I have the advantage and disadvantage of being old. I remember what I think were ‘better times’ (but all old people in most historic eras have felt the same.
When I first worked in industry, unions were strong and fought well for what they saw as a fair share of the results of productivity gains made by their companies. Strong unions did manage to keep the pay divide (between the worst and best paid employees) under control – and they did this in an age when productivity rose constantly (largely as a result of technology improvements and innovations).
Many said that the unions were too strong and so political priorities were for a time focused on reducing the power of unions. This, again for a time, improved the economy but – whether as a direct result or not – did start the widening of the pay gap. This has widened continually over the years as self -and mutually -serving remuneration committees secured vast increases in pay for senior executives whilst those further down the food chain received only modest increases.
This seemed to be acceptable for a while . Only the unions occasionally complained – but they by now had too little power to do anything about it.
A few policy decisions have attempted to ameliorate the situation (minimum wage, equal pay, and so on) but industry bosses have so much power, they can safely navigate around these little problems. Their pay – even for those in the public sector, in hospitals and universities – has continued to rise steadily. They have bonus schemes which seem to have little to do with long-term success snd can sit smugly even when the fortunes of their company start to wane.
The politicians of the ‘new right’ form alliances with the great industry leaders and we enter a spiral of mutual interest’ making the problem worse.
I have written before how I expect AI to make things worse (in the medium to longer-term) so the cavalry are not coming anytime soon.
Well, as I said at the start, I am old. This not my problem, my fight. I hope younger generations can address these problems – but I an not sorry I won’t be around for the fight.