{"id":914,"date":"2004-07-21T09:29:22","date_gmt":"2004-07-21T13:29:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/?p=914"},"modified":"2004-07-21T09:29:22","modified_gmt":"2004-07-21T13:29:22","slug":"where-did-all-the-money-go","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/?p=914","title":{"rendered":"Where did all the money go?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The admirable Billmon<\/a> has a statistic I don’t understand and can’t really believe: All told, real wages dropped more than 20 per cent<\/em> between 1972 and 1992. I’ve often wondered what the political fallout would have been if that same decline had been administered the old-fashioned way – through direct pay cuts by employers instead of the gradual, indirect erosion of inflation.”<\/span><\/p>\n\n

I can’t think of anything<\/em> which Americans were able to buy 20% less of in 1992 than in 1972 — not even illegal drugs. So in what sense did real wages fall? The statistic I always remember is that for the “middle classes”, real wages have stayed approximately the same<\/em> since the 1970s. This alone would produce a certain dissatisfaction and political savagery, especially in a culture where everything is always meant to be improving.<\/p>\n\n

But maybe I am just showing a lack of imagination. Things that might be 20% less affordable for the average American include health care, child care, and housing.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The admirable Billmon has a statistic I don’t understand and can’t really believe: All told, real wages dropped more than 20 per cent between 1972 and 1992. I’ve often wondered what the political fallout would have been if that same … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/914"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=914"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/914\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=914"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=914"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}