US workers' real wages (money wages adjusted for the prices workers actually pay) have not risen from their levels in the 1970s. Recent Bureau of Labor Statistics data confirm that real wages continued to stagnate through 2009. Across the same 30-year period, the productivity of labor kept rising: the average worker produced ever more output for the average employer to sell. Thus, capitalists' revenues rose relative to workers' wages.

Capitalists used those rising revenues to intensify class war on US workers. First, capitalists weakened their adversaries by lending one portion of their rising revenues back to US workers as high interest "consumer loans."

Second, capitalists used their rising revenues to finance (1) the relocation of production and other facilities outside the US and (2) computerization of production.

Third, capitalist boards of directors used another portion of rising revenues to raise salaries and bonuses for upper-level managers (including themselves), people who contribute significant sums to politicians favoring conservative, pro-business laws and regulations.

http://www.monthlyreview.org/mrzine/wolff160909.html

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