The Truth About Wages

In this essay author Bruce Bartlett talks about the wages of people today and how they are on a decline. He lists off possible answers to why this may be happening. His first reason is maybe because the labor union membership has stopped protesting to getting higher wages and doesn't know how to handle asking for a raise. The second reason is that people are happy with just having a job and that with all the lay offs and people loosing their jobs they don't think it would be possible to even get a raise. I agree with this factor because so many people who are working are just taking what they can get. Some people who have worked in high end jobs their whole life are now working at retail stores and fast food places because of lay offs and decrease in pay. People today are really watching their budgets and having to make many cut backs not getting raises to a job they may not even have tomorrow. Other reasons the author feels that its going down is because the changing demographics of the population. The baby booming age's kids are packed up and moved out to college, so now they have to pay for the high prices of college and maintain their own bills at home. I believe this is just another stage that our economy has to go through. It was rising for so long people believed that the good would never end and it did and no one knew how to deal with it at first. Now though as a whole people are watching what they buy and spend and making the decision to get needs instead of wants.