>>>>US blue collar workers have been driven way down and now it's starting with the middle class. You don't need a degree in history to know what happens when you lose the good will of the middle class.
>>
>>Driven way down from what?
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>If nothing else, the relationship between productivity and pay has been broken. Used to be when productivity increased, so did wages. That stopped around 1980.
>
>http://thecurrentmoment.wordpress.com/2011/08/18/productivity-inequality-poverty/
>
>(FYI, more or less the same graph is available on a lot of sites. I picked this one because it's easy to read.)
>
>Tamar

That graph bears out what I've seen.
As I see it, that change has been caused by labor's loss of bargaining power due to competition from foreign sources, decreasing demand as the baby boom ended, women entering the workforce and technological change.
There are still a few semi-monopolistic labor pockets that are holding out- mainly jobs like police, health care workers, transit workers and teachers, but their grip is slipping as privatization expands and technology moves in.
"School Choice" is really a buzz-word for anti-unionism.

Could government policies have changed the curve?
Probably, but not while we worship at the altar of free trade and globalization.