On Mon, 14 Feb 2005, Doug Henwood wrote:
Real hourly earnings for all private sector workers:
Jan 73 (high) to May 95 (low): -18.1% May 95 to Nov 03 (latest high): + 9.9% Nov 03 through Jan 05 (latest): - 1.0% latest vs Jan 73 peak: -10,8%
There has been a big brohaha lately about the Bushit proposal to change the indexing of social security benefits, from indexing them to wages (the present system) to indexing them to prices. There seems to be universal agreement, both among people who are for the change and people who are against it, that this will lower benefits, because wages rise faster than inflation.
But if real wages have fallen over the last 30 years, doesn't that mean by definition that prices rose faster than wages -- and that if benefits had been pegged to prices, the last 30 years, they would have risen faster too?
Michael
