- by New Deal democrat
The Brookings Institution studied total real earnings over workers' prime employment ages from 25 to 55. making use of the most comprehensive measure available: Social Security payments based on payroll data from 1957 to 2013.
I'll cut right to the chase. Here's the conclusion:
Adjusting for inflation, the median male worker born in 1958 earned just 1 percent more during his career compared with the median man born 27 years earlier, in 1932.
I am reminded of a line from Billy Joel's song, "Allentown":
Every child had a pretty good shot,
to get at least as far as their old man got.
This is the most damning evidence I've seen yet that the American Dream has been dying for over a generation now. And people wonder why the electorate is grasping at straws, hoping for somebody to deliver real economic change.
