Michael Strain says that wages have grown more than people think. The usual figures from lefties are rigged, he says, by starting in 1973 and using the CPI to calculate inflation. If you start in 1990 and use the PCE index instead, wages of blue-collar workers¹ have gone up 32 percent. Not bad!

Strain’s math is correct. But let’s take him up on his choice of starting date and inflation index. Here’s the chart he doesn’t show:

It’s true, using Strain’s measures, that worker pay has increased 32 percent since 1990. That’s about 1 percent per year. But overall national income has grown three times as fast. Where is all that extra income going? Here is Strain:

I’m not trying to be sanguine here. Americans have high expectations for wage and income growth, and we shouldn’t be satisfied with the gains we’ve enjoyed over the past three or five decades….But messages matter. If all people hear is that wages have been stagnant for decades as part of a game rigged to benefit people at the top — well, they might believe it.

I’d say that people have every reason to believe this. If national income has gone up 109 percent since 1990, why hasn’t the income of ordinary workers also gone up that much? I think we all know the answer.

¹As usual, I’m using “blue-collar” as shorthand for what the BLS calls “production and nonsupervisory workers.” This includes about 80 percent of the population.

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“Lying.” “Disgusting.” “Scum.” “Slime.” “Corrupt.” “Enemy of the people.” Donald Trump has always made clear what he thinks of journalists. And it’s plain now that his administration intends to do everything it can to stop journalists from reporting things they don’t like—which is most things that are true.

No one gets to tell Mother Jones what to publish or not publish, because no one owns our fiercely independent newsroom. But that also means we need to directly raise the resources it takes to keep our journalism alive. There’s only one way for that to happen, and it’s readers like you stepping up. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

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