It’s class warfare I tell you!

I am still amazed that the Wall Street Journal of all places has hired my favorite writer (or perhaps I should say historian) as a columnist. Today, he gives us a history lesson based on Steve Greenhouse’s new book, The Big Squeeze (which I reviewed very favorably here):

Median “nonelderly” household income, we find, fell consistently through the first half of this decade, despite the solid economic growth enjoyed by the country as a whole.

Some nonmedian folks did just fine, of course: The top 20% of households earned more, after taxes, than the rest of the country combined in 2005, while the topmost 1% of the population took home more than the bottom 40%. The top-earning hedge fund manager of 2007, in fact, made about as much last year in nominal dollars ($3.7 billion) as J. Paul Getty, one of the richest men in the world, was worth in the mid-1970s.

Real hourly wages for most workers, on the other hand, have risen only 1% since 1979, even as those workers’ productivity has increased by 60%. What’s more, American workers now clock more hours per year than their counterparts in virtually every other advanced economy, even Japan. And unless you haven’t read a newspaper for 15 years, you already know what’s happened to workers’ health insurance and pension plans.

Who’d have thunk it? Class warfare on the pages of the Wall Street Journal.

I can’t wait to see what happens when Frank goes directly after Wall Street.