household income

Median Household Income Began to Stagnate in 1980, not 2000 by Dean Baker

Thomas Edsall has a good discussion of the shift of income from labor to capital in the years since 2000. His piece puts the blame largely on the way the United States has structured global trade to put downward pressure on the wages of ordinary workers. 

While Edsall's discussion of the period since 2000 is largely on target (it does miss the impact of macroeconomic fluctuations and the fact that we have been well below full employment for most of this period), it errs in telling readers: 

"Until 1999, median household income (as distinct from wealth) rose in tandem with national economic growth. That year, household income abruptly stopped keeping pace with economic growth and has fallen steadily behind then." 

While median household income did keep pace with economic growth from 1993 to 1999, it actually lagged far behind in the years from 1978 to 1993. Over this period real per capital income rose by 30.0 percent, while median household income barely changed. This divergence of median income from growth was associated with an upward redistribution of wage income, with high end earners (e.g. Wall Street types, CEOs, and doctors) gaining at the expense of most workers. 

In this period, most college graduates (@ 25 percent of the workforce at the time) were among the winners. By contrast, in the period since 2000 only workers at the very top of the income distribution and owners of capital have been winners.

America Out of Whack by Thomas Edsall
I asked Shawn Fremstad, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, a pro-Democratic think tank, to address current income and wealth disparities, and he wrote back by email:

“a big-picture solution involves higher marginal income tax rates for the top 1 percent and some sort of wealth tax on the top of the top, combined with stronger labor market institutions (minimum wage, unions, paid leave/sick days/vacations, etc.).”

We need wage inflation and full employment via demand management (fiscal, monetary, trade/currency) policy.

Yglesias:

Obama's biggest economic policy mistake

Blame Obama for bad monetary policy, not Republicans