Wages Down thanks to inflation, dwindling Unions, Temporary labor, and Independent contractors.

The promise that tax cuts would lead to higher wages has always been pretty empty, especially when Republicans continue to destroy unions and pass right to work laws. Yet, we have been trained to act surprised when nothing happens while being told to wait just a little longer. Nope.

Reality now says workplace raises outside of Democratic Party induced minimum wage hikes is not going to happen, all because we've seen a major power shift toward corporations. They can wait till people have starved to death thanks to new work requirements for food and healthcare, and this time waiting a little longer makes sense.

Wages aren't rising enough to offset inflation and are actually lower than wages were a year ago. Temp and contract work has also shifted the costs onto hired labor from employers.

AUSTAN GOOLSBEE: That's the biggest puzzle that we're trying to figure out ... and we've been for a while waiting for the wages - oh, they're about to go up. But they kind of haven't - still haven't been going up that fast. And the real wage which the economists call the real-wage year - how much your wages went up minus how much inflation went up - at best it's pretty stagnant.

NPR's CHRIS ARNOLD: The short version is the decline of unions might be playing a role or other ways that employees just don't have the power that they used to to negotiate better pay. Productivity growth is slow. And workers might be getting compensation like we heard about - health care, bonuses, gym memberships and other stuff like that.