A surprise is that this is in the Wall Street Journal, which was slanted toward the plutocracy, even before being bought by Murdoch.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121072656227790335.html?mod=todays_columnists
By THOMAS FRANK
May 14, 2008; Page A19
Median "nonelderly" household income, we find, fell consistently through the first half of this decade, despite the solid economic growth enjoyed by the country as a whole.
Some nonmedian folks did just fine, of course: The top 20% of households earned more, after taxes, than the rest of the country combined in 2005, while the topmost 1% of the population took home more than the bottom 40%. The top-earning hedge fund manager of 2007, in fact, made about as much last year in nominal dollars ($3.7 billion) as J. Paul Getty, one of the richest men in the world, was worth in the mid-1970s.
Real hourly wages for most workers, on the other hand, have risen only 1% since 1979, even as those workers' productivity has increased by 60%. What's more, American workers now clock more hours per year than their counterparts in virtually every other advanced economy, even Japan. And unless you haven't read a newspaper for 15 years, you already know what's happened to workers' health insurance and pension plans.
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