The chart is real. Your conclusion is not. The split between productivity and worker pay after the 1970s doesn’t show “the death of capitalism.” It shows the rise of everything that isn’t capitalism: • Fiat money and inflation after the end of the gold standard • Payroll taxes and benefit mandates that hide compensation in non-cash costs • Licensing laws, zoning, and regulation that kill competition and wage mobility • Union protection of incumbents at the expense of new workers • Corporate lobbying for regulation that blocks smaller, rival firms • Government-run education producing workers who can’t bargain for value Hourly wages appear flat because compensation was shifted into healthcare, payroll taxes, and compliance overhead. Total compensation has continued to track productivity far more closely. The problem is that the state forced compensation to flow through bureaucratic bottlenecks rather than the worker’s hands. What you’re calling “the death of true capitalism” is actually the triumph of government-managed markets. When the state rigs the rules, prices signal politics instead of value. Capitalism didn’t fail. It was replaced. If productivity rises but your paycheck doesn’t, the first question is: Who inserted themselves between you and the value you produce? The answer is never “capitalism.” It’s always “the people who claim to be protecting you.”

The gap starts with the Immigration Act of 1965. Immigration, outsourcing, trade deficits -- cheap foreign labor one way or another substituting for American labor, driving down the wages paid to American workers.

productivity is driven by automation/technology. if you dig 5 feet of trench with a shovel and 500 feet with a backhoe that it cost me $150k to purchase so that you can use it, you're apparent productivity rises. but your job got easier and dependent upon the use of someone else's capital. so of course workers do not capture all of it. but also, your data source looks incorrect. hourly wage is up 669% since 1973. real hourly wage has roughly doubled since 1973 vs about a 138% rise in productivity. you're not making a real argument.

Something very important happened in the early 1970s that helps to explain this!

Just the opposite is true. Reread “Wealth of Nations”. Capital is invested in machines which reduce the need for human labor to make profits specifically for the owners of the machines. Owners of those machines become wealthy creating a larger wealth gap. A growing wealth gap is inevitable and the machines reduce the value of human labor. The outcome of capitalism is better and cheaper products and services. It’s the “invisible hand” at work. Socialists demand a correction to the ever growing wealth gap while ignoring the benefits of capitalism. People aren’t working 12 hours per day with rampant malnutrition and early deaths due to disease because capitalism works and it always will work. Socialism is the opposite of capitalism and the 20% of citizens who are highly educated understand if a country moves too far to socialism, it can destroy an economy. Unfortunately the less educated 80% can vote for leaders promoting a bad system while thinking they are noble social justice warriors fighting the wealth inequality which is inevitable as capitalism progresses.

How and why, in the process of evolution, did specific lifespans form among different species? Why are some granted mere days, while others enjoy long decades? What factors defined this span?

Almost every single “bad statistic” starts at 1971

@grok please show me a comparative chart that shows the productivity and wages of federal employees for the same time frame.

OP Ed: The chart shows the fiat dollar decoupled from the gold standard dollar (1971). Only capitalism, and the relentless productivity improvements it provides, keeps the ship from sinking while the government prints out of thin air.

The chart is only damning because it's fake. It uses two different measures of inflation to adjust both data series, and not only do these measure disagree with each other but they diverge starting in the 1970, making the divergence in the chart just an artifact of using different inflation measures.

Mark. You have to dig a bit deeper. There are tools that enable workers to get more done in less time/more efficiently. Using that metric, sure...more work gets done for less money, but that's not necessarily a bad thing for the worker or the employer.

This is the concept of increasing returns to skill that Murphy, Welch et al have been studying for the last thirty something years. The body of work around it is enormous. It is neither "the death of capitalism" nor is it "muh fiat money."

No. The added producing is from automation, not people So wages are going up since more people are moving from unskilled work to skilled and skilled work to professional (generationally).

To play devil's advocate, I suppose the way "productivity" is measured might have changed in 1973 for some reason. Does anyone know whether or not that is true?

Do everything right just to get a .10 raise while the Executive team takes your yearly salary in bonuses. Truly a mystery why so many people are in poverty, and so many are outright disillusioned about the state of affairs.

The middle class has been under assault since 1981. Executives then shareholders have captured almost all wealth from productivity gains.

The point at which honest money ended. Simply removing any form of tax from Constitutional money would restore the balance.

Gee, what happened in 1973 to distort the dollar's value so badly?

HMM WONDER WHAT HAPPENED AROUND THAT TIME gold

Yes. Also check out Real Wage growth under Trump. One statistic he can show that differentiates him... and no one including the White House is talking about it.

Do you think the disconnect had a partial contribution from the removal of the gold standard for the valuation of the US dollar in 1971?

Funny how it coincides with the productivity added by computers.

We don’t have capitalism. We have corporatism

Notice it coincides with scrapping the Bretton Woods agreement.

I don't think AI is going to make it better.

Yep. This is what happens with out of control inflation. Wages devalue and assets skyrocket. They sacrificed value of work for shareholder value.

Is there a similar chart showing the industrial revolution era?

Corporate middle finger: H-1B, offshoring. Workers done voting for lies. Full Article: x.com/garypnabhan/status/198…

How about federal employee wages. Do that one please.

Add average CEO salary to that chart…

Thanks central banking!

The United States effectively ended its adherence to the international gold standard in 1971, when President Richard Nixon suspended the convertibility of the U.S. dollar into gold for foreign governments, marking the collapse of the Bretton Woods system. This move shifted the global economy toward fiat currencies and floating exchange rates by 1973.

Computers

This is the problem

That chart only goes to 2014 😬

I wonder how well that chart correlates with increases in illegal immigration?