American workers' wages stagnant, even in a great economy: why?

[Chad32]

I have family that believes that if you increase wages, the price of everything will go up the exact same amount.

Yeah, that's kind of silly.  When wages increase, people have more disposable income, buy more stuff, creating a greater demand for services and manufactured goods, which increases production which lowers prices.  Economies of scale work best when wages grow moderately faster than inflation.

Boru

That's what I figured too. When you have more customers coming in with disposable income, you don't have to jack your prices up so much. They just don't seem to believe that, though.

Yeah. Deficits are out of control, so we need to cut funding in social safety nets while continuing to shovel money into the military and corporations. Those are two things the government will never cut back.