(Unlike Common Dreams, this article shows their work and discloses their exact methodology and data sources.)
There’s a couple of big picture issues to consider:
1) Why focus on just wages, rather than just benefits? If productivity doubles, but the cost of providing healthcare triples, should employers cover the increased healthcare costs and also double wages? It’s not Microsoft’s fault that it costs $5,000 to get an MRI. From the perspective of how much is transferred from the employer to the employee, a dollar spent on wages isn’t any different than a dollar spent on healthcare.
Failing to distinguish the two things obscured the real problems. It makes you think something is a structural economic problem when in reality it’s cost disease in a particular industry. Wages aren’t keeping up with the cost of housing in New York and San Francisco. But nationwide, the median mortgage payment as a percentage of the median income has scarcely changed since the 1970s. Are wages the problem or are local laws around housing the problem?
2) There is kind of a metaphysical question about who should get the benefits of investment in technology. If you replace 100 workers with technology + very expensive capital equipment, productivity will increase by a factor of 10. (That’s how labor productivity is measured.) Does that mean wages should go up by a factor of 10?