By the way, Marx literally predicted wages stagnating even as production increases. I’ve also added some other benchmarks to help gauge where earners would stand given how much they currently earn.

25k in 2020-> 57k

35k in 2020-> 80k

45k in 2020-> 103k

50k in 2020-> 108k

75k in 2020-> 172k

100k in 2020-> 229k

    • cracksmoke2020 [none/use name]
      ·
      4 years ago

      The oil price shock is what triggered the era of neoliberalism in order to prevent that from ever happening again. The end of the gold standard also played a role.

        • cracksmoke2020 [none/use name]
          ·
          4 years ago

          What @truth said below is a much more elaborate comment than mine and is very accurate.

          It's that the oil price shocks shook the existing system from a profitability and inflationary standpoint and in order to bring in higher levels of growth increased globalization became necessary. Part of that involved things like ending the gold standard, and pushing for neoliberalism which expanded economies of scale that benefited large enterprises over small ones. The end of small business that slowly followed this is really what resulted in the change in productivity wage curve as the market for hiring employees became looser.

            • cracksmoke2020 [none/use name]
              ·
              4 years ago

              No neoliberalism started in full force immediately after watergate with some hints of such before it happening too. Nixon, even with his problems, was still in many ways following the old social democratic status quo of things like price controls and strict market regulation at the beginning of his presidency. The neoliberal experiment really began with Penochet in Chile as well which also happened in 1973.

              The primary reason neoliberalism resulted in the productivity wage curve shifting is that prior to this, large enterprises weren't nearly as much of a thing. Smaller employers had to pay their workers more since hiring was harder, domestic manufacturers didn't have the ability to outsource in the same way due to lack of standardized rules of trade and exchange rates so unions were also able to thrive,

              The rise of large global enterprises resulted in highly optimized supply chains, you had far less "duplicated" work within the world market, later on came automation and we ended up where we are now. It's worth pointing out that the productivity wage curve never actually dropped out for those in the top 20-30 percent of income, which is a primary driver of middle income wealth inequality today, but it is this group that both automated, optimized these supply chains, fired a bunch of domestic workers and busted their unions.

        • BeamBrain [he/him]
          ·
          4 years ago

          This comment seems to be off-topic. You should be careful about that sort of thing, the mods here are pretty strict.

    • opposide [none/use name]
      ·
      4 years ago

      I have literally no idea but I know somebody who is smart out there will tell us

      • truth [they/them]
        ·
        4 years ago

        Uhh to be really quick that's when the bottom fell out of the economic model the US was doing. A triple whacking of capital accumulation in Europe and Asia reducing profitability of us corporations (this buildup was required to buffer against the SU, so it's an internal contradiction), the oil shock from opec ( blowback from imperial adventurism to maintain profitability ), and a wage-inflation spiral from full employment hitting against that reduced profitability ( again another internal contradiction ), these three collapsed the previous economic model. Nixon swaps the US over to completely greenbacks and we begin the process of totalizing financialization and economic auto-cannabalism. There's a lot more to it but I'm on my lunch break.

      • truth [they/them]
        ·
        4 years ago

        Uhh to be really quick that's when the bottom fell out of the economic model the US was doing. A triple whacking of capital accumulation in Europe and Asia reducing profitability of us corporations (this buildup was required to buffer against the SU, so it's an internal contradiction), the oil shock from opec ( blowback from imperial adventurism to maintain profitability ), and a wage-inflation spiral from full employment hitting against that reduced profitability ( again another internal contradiction ), these three collapsed the previous economic model. Nixon swaps the US over to completely greenbacks and we begin the process of totalizing financialization and economic auto-cannabalism. There's a lot more to it but I'm on my lunch break.