Kenneth Davidson again cuts through the budget smoke and mirrors to reveal that “between 1996 and 2006 the wages share of gross domestic product fell from 56 per cent to 54 per cent, while corporate profits rose from 23 per cent to 28 per cent. That is equal to about $40 a week if wages had maintained their mid-1990s share of national income.”
To add insult to injury the federal tax burden has increased from 23.3 to 25 per cent of GDP in the same period.
The Howard government claims to have increased employment substantially (although these figures are indeed shonky) so the decline in wages GDP share represents even further erosion in the fortunes of the average battler.
One might think this represents a growth in productivity (by lowering the cost of wages), yet in the same period, national productivity growth has been heading South and will cross the border into negative territory this year.
