How the American economy conspires to keep wages down | Gabriel Winant

The economy is growing but our paychecks are not. That's because employers have, over decades, built a political apparatus to hold down pay

When unemployment goes down, wages are supposed to go up. That's just supply and demand. Quite puzzlingly, though, this mechanism seems not to be working today. Unemployment stands at a modest 4%, but paychecks aren't growing. Although today's is the best-educated workforce in history, employers just insist that workers need more training.

In other words, they're gaslighting us. Meanwhile, over decades, employers have built and maintained a massive collective political apparatus to hold down wages. To call it a conspiracy would be only slight embellishment.

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Work is intrinsically political. In return for your wages, you're supposed to submit - not once but every day

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