Middle-Class Doldrums Don’t Add Up to a Crisis

The U.S. economy is back to normal again. Unemployment is low. Business investment is up. Wages are slowly rising. The traumatic memories of the Great Recession and the global financial crisis are finally beginning to fade.

The absence of pressing crises means that it’s a good time to step back and take stock of deeper issues in the U.S. economic system. For several years, there has been a rising outcry over inequality. The income accruing to the world’s billionaires, a new report from charity Oxfam International claims, could end extreme poverty seven times over, and salaries of chief executive officers are breaking the $100 million mark. Meanwhile, pundits and economists alike tell us that the average American worker hasn’t seen a wage hike since the early 1970s. Adjusted for inflation, wages for production and nonsupervisory workers fell from their peak until the early 1990s, and haven’t yet climbed back to their former heights: