Embed Notice

@freemo @kilroy_was_here I don't think it's correct to say that living standards in 1975 were achieved by compromising workplace safety (and by extension that any loss since then is because more is being spent on safety). Safety standards at the time were what was believed to be acceptable, it's not that people were cutting corners to save money, and even if they had been workplace safety isn't generally as expensive as all that.

Any erosion of median living standards since the 70s is likely to be a result of massively widening inequality between the top and the bottom. For instance in the UK in 1979 the top 10% took home 21% of the total net income, in 2009/10 it was 31%. This rise was largely at the expense of the bottom 30%. (figures from https://www.poverty.ac.uk/editorial/more-unequal-country). The top 10% have a 50% pay rise over that period, the bottom 10% have a 75% cut. Similarly, from https://www.poverty.ac.uk/pse-research/going-backwards-1983-2012, the percentage of people lacking three or more "necessities" in the UK has more than doubled between 1983 and 2012.

Similarly in the US the share of aggregate income from 1970 to 2018 being taken home by the "upper tier" income group rose from 29 to 48%. The "middle tier" income group fell from 62 to 43%. Share of aggregate family wealth for the upper tier rose to a whopping 79% from 1983-2016, to just 4% for the lower tier (both stats https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/01/09/trends-in-income-and-wealth-inequality/).

The rules got changed, a lot of regulations that served a very good purpose got done away with, and the richest in society got the benefit. It's nothing to do with spending money to make workplaces safer.