Corporations Are Stealing Worker Productivity

Back in  the 1950's and 1960's this nation's economy was booming. A major reason for this was because everyone shared in the increase in wealth due to increased worker productivity. The corporations benefitted through higher profits. Workers benefitted through increased wages and better benefits. The poor and the elderly both benefitted through better social programs, paid for by the increase in tax revenues due to the increased profits and wages. It was a winning situation for everyone.

But that was before the Republicans came back to power and instituted there "trickle-down" economic policy, which encouraged and justified corporate greed. The idea was that if the government removed regulations from corporations and lowered their taxes, they would continue to share their new wealth through increased wages and benefits. This pie-in-the-sky policy was doomed to fail because it didn't take a couple of important aspects of corporations into account -- that corporations are built on greed and have no conscience.

The reason the economy was working for everyone was because their were strong unions, government regulations, and fairly high taxes -- which combined to rein in the natural greed of corporations and forced them to share the wealth of increased productivity. The Republican policies attacked and weakened unions, removed important regulations, and lowered taxes on the wealthiest corporations and people.

But instead of much of the wealth trickling down to workers and other Americans, as the Republicans had assured us would happen, the new wealth was hoarded by those at the top. They no longer had to share the wealth, and they didn't. They kept it all for themselves. 

As the charts above show, workers continued to increase their productivity. In fact, worker productivity has risen sharply since 1980. But workers are no longer allowed to share in the wealth created by that productivity. While productivity has continued to climb, wages and compensation have not (remaining virtually flat for that same time period). In other words, corporate management has been stealing the worker's share of increased productivity. They use the stolen productivity to show abnormally high profits (which of course, justifies giving themselves abnormally high compensation and bonuses).

As the second chart above shows, corporate profits are at their highest (as a portion of the nation's GDP) since the 1960's. They are making record profits and sitting on record amounts of money, and yet, worker wages remain flat and no jobs are being created. In fact, worker wages (as a portion of GDP) are at their lowest point since World War II. Instead of creating an better economy for everyone, the failed Republican policies made the rich much richer and made everyone else poorer (since even stagnant wages lose buying power due to inflation). 

The Republican economic policies didn't just fail, but caused a serious recession (depression?), destroyed millions of jobs, hurt most Americans, and are turning this country into a third-world banana republic (i.e., plutocracy). And what is their solution? More of the same. They want to remove even more regulations, give the rich and corporations massive new tax breaks, and further weaken or destroy unions. They must be voted out of power before they completely destroy the country.