Life's Tough in the Aluminum Siding Business

As a former earner of the minimum wage and a future dependent on retirement benefits, I feel confident in saying that we deserve more. Everyone wishes they had more money, whether they deserve it or not. Republicans would like to keep more of their taxes, while Democrats would generally like to get paid more up front. Obviously some people are overpaid and milking the system, and it's hard to judge the value of things as abstract as ideas or customer service. How do you decide the exact worth of an hours-worth of answering phones or a years-worth of accounting? Obviously their are factors to consider and a fair amount of guess-work that smarter people than I have figured out long ago. But, I think it's fair to say that it might be less than precise.
According to the Economic Policy Institute, productivity has risen 67 percent in the past 25 years, most of that during the late nineties. As a nation, we've all been working harder, and accomplishing more in less time. This is all evident from the huge economic expansion that's occured, and the growth of everything from e-commerce to commodities markets. Yet, during this time when our nation has been producing more and making more profit, wages have only risen 8.9 percent. I'm the first to admit that maybe in 1979 people were being paid too much and working too little so there was some catching up to do as far as productivity is concerned, but still that's a huge gap. And, since 2001 the median wage for college grads has stagnated while the median wage for people without degrees has actually begun to go down. Growth in real wages, including benefits, adjusted for inflation have slowed, and in some cases decreased. And to top it all off, fewer employers are offering retirement plans and most have decreased pensions and medical coverage.

There are no easy answers here, and fluctuations in markets and the economy are going to have effects on wages that aren't always fair or predictable. However, these trends represent a larger problem, that overall the American worker is giving more and getting less. In a nation where our highest ideal is to give our children a better life than we received, its a big let down to have each generation facing more difficulty and less reward.