America is the world's richest nation, still growing, still getting richer, but the average American might not even notice, or if they do notice, notice that they are falling further and further behind the curve, to wit, as reported by the nytimes.com, the net productivity of the total American economy has since 1948 consistently grown, but the pay for the production/nonsupervisory workers in the private sector which had been essentially in lockstep with that productivity growth, unitl the mid 1970s, has in essence, flat-lined since that time.
There are many theories as to why this is so as well as explanations as to why this gap is not nearly as steep as reported in the media, for instance, that the wages of employees should take into account those that are of the white collar workforce, which are more educated and hence more skilled and necessary, along with the fact that employees receive benefits in the form of health care which do not directly show up in their wages, which should be considered as a form of compensation and so on and so forth. But even with these additions, or considerations, wages while increasing somewhat since the 1970s are far below the actual output of the productivity of those workers in total, notwithstanding.
A significant reason why this is so, comes down to the fact, that the globalization of world trade, has taken what use to be labor done in the United States, and outsourced that overseas in which those overseas laborers are compensated at a much lower wage package, while simultaneously eliminating those jobs in America, which reduces both workers, equivalent opportunities, as well as wages paid, domestically, but increases the productivity of those companies. Additionally, private sector labor unions have been in a steep decline since the 1960s, signifying that labor "negotiations" are more commonly done not by unions against management, but individuals against management, in which, the individual has little strength in numbers or power, whatsoever, to receive fair or appropriate compensation. Further to the point, productivity and profits are well up for America corporations, indicating that those that control the compensation and hiring practices, are the chief beneficiaries of this increased productivity which they have aggrandized unto themselves with compensation and perks that have never been better, demonstrated by the widening gap between not only the very rich and very poor, but the upper class and the middle class.
In point of fact, in fairness, when labor productivity goes up, which it has been doing year by year, those that labor for it, should see their compensation rise at a similar percentage, but this has not been done over the last two generations, in which, America has regressed back more to the era of robber barons, and thereby the oligarchs control the show, in which they demonstrate this by outsourcing labor whenever and wherever they can to willing nations, that need employment for their people. Also, corporations work hand-in-hand with the semantics of State "right to work" laws which suppress wages by eliminating or trivializing union membership or activity, in addition to unfair legislative and taxation laws which benefit the mega-corporations and the connected, while burdening the middle class with the actual payment of real taxes.
Those that are in control of capital have an unfair advantage over those that need to labor so as to sustain themselves and their family, and when the government does little or nothing to level the playing field or even actively works against laborers, those that labor will be subject to exploitation, and exploitation is always good for profits, and good profits is always good for Wall Street.