“Imagine the proceeds of economic output as a pie, crudely divided between the wages earned by workers and the returns accrued to the owners of capital.” With this picture in mind, The Economist proves with numbers that “the workers’ take from the pie has shrunk across the globe” over the past 30 years. Especially “when growth is sluggish, as it is now, most workers are getting a smaller morsel of a smaller slice of a slow-growing pie“.

So what can be done? The Economist states that the goal should be to strengthen workers without hamstringing firms. In fact, “a good antidote to labour’s falling share of national income would be to boost ordinary workers’ share of capital.”

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