Zachary Saltis

The Economic Consequences of Declining Real Wages in the United States: Class Struggle and the "American Dream" Zachary Saltis

As the real wages of the vast majority of U. S. workers were declining in the 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s, wage-earning households increased their labour supply dramatically. Not only were these households struggling to maintain their acquired standard of living as the scales of class war were tipped disproportionately in favour of capital, but more importantly, they were trying to raise it. Precisely when household labour supply hit an upper bound in the latter half of the 1990s, household debt surged. The author argues that exploding household debt - primarily in the form of home mortgage debt - from the late 1990s until 2007 was driven by wage-earning households desperate to pursue the "American Dream" at all costs. The current economic crisis, argues the author, may be the beginning of a painful downward adjustment in the standard of living of American workers.