Reply #15: Real wages have been dropping steadily ever since the Bush coup:

[newswolf56]

The high productivity growth during the same period has meant that American corporations, on average, have been getting more out of their workers for less, and this, combined with corporate tax cuts, has translated into an increase in corporate profits. In its February 10 issue, the business magazine Economist noted that in 2004 “America’s after-tax profits rose to their highest as a proportion of GDP for 75 years.... The flip side is that labor’s share of the cake has never been lower.... Over the past three years American corporate profits have risen by 60 percent, wage income by only 10 percent.”

Full analysis:

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/may2005/wage-m16.shtml

Since this is a socialist source -- which means the misinformed will reflexively jeer it -- here is a piece from the fascist press that says much the same thing, albeit in the obligatory cheerleader/zieg-heil tones:

http://www.nationalreview.com/nrof_malpass/malpass200407220747.asp

And here is an analysis from the Labor Research Association (the research arm of the American labor movement) explaining how forcible wage reduction fits into the global economy -- specifically the oligarchy's scheme to concentrate wealth, increase profits and lower wages everywhere on the planet:

http://www.laborresearch.org/story.php?id=385

Lastly, here is data from LRA reflecting the long-range downward trend in wages resulting from the corporate oligarchy's long-term war on American workers:

http://www.laborresearch.org/dis.shtml?rw_tab.txt

Literally, the American working class is being methodically reduced to serfdom: one of the specific purposes for which Bush was given the White House -- like his father, like Reagan before him, and Clinton too: NAFTA, genocide disguised as welfare "reform."