Production can be cut, without lowering pay for most workers
Companies have a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders, so unless you’re running a co-op or we transition to a socialist economic structure then this will likely never happen sadly. That huge gap between production and wages is what fuels our current economic paradigm. The system just needs to be rewritten.
Switzerland is one of the few countries where this graph hasn’t strayed. I wonder if it is because how strong apprenticeship and manual jobs are valued in our culture?
Germany has a pretty similar apprenticeship system to Switzerland, but a massive gap.
Maybe the salary increases of the boses of the companies registered in our tax haven cantons are artificially closing the gap.
Does anyone know what happened in the early 1960’s that led to that smaller, but still noticeable diversion?
MBAs took over businesses from internal promotions.
Unfortunately I don’t know.
To correlate the effect with social processes, one would have to plot the same graph for multiple countries and see what processes occur in each history at the time of the lines forking apart (assuming they do so).
Some guesses: automation, perhaps globalization of supply chains, something related to the effectiveness of employees at bargaining with employers?
In what year was Reagan elected? I’ll give you a tip, it was the same year the country started to get fucked.
Forget baby Hitler, if I had a time machine I’d kill baby Reagan.
You beat me to it. I was just going to reply, “Ronald Regan”.
this is why everyone who’s getting screwed on pay should be quiet quitting with no remorse
“Production can be cut”
Ownership class:
Obligatory EPI Institute webpage on this (recently updated for 2024!)
