Nick Bunker — Rising U.S. compensation inequality and productivity growth

If the question you want to answer is ultimately how well labor as a whole is being compensated for its productivity, this data choice is the right way to go. Lawrence finds evidence of a break between productivity and average labor compensation around 2000, just as he did in a recent National Bureau of Economic Research working paper. This break means that labor as a whole is receiving a declining share of income, with the gains from productivity go to the owners of capital instead.

But what if we want to think about how productivity growth results in rising standards of living for workers on different rungs of the economic ladder? Then we need to look at what’s happening to the distribution of compensation. It may have been that compensation for labor as a whole tracked productivity until 2000, but it’s not clear how well productivity growth was translating into growth and higher living standards for all workers.

Note: The assumption of trickle down is that higher growth rate per capita implies a higher standard of living for all through distributional effects based on market forces.

WCEG — The Equitablog
Rising U.S. compensation inequality and productivity growth
Nick Bunker

Banks commit major felonies, get wrist slapped by Feds and CEO's collect $20 million in compensation

This is such a fucking sham, such a travesty. A bunch of big banks will plead guilty to major felonies this week and nothing will happen. Even worse, some of their CEO's, like Jamie Dimon, will be paid $20 million in compensation.

Meanwhile the Feds throw people like Teresa Giudice (Real Housewives of NJ) in jail for some (comparatively) two bit tax evasion just "to make an example."

An example of what? How fucked up the whole justice system is???

Dave Altig — Myth and Reality: The Low-Wage Job Machine

Charts.

Importantly, the animation also clearly illustrates that the growing wage disparity is a trend, not a unique feature of the postcrisis period. There are lots of interesting things being written about the reasons for this trend, and it is a vitally important topic. But I'm pretty sure the answers to the important policy questions lie well beyond the current business cycle.

FRB Atlanta — Macroblog
Myth and Reality: The Low-Wage Job Machine
Dave Altig

US economy changing structurally? Looks like it.

Mary Bottari And Rebekah Wilce — The Force Behind Bills To Lower Wages and Suppress Workers’ Rights? You Guessed It: ALEC

The right-wing American Legislative Exchange Council has modeled legislation to strip workers of their rights nationwide.

According to a new analysis by the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD), publishers of ALECexposed.org, at least 117 bills introduced in 2013 fuel a “race to the bottom” in wages, benefits and worker rights—and resemble “model” bills from the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).

As working Americans speak out for higher wages, better benefits and respect in the workplace, a coordinated, nationwide campaign to silence them is mounting—and ALEC is at the heart of it. ALEC corporations, right-wing tink tanks, and monied interests like the Koch brothers are pushing legislation throughout the country designed to drive down wages; limit health care, pensions, and other benefits; and cripple working families' participation in the political and legislative process....

While ALEC and its supporters frame their actions as fiscally responsible and pro-worker, it is clear that this is a deeply political agenda. An analysis by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) shows that, on the whole, these types of bills don't create new rights for employees but “significantly tilt the political playing field by enabling unlimited corporate political spending while restricting political spending of organized workers.” Fox News reporter Shepard Smith put it even more bluntly. He noted that of the top 10 political donors in the United States, only three donated to Democrats—all unions. “Bust the unions, and it's over” for the Democrats, he said.... 

Harold Schaitberger, General President of the International Association of Fire Fighters, put it best when he told CMD, “The sole purpose of ALEC has been to develop the most anti-middle class, pro-corporation policies, legislation, and agenda in history. They've been waiting for just the right moment to reverse the progress of the American middle class and drive everyone to the bottom, to the lowest wages, the weakest benefits, no job security, and no retirement to speak of. We may not have the billions of dollars of the Koch brothers. But we have each other and we must stick together and fight ALEC's cynical and un-American agenda.” 

In These Times
The Force Behind Bills To Lower Wages and Suppress Workers’ Rights? You Guessed It: ALEC
Mary Bottari And Rebekah Wilce

The Huffington Post — The Disturbing Nature Of America's Part-Time Jobs Recovery (In 1 Chart)

The Huffington Post
The Disturbing Nature Of America's Part-Time Jobs Recovery (In 1 Chart)

This is a structural problem that is leading to social dysfunction. Another fallacy of composition. What is good for one firm is terrible for the society and economy and will eventually adversely affect all firms.

Mark Gongloff — Bankers Explain How They Cannot Possibly Live On $1 Million Pay

Like many carbon-based lifeforms, you perhaps think that bankers are driven only by naked greed. But that is just because you don't understand them: They actually have a deep psychological need for that money....

For one thing, taxes will quickly whittle a seven-figure income right down to the mid-six figures, perilously close to being within sight of the middle class. Then, an ex-Goldman banker points out, with the mere $600,000 in take-home pay remaining, bankers still need to "pay the mortgages on, and maintain houses, in the Hamptons and Manhattan, to put three children through private schools costing $40k a year each, and to pay living costs."...

And this is before the wives get their cut. According to the bankers and ex-bankers in this article, there are only two marital choices available to bankers: The frumpy, educated girl they've been saddled with since college, or a physically attractive layabout who sucks their soul and bank account dry. Which only makes sense, because what other kinds of women are there, amiright, fellas?

The Huffington Post
Bankers Explain How They Cannot Possibly Live On $1 Million Pay
Mark Gongloff

Catherine Rampell — Majority of New Jobs Pay Low Wages, Study Finds

While a majority of jobs lost during the downturn were in the middle range of wages, a majority of those added during the recovery have been low paying, according to a new report from the National Employment Law Project.

The disappearance of midwage, midskill jobs is part of a longer-term trend that some refer to as a hollowing out of the work force, though it has probably been accelerated by government layoffs. 

“The overarching message here is we don’t just have a jobs deficit; we have a ‘good jobs’ deficit,” said Annette Bernhardt, the report’s author and a policy co-director at the National Employment Law Project, a liberal research and advocacy group.

The New York Time | Business Day
Majority of New Jobs Pay Low Wages, Study Finds
Catherine Rampell

Welcome to Third World America.