Charles Hugh Smith – So when the protected class of well-paid institutional “progressives” speak darkly of “reversing 40 years of social progress,” what they’re really saying is we’re terrified that the bottom 95% might be waking up to our Great Con of identity politics and political correctness.
To understand the Great Con of political correctness, we must first grasp the decline of the working class (self-described as “the middle class”), i.e. those who must sell their labor to earn their livelihood.
Labor’s share of the national economy has been declining for 46 years:
Shares of gross domestic income [view chart]
So where has the wealth that’s been generated ended up? In the hands of the .1%:
Share of US household wealth [view chart]
And where did the wages gains end up? In the top 5% technocrat/ managerial class:
The ever-widening wage gap [view chart]
And what is the technocrat/ managerial class response to this staggering decline in wealth and wages suffered by the bottom 95%? Political correctness.