CBO get their data from the same primary sources.To caricature, even if everyone earns the same and just Elon Musk is paid tens of billions more, it is still better overall. Whether Elon Musk gets to keep his billions or has to share them with his fellow workers is political.Mmmm, correcting the inequalities how, except by transfering wealth? I mean, I don't think you mean suppressing inequalities (ie, everyone has the same income level), and I don't want to delve into politics more, but could you explain what you mean by "correcting inequalities" if it's not ensuring everyone gets access to necessary services (food, housing, basic income, healthcare, education, pensions...) at an acceptable level through redistribution?That's interesting, in the US the average was more than driven by the increase in richest household (and increased participation of women in the workforce (50.9% in 1978, 57.5% now) than elsewhere. If anything, the contrast between the increase by 28.8% of women's wage compared to men's is lending credence, in their minds, to the claim of incels. The catching-up while they stagnate can be felt as a decrease, despite men still being paid better.Here is the relevant graphic for France:[ATTACH=full]421966[/ATTACH]Where the revenue after social tranfer, in real terms, meaning inflation-adjusted, nearly doubled for the lowest 10% (blue dotted line), while it increased less for the top 10% (yellow dotted line) -- partly due to increased social transfers but largely due to increase of the minimum legal wage.For the UK, here are some relevant data from the ONS:[ATTACH=full]421968[/ATTACH]Though it doesn't go back as far as 1975, it is showing a steeper increase than in the US.For the Netherlands:[ATTACH=full]421972[/ATTACH]Both the median male and female wage increased, though women increased more. (In case anyone wonders, the overall median decreased because more women participate in the labour force and they still get paid less than men, so their increased workforce participation drives down the median value).Well, if the average wage increased, you can't say that it's not true that workers got wealthier on average. The person in the middle is the median, and while it might get less money than the average household (since income average can be pushed up by very high wages, while one can't have negative wage), that person in the middle is still getting paid more by 8.8% in real terms according to the data you quote.Well, that's the "why should we bother researching a costly cure if most won't be able to buy it?". You can consider that situation was objectively better in 1979, and that would mean that men might be paid 3% more than now and women would be paid 30% less: if anything, that warrants having advanced? Even if it was just "everyone loses 1% except a few who greatly increase their wealth", it would still be worth it if it was a net increase overall. You just need to ensure after that that redistribution works for this outcome to be acceptable. A huge increase overall and no redistribution is something we experienced in the 19th century. It ended with bloodshed, and the starting of the trend of inequality reduction we enjoyed over the 20th century.Sure, I focused on wages because they are what affect the daily lives of most people and thus more reflecting the general feeling. A large share of the wealth increase go to capital owners (either collectively through saving plans or direct holding), but they tend to enrich the top percentiles and affect less the perception of most of the people (for whom capital gain are a relatively small part of their overall income). They do increase inequalities, though. But it is even more political to veer into whether the pie-sharing between capital and work should favour capital-owners or workers. Both solutions have proponents and opponents after all: without workers, there would be no wealth produced, but without the tools for them to work (capital) there would be no wealth created either. It is evident that if a larger share of the wealth created was demanded by workers (either individually, collectively (unions) or politically (legal minimum wages, wealth redistribution mechanisms...), their wage would have increased more (as they did in other countries).Also, you should have used real GDP: the increased wealth increased by a factor of 4. Which is great enough![ATTACH=full]421970[/ATTACH]Much like the US chose to have relatively small redistributive social policies compared to other OECD countries, the US is also one where the labour share decreased over time:[ATTACH=full]421980[/ATTACH]Nearly 8 points less compaed to 1979.Contrast with the UK:[ATTACH=full]421981[/ATTACH](OK, the graphic isn't easy to read, but the 1979 value is 63.1 and the 2025 Q1 value is 60.7, a much smaller decrease of nearly 5%).And France:[ATTACH=full]421982[/ATTACH] (From 0.69 to 0.625, a decrease similar to the US's but with stronger redistributive measures in place and an uncanny increase in the early 70s followed by a sharp decline in the early 80s, so it can be felt as a stagnation of the labour share since 1990, while the US situation would have been felt as a stability from 1980 to 2000, followed by a continuous decrease -- which is certainly making the situation uncomfortable for workers depending on their wage for living, especially those who entered the workforce in the early 2000s).Note that I don't focus on the actual labour share of GDP of these different countries, but rather at their trend, because it is what can be felt by people. A higher level of capital share, entrenched for a long time, may be socially accepted (like the labour share in the UK being historically lower doesn't translate into a structural feeling of inequality among English workers).</blockquote>

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