Do America’s Corporations Care How Much American Workers Earn?

Consumer spending is a critical driver of American economic growth. Yet business leaders seem unconcerned about the declining standard of living of middle-class America, or about the growing number of American families slipping into poverty. Higher wages mean more consumer spending and more growth, but corporate America is focused, with increasing intensity, on driving wages further down. It wasn’t always this way. A historical review indicates that businessmen like Henry Ford and Edward Filene once understood the importance of ensuring workers' wages were high enough to allow them to purchase the the goods they produced.