05-08-2020, 07:13 PM
(05-08-2020, 01:25 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: The gas-shortage recession led to downturns after 1973, but wages were at least recovering if less quickly than productivity under Nixon-Ford. Then along comes Reagan and the gap widens. Compensation, as the graph shows, made very modest recoveries under the moderate "new" Democrats (non-FDR/LBJ Democrats) Carter, Clinton and Obama, despite furious Republican opposition and obstruction, but under Republicans it actually declined or went nowhere. The gap widened particularly as the 3T got going in Reagan's second term, after he won by a landslide and soon after the early 1980s recession ended.
You need to look at the timing more carefully. There was a mild recovery in wages in the last year of the Ford administration and the first couple years of Carter, but that quickly tanked in the middle of Carter's term, which is why he didn't get reelected. There were mild gains in Clinton's second term and Bush's first term. There was a step gain in the 2008/2009 recession when the lowest wage workers got laid off, raising the average, but you guys always blame that on Bush, not Obama.
All of these were minor blips in the straight line of real wages, and none of them compared to what productivity was doing. The gap continued to widen and widen, thanks to the easy availability of immigrant labor.