Re: [Marxism] Wage share lowest since at least 1947. Profit share greatest since 1960s. Minimum wage at 50-year low

["David Powers" <cyborgk@xxxxxxxxx>]

> From the David Brooks article:
>
>   Workers continue to see their wages rise as they age. The typical
> male worker with some college but no degree has seen his income rise
> from $34,000 in 2000 to about $40,000 today.

Looks like I was due for a pretty big raise in 2000, and I'm due for a
pretty big raise today. Seriously though, these qualitative analyses
are useless, without the real quantitative data and details on the
statistical methods used. It's fairly easy to twist numbers around to
obtain some desired result.

Just in the above paragraph: exactly who is a "typical male worker"?
What is the comparison between this worker's wage, and the rise in
productivity? Finally, what is the difference in cost of living
between now and then - what are the workers real wages? It hardly
matters if you make more money, if your purchasing power is reduced.

Most of the other statements are also either vague or anecdotal, or
fail to include information that would be essential to determining how
workers are really doing in the economy.

Moreover, the class rhetoric is extremely misleading. "The top ten
percent of workers" (again a vague category), are not in the same
class as those on the bottom; they are petit bourgeois or possibly
even bourgeois. They have access to a totally different set of social
resources and privileges. No worker on the bottom is ever going to be
a CEO. Related to this, it is essential to examine class mobility.

This type of rhetoric seeks to disguise class differences by making it
appear that "everyone is a worker". Well, Bill Gates worked in his own
company too, for many years... That doesn't make him a member of the
proletarian class by any means.

I'm writing in a hurry here, but this is just a rough draft for some
kind of critique of the line of reasoning presented in the above
article.

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