The man is keeping you down

We know, via economic science, that Americans should probably be making about $30,000 more than they do. We also know that job growth has been nice — 223,000 jobs were added off the last report — but earnings have remained stagnant, and that’s bad. (In related news, no one really understands the unemployment rate anyway.)

Now there’s this, via here:

U.S. Wage Growth

Year-on-year wage growth is about 1.9 percent. For context, the last time the unemployment rate was this low was early 2008 (RUH ROH!) and year-on-year wage growth was about 3.8 percent, i.e. double what it is now.

Now look at this:

How Much U.S. Citizens Work

Alright, so … workday is up, earnings are basically stagnant. Not good. I still think people over-inflate how busy they are, yes, but hours at the office going up without earnings really going up isn’t a great place for us all to be in.

Now consider this:

1 Percent vs. Bottom 50 percent

80 people (the top billionaires) are soon going to own as much as the bottom 50 percent of the entire world. (And this is from Oxfam and Credit Suisse, who are pretty vetted.)

If you’re scoring at home, I’ve got it as The Man 1, The Rest Of Us 0. What’s your score?

Ted Bauer