Bestest Grafick Evah

From this Robert Reich op-ed, which is good, comes the graphic below, which is great.

This is the best summary of the negative trends that have pinched the middle class over the last 35 years.  The point about women working comes across as slightly sexist, but I don't think the equivalent data for both sexes (dads can stay at home, too) exists, at least for the time period involved.  So the excellent NYT graphics department used the best available series.

We've been running the Republican experiment since the 1980s - cut taxes, cut social spending, cut public investment, increase war and security spending, and outsource much of the latter - and it hasn't produced good results for the majority of Americans.  The underlying trends - globalization, computerization - would still exist if we had stuck with Democratic policies, but overlaying Republican policies on those trends has amplified them.  Capital moves quicker and farther than labor, and giving more capital to the rich has only allowed them to shuffle it around with greater ease, dragging jobs with it.