Median wages of production workers, who comprise 80 percent of the workforce, haven’t risen in 30 years, adjusted for inflation.
Meaning of the quote
The quote means that the typical pay of most workers, about 80% of all people with jobs, has not increased over the past 30 years after taking inflation into account. This shows that the wages of the majority of the workforce have not kept up with the rising cost of living over a long period of time.
More quotes from Robert Reich
Centrism is bogus.
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Globalization and free trade do spur economic growth, and they lead to lower prices on many goods.
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I wish it were simply a nightmare, but I think that any reasonable person watching American politics would come to the conclusion that a second Bush administration would in fact incorporate a more radicalized version of what we’ve seen in the first administration.
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Our moral authority is as important, if not more important, than our troop strength or our high-tech weapons. We are rapidly losing that moral authority, not only in the Arab world but all over the world.
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Radical conservatives want to police bedrooms.
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A leader is someone who steps back from the entire system and tries to build a more collaborative, more innovative system that will work over the long term.
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The silent majority really is a liberal majority, even though the word liberal has taken a real beating over the last 20 years by radical conservatives.
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It’s not government’s business what people do in their private bedrooms.
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There is a crisis of public morality. Instead of policing bedrooms, we ought to be doing a better job policing boardrooms.
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You can’t create a political movement out of pabulum.
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Your most precious possession is not your financial assets. Your most precious possession is the people you have working there, and what they carry around in their heads, and their ability to work together.
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Liberals are concerned about the concentration of wealth because it almost inevitably leads to a concentration of power that undermines democracy.
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You can’t inspire people if you are going to be uninspiring.
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The liberal ideal is that everyone should have fair access and fair opportunity. This is not equality of result. It’s equality of opportunity. There’s a fundamental difference.
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True patriotism isn’t cheap. It’s about taking on a fair share of the burden of keeping America going.
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