Devaluing Labor

Or, a succinct reminder, from Fred Hiatt's Washington Post, no less, of the reason opinion columns in newspapers are called "OpEds" -- a contraction of "opposite editorial":

The young may be understandably incredulous, but the Great Compression, as economists call it, was the single most important social fact in our country in the decades after World War II. From 1947 through 1973, American productivity rose by a whopping 104 percent, and median family income rose by the very same 104 percent. More Americans bought homes and new cars and sent their kids to college than ever before. In ways more difficult to quantify, the mass prosperity fostered a generosity of spirit: The civil rights revolution and the Marshall Plan both emanated from an America in which most people were imbued with a sense of economic security.

That America is as dead as the dodo. Ours is the age of the Great Upward Redistribution.
...
For the bottom 90 percent of the American workforce, work just doesn't pay, or provide security, as it used to.

Devaluing labor is the very essence of our economy. I know that airlines are a particularly embattled industry, but my eye was recently caught by a story on Mesaba Airlines, an affiliate of Northwest, where the starting annual salary for pilots is $21,000 a year, and where the company is seeking a pay cut of 19 percent. Maybe Mesaba's plan is to have its pilots hit up passengers for tips.

Labor Day is almost upon us. What a joke.

And isn't it a remarkable coincidence that while median income has been declining in 46 states, it has been rising in the District of Columbia? If you could somehow reverse out the K Street thievery, I'd wager D.C. would look a lot more like the rest of the country.

Progress. Courtesy of the Let Them Eat Cake Party.