Typical union propaganda piece reprinted as facts by the friendly co-conspirators at the newspapers. Rather than give actual figures, by which one can make meaningful comparisons, one figure is given as it actually is, while the rest are "adjusted for inflation," which could mean anything -- and probably does, to arrive at their preconceived conclusions that salaries and wages are the lowest in history, and so millions of Americans are going to bed starving every night, and so the median weight of Americans (adjusted for inflation) are below that of people starving in Africa.
Also, because wages are so low, nobody can afford to buy cars and so the roads are completely empty with no traffic congestion (adjusting for inflation) while newspaper subscriptions are soaring (adjusting for inflation).
"The median weekly salary in 2005 was $659 (half of all workers earned more, half earned less). After inflation, that’s 1.9% less than in 2004. Average hourly pay for all production and nonsupervisory workers was $16.11—a 0.7% decline when adjusted for inflation. Workers’ retirement and health-care benefits also are shrinking—and not only in troubled industries. Financially healthy companies are freezing their pension plans to exclude new hires and/or younger employees—a trend that’s expected to continue. In a frozen plan, workers stop accruing benefits. This also hurts longtime workers, because they will retire with much less than they expected: Up to 50% of a pension is earned in the last five years on the job."
And the theme of the day is that the present economy is hurting the midddle and upper middle class folks a lot harder than the people at the lowest end -- and so the poor now should subsidize wage increases for the upper middle (who adjusted for inflation) are really the poor.