Do wages rise in capitalist societies?

[UnknownPerson]

Do wages tend to rise in capitalist societies, or do they stagnate and/or even decline?

[Nox]

Naturally, they decline.

The only way they could possibly rise is if the inflation % is alot higher than the wage increase %.

[Dogs On Acid]

Naturally, they decline.

The only way they could possibly rise is if the inflation % is alot higher than the wage increase %.

I think you got that the wrong way round.

First of all wages are directly related to purchasing power. As inflation rises purchasing power gets lower and lower. To maintain purchasing power the wages must increase proportionately.

Due to inflation and wages increasing and decreasing at different rates, in the short-term purchasing power rises and lowers (I believe this was your question).

Over a long term, purchasing power has a tendency to decrease, because wages don't keep up with inflation (the rise of prices).

[Weezer]

Wages can rise and fall in capitalism.

Raises, however, were initially fought for almost exclusively by workers' unions and other radicals, while declines in wages have been historically defended by the privileged.

[Apoi_Viitor]

Noam Chomsky:

In my view, the breakdown of the Bretton Woods system in the early 1970s is probably the major international event since 1945, much more significant in its implications than the collapse of the Soviet Union.

From roughly 1950 until the early 1970s there was a period of unprecedented economic growth and egalitarian economic growth. So the lowest quintile did as well -- in fact they even did a little bit better -- than the highest quintile. It was also a period of some limited but real form of benefits for the population. And in fact social indicators, measurements of the health of society, they very closely tracked growth. As growth went up social indicators went up, as you'd expect. Many economists called it the golden age of modern capitalism -- they should call it state capitalism because government spending was a major engine of growth and development.

In the mid 1970s that changed. Bretton Woods restrictions on finance were dismantled, finance was freed, speculation boomed, huge amounts of capital started going into speculation against currencies and other paper manipulations, and the entire economy became financialized. The power of the economy shifted to the financial institutions, away from manufacturing. And since then, the majority of the population has had a very tough time; in fact it may be a unique period in American history. There's no other period where real wages -- wages adjusted for inflation -- have more or less stagnated for so long for a majority of the population and where living standards have stagnated or declined. If you look at social indicators, they track growth pretty closely until 1975, and at that point they started to decline, so much so that now we're pretty much back to the level of 1960. There was growth, but it was highly inegalitarian -- it went into a very small number of pockets. There have been brief periods in which this shifted, so during the tech bubble, which was a bubble in the late Clinton years, wages improved and unemployment went down, but these are slight deviations in a steady tendency of stagnation and decline for the majority of the population.

http://www.chomsky.info/interviews/20090210.htm

[khad]

To add to what Apoi Viitor said, these were the tax brackets during the period Chomsky describes:

http://www.stanford.edu/class/polisci120a/immigration/Federal%20Tax%20Brackets.pdf

http://uploadpic.org/storage/2011/Rf4xgUWlZShR4aXoXGCYgIlE.png

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Generally, in the UK in the past 30 years (since the hegemony of neo-liberalism), all wages have either stayed the same level or risen.

The bottom 10% have stayed the same or increased very slightly (adjusted for inflation), the rest have increased, but mostly the bottom 20% rises a lot slower than the other 80%.

It matters little when you consider that the overwhelming majority of people have no control over their wages/salaries anyway. That's the key point.

[UnknownPerson]

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/b1/US_Real_Wages_1964-2004.gif

[robbo203]

Generally, in the UK in the past 30 years (since the hegemony of neo-liberalism), all wages have either stayed the same level or risen.

The bottom 10% have stayed the same or increased very slightly (adjusted for inflation), the rest have increased, but mostly the bottom 20% rises a lot slower than the other 80%..

You dont possibly mean the top 10%, do you? My impression was that the postion of the bottom 10% has declined relatively speaking but I may be wrong...

Also if you are talking in nominal terms, the fact that "all wages have either stayed the same level or risen" could be accounted for by inflation; to what extent does not represent a growth in real terms?. In relative terms it is of course not possible for the bottom or top quintile to increase its share without a corresponding fall elsewhere

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

http://marxists.architexturez.net/archive/marx/works/1847/wage-labour/index.htm