How can we get wages rising? (US)

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For over 40 years, wages have barely moved an inch, while consumer price increases rise faster, and housing, once easy doable with one middle-income salary and with only 25% of take-home pay, is now an elusive pipe dream for many.

Half of all Americans have no money saved up for retirement, and employers are contracting workers at half the salary of in-house employees. Meanwhile, CEOs are getting richer, and are just sitting on cash, which is designated for shareholders.

The question: How can we get back to the days of owning a house with only 25% of one mid-income salary? How can we get wages to catch up to inflation?

And how can we sell this idea to the "everything I don't like is socialism!" crowd?

Forget about it. The plutocrats have won this war. Pro-Labor is in the trash thanks to all mainstream news media, even the once liberal CNN, pushing right-wing pro-corporate agendas. The plutocrats spend money to get the laws written in their favor. They make sure everything that takes so much as a freaking penny out of their wallets or their bank accounts or their tax havens is labeled either socialism, communism, or both. Finally, they'll keep the masses so ignorant, they'll hate these things as much as they do. A dark future of anti-intellectualism. They want happy obedient slaves. Once they've accumulated 100% of the wealth, America will become an Economic Hell on Earth where they rule over us like they did in the age of feudalism.

Require mutual fund companies to allow the stock mutual fund investors to vote on all stock proxy votes in the case of individual stocks in the mutual funds. This would put the power back into the individual investor who until the 1970s controlled CEO and board pay with the vote.

I know the progressives talk about taxing the super rich, but how would the taxed income be allocated?

Is there a way that we can regulate how much companies pay their employees?

Unionize every job in America, including those held by degreed professionals, OR turn over ownership of every means of production to the people who do the actual production work.Send every cubicle-dwelling, paper-pushing, butt-kissing bureaucrat to the nearest re-education gulag to teach them what it really means to earn their wages.Give away free unicorn rides and Philosopher's Stones to everyone who signs on to the idea.

All tax money goes to the military industrial complex anyway to fund building more weapons we do not need to prepare for some stupid war we'll be dragged kicking and screaming into fighting. We should be focusing on efforts to deescalate the tensions. Nope, some countries feel like less manly unless they're preparing for war or actively invading countries.

Regulate? As long as we put up with neoliberals and Ayn Rand conservatives, there shall be no regulations of any kind on any businesses.

Reverse globalisation. Close the borders to foreign workers and as much as possible to foreign goods. Close the housing market to foreigners too. Dispense with the financialised rentier economy and rebuild a more traditional industrial one. Then try to think of better alternatives to the problems of industrial economies than what we just tried for the last 50 years. Strap in for some tough times while you implement all this - the reward will be that your grandchildren might have a better life - you, however, are already cooked I'm afraid.

Unfortunately, this is unpopular with both mainstream Left and Right (because "dats racist" and "don't take muh cheap servants away").

This.

For more than a year now I've seen news clips reporting about how the USA is about to go through it's biggest labour movement in more than half a century, and I agree.. wages/benefits are far too low for far too many worker bee positions. Labour unions will form for service employees, manufacturing, gig economy people, warehouse operations, retail etc because employers/management are mismanaging wages & benefits to the extreme and people have had enough.

Unions, by their very nature, are reactionary. People don't volunteer to form them and everyone pay union dues if they're treated well by management and compensated fairly as there's simply no need for them to exist in those instances. But when businesses are mismanaged to such and extreme that people are being taken advantage of and made to work dangerous jobs or under other undesirable conditions, it pushes people passed the brink and they get made enough to band together and make demands via collective bargaining.

It's gonna happen. Too much corporate greed underpaying the workers that generate value w/ gains going to owners/managers/shareholders. People have had enough.

Well I think you would have to abolish the law requiring public corporations to generate the greatest amount of money for the shareholders possible but this will never happen.

If you ever figure out a way, please let nurses in the UK know how you managed it! There’s such gross discrepancy in wages among the professions that it hurts …

I don't think it's necessary to go to this extreme, but, at the very least, we should have a tax policy that strongly discourages non-productive real estate speculation, especially by foreigners. For example, here in NYC, there are a lot of empty apartments owned by foreigners who can't be bothered to rent them out, but who just hold on to them as a real estate investment. That sort of thing should be severely taxed.

[Sar]Won't somebody PLEASE think of the children shareholders?![/casm]