Man that was Sikh <| sep |> To add to the point made by u 90065 , first check this graph outtc . pbs . o rgprodmedianewshourphotos 20121206 A n d r e w S m i t h e rschartblogmainhorizontal . JPGDo you see the historic lows in labor returns relative to capital returns ? Well , that is NOT just poor people . That is all wages at all pay scales . In 1980 that was a mere $ 20 k a year . It was less than $ 10 k a decade earlier . Grunt labor could make that much back then . You could support a family just pumping gas at a gas station back then . So what you are saying is that you are happy making what a high school dropout could expect to make withing my own lifetime ? Only , for those lower down on the pay chain , the losses and pain is significantly more acute . Just because your at a pay scale that can support you at a level that high school dropouts could go to work for when I was in school doesn ' t make it not a problem . This is in spite of the productivity going through the roof since then . Why is it the more people can produce the more expensive it gets for wage earners ? But why is it really an economic problem , and not just a poor persons problem ? First of all just look at the issues in the world economy . In order for a supply and demand economy to maximize efficiency and wealth , supply and demand much match . If either falls short then the economy gets constrained to that level , below productive capacity . The money side of the supplydemand ration is the ratio between capital and labor returns . So when that ratio goes too far in either direction it limits the economy . If the demand side gets too big , relative to supply , it induces inflation . Something the Feds are working hard just to hit a 2 % target , and falling short of even that 2 %. If the supply side gets too big , relative to the demand side , then inflation gets artificially low , and even into negative numbers . Hence the negative bond yields you can now buy . Worst of all , factories actually lay off people to limit their production to what the economy can actually afford to consume . Because too many full time employees simply don ' t have enough money to consume the available production . Hence , it makes no money sense whatsoever to invest in more production when people can ' t even afford to consume the production already on the market . No matter how high the capital returns are on paper , it ' s not going to be there if the product doesn ' t sell for lack of customers . Hence the overproduction link provided . This also drives investment to historic lows , in spite of the capital glut . When is why has been on a long term tend downward for several decades . It hasn ' t even broke the 3 % mark in several decades now . So yes , this is an even bigger problem than low paid paid workers alone . This is driving down the total wealth of the economy as a whole , and only keeping the appearance of keeping up because of capital returns with wages that are stagnant on average , but falling for the low paid jobs . Your own job would have paid the equivalent of at least 3 or 4 times your $ 60 k a year within my own lifetime . Even though productivity was far lower . Making paying you that cheaper now than then . Except that the paradox of thrift , created by the lack of pay rather than a lack of spending of that pay , has made that money appear to not exist . Yes , left wing ideologies can go overboard and create huge inflation problems , and a dwindling economy . But so can overly extreme right wing supply side ideologies when they suppress demand to extremes .