This article is a joke, right? We're going to look at a book published 30 years ago and see whether it was on track or not by cherry-picking data from "a recent two-and-a-half-year period" and the last nine years?

In actuality, wages and salaries have risen from $768 billion in 1974 to $4.970 trillion in 2002 (the latest annual figures available, I believe). Corporate profits, meanwhile, rose from $147.8 billion in 1974 to an outrageous $745.0 billion in 2002.

So wages and salaries rose by a measly 6.9% annually during this period, while corporate profits "surged" by a stunning 5.9%. So Studs was right? Who's gained more from productivity?

And what about Cohen? Could this be any more intellectually dishonest?

I should note that when the 2003 figures are final, they will show well below average growth in wages and salaries, and well above average growth in corporate profits. It would be extraordinary if the one year of data would erase the one percentage point gap in the average growth between the two; if it does, however, it just amplifies the point that Cohen cherry-picked the data, and demonstrates that 2003 is a wild outlier over the past 30 years.

This is simply incompetent.

Percentage changes in corporate profits and in wages are not comparable.

For many companies during that period, losses were made.

Except for a few interns and kids at Disneyworld, nobody paid corporations to work for them.

If it were true that "Most of us [...] have jobs that are too small for our spirit... Jobs are not big enough for people", then most people would be entrepreneurs.

Actually, even when almost everyone was an entrepreneur, (as farmers and ranchers in a rural and agricultural society), THAT was too small for our spirits.

It seems reasonable that corporate profits are skyrocketing this year because of a booming economy, high productivity, and low payrolls.
However, increased activity leads to increased hiring, so next year I would expect to see profit growth diminish, and wage & salary growth strengthen.
After all, heading into the recession, corporate profits nosedived in advance of wage & salary stagnation, and reductions in hours worked per week.

Growth in profits and wages are comparable--they're both forms of income measured by the NIPA. Generally, when the share of national income that goes to corporations increases, the share paid in wages declines (though there are other forms of income such as "dividends, interest and rent," "other labor income," and "proprietor's income," proportions of which also shift over time).

But yes, it is simply incompetent.

In that sense, the two ideas are comparable.

But at a deeper level, they are not.

Assume a base line. One parameter can rise above or fall below the baseline. The other cannot.

Apples and oranges.

"Most of us, like the assembly line worker, have jobs that are too small for our spirit," an editor says. "Jobs are not big enough for people."

That's why they have to pay you to do it.

Spend ten minutes thinking about the jobs that have been lost and thank your lucky stars. Go read Upton Sinclar. Read about working in a Coal Mine before the job was automated. Think about building a railroad with a pick and shovel. To live in the United States today is a rare privldege. Not to know it is rank ingratitude.

Cohen produces typical NY Times Bullnuance. He sounds like a creaking old Commie sitting on a park bench and lamenting the failure of the duped masses to take to the barricades. Drive around America and try to tell me that people are poorer now than 30 years ago.

For Adam Cohen to be right, Starbucks must not exist.