[ameister14]

>yes, a growing economy requires higher-skilled work, but that's good because that work comes with higher pay.

The problem, of course, is that wages stagnated from '99 to 2014 and the job participation rate has been decreasing since 2000 while cost of living and general production increased; so no, in a dynamic market work does not necessarily come with higher pay. It actually wouldn't really make sense for all new work to come with higher pay; if you have changes in supply (which is what we are really talking about) that come with associated lower labor costs, the people that used to provide higher cost labor for the initial supply level will have to accept significantly reduced salaries in their industry.

That's what happened with the industrial revolution. Wages overall increased because people entered the workforce for the first time as skill requirements went down, but the average wage of previously employed people went way down as artisan and highly skilled labor was outcompeted by factory work.

[bamboozled]

while cost of living and general production increased

This is a major problem! Why ? Corporations chasing profits without enough competition ?

[wordpad25]

wages stagnated, not total compensation which continued to grow employee preferred form of compensation has just shifted towards other benefits

[ameister14]

Did that even keep pace with inflation? Looking at a generous measure of that in the form of ECI, I don't think it did.

[BeFlatXIII]

> employee-preferred

More like Congress-imposed (through tax incentives)