| Chark said: Isn't it a little misleading to use benefit value adjustments though? The reason many of those exist is for tax avoidance by employers rather than to offer taxable salary increases. A system like that greatly benefits the wealthy and has led to our healthcare system inefficiencies and over consumption. |
Is it perfect? Probably not. I don't see how you can argue that it's more misleading then just completely ignoring every single new benefit workers get now that they didn't before. Fact is... take away those things, and the average person is far worse off, and paying far more for things like healthcare.
As for benefiting the wealthy... not really. Real wages for the poor have gone up as well. It's just outside of the poor it's gone up in terms of different benefits.
As for tax avoidance... maybe that's something under the ACA but it doesn't save companies any money now. In fact, it benefits employees more then it shows because FICA and the like aren't taken out of it.
Even then if we're talking "Rich vs Poor income inequality" it misses an even bigger thing.
Non-Salary/Compensation income. As companies make more money they're taxed more, as they're taxed more that's more money to government which often means things like more funding to things like Welfare, Medicare and Medicaid. For an example.... look at that above chart that also has women's numbers on it, and check out the tripling of real income for Women without Salary/wage.
In general, the answer an obvious yes to "Are we better off then we were in the 1950's-1960's." everyone is, and everybody has higher compensation in relation to real income.
This is despite the fact that since there the has been a huge demographics changes that's exerted downward pressure on this... espiecally at the lowest income levels. Like Single Parents. Which is a whole other thing that gets overlooked by the way.
