2019-02-22 v. 1
There's class warfare, all right, but it's my class, the rich class, that's making war, and we're winning.
—Warren Buffett to Ben Stein, 2006
Buffett is right. Here's the evidence, in one sparkling graphic, courtesy of the Economic Policy Institute:
What this graph shows is, in the left half, the lockstep growth of wages and productivity from 1948 until the 1970s. Productivity (dollars of output per hour of effort) rising; wages rising. Shared prosperity. Then, in the late 1970s, the neoliberal era gets going with deregulation, tax cuts, privitization, etc. The new pattern is set, which has persisted ever since. Productivity, still rising. Wages, stagnant. All gains to the owners: profits, capital gains, etc. To wage earners: nothing. This is the neoliberal legacy. This is class war.