How could that have happened? What did voters believe they would be getting from Trump?
The answer to that question goes far back into the 20th century. Take a look at a visual description of the problem that working-class Americans have been struggling with for decades.
The first graph on https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/ shows what has been happening since 1971.
It compares productivity with hourly compensation of Production and Nonsupervisory Workers from 1948 to 2017. Between 1948 and 1972 compensation kept right up with productivity. Then in 1972 compensation stopped growing while productivity kept on rising.
Who is hurt by this?
80% of the workforce, that’s who. The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates “Production and Nonsupervisory” workers to be roughly 80% of the American work force.
More recent data on productivity and wages are available from the Economic Policy Institute’s data library at https://www.epi.org/data/. It covers the years from 1948 to 2022 and is displayed in the graph below.
The lower (green) line shows the compensation rate in dollars per hour with the area under the line shaded in green. The top (black) line is productivity. The area between the two lines is shaded red. It represents lost wages for 80% of the workforce.
This graph shows that compensation actually began falling in 1972, and after a brief recovery it resumed falling and didn’t stop until 1996.
How does this affect you?
Are you in the category of Production and Nonsupervisory Worker? If so, you can see the effects that wage stagnation has had on you at the “What should you be making?” page at https://www.epi.org/multimedia/wage-calculator/. There is a form on the page where you can “Enter your current annual wage:” which is preloaded with the value $40,000. You can enter your current annual wage and then click the red button with the “How much should I be making?” label. It will calculate the wage you would be making if wages had kept up with productivity since the late 1970’s. These losses keep occurring year after year. The cumulative effect of that wage loss combined with the COVID inflation has put millions of households under heavy pressure to keep up their standard of living.
People in the Production and Nonsupervisory workforce today are angry and they have good reason to be angry. They’ve been losing ground for decades, and the cumulative effects are becoming impossible to live with. Kamala Harris began her presidential campaign with plans to deal with the problems facing 80% of the American workforce.
Then she stopped.
Joe Biden talked only about the progress that he had made during his term. He did make progress too. However, he ignored the fact that he had inherited a very bad situation and that people were still having a great deal of difficulty coping with the consequences of the inflation resulting from the COVID pandemic. He just ignored it. Kamala Harris just ignored it too. Donald Trump didn’t ignore it. He blamed it on Biden and Harris, and promised voters relief from the stress they were feeling.
There’s so much to say about this that I hardly know where to begin.
For one thing, why did Kamala Harris stop talking about the difficulties people were having and the solutions that she was initially proposing?
What are your thoughts? Leave a comment below.
