XXII. Why Working Wages in US are flat

Here's an "old" Whack-O Theory I've dug up.  Still the case, a Whack-O Theory isn't true; pure fairy-land extravaganza!  So, on with the story.

I was in graduate school in New York City--with very little money.  For "entertainment," I'd attend the United Nations' meeting on 42nd Street off the River.  I'd watch the river traffic out the beautiful glass wall, when things got boring at the meetings.

Anyway, a theory floating the hallways of the UN building at the time--many decades ago--was the hostility building against the "have" nations among the "have-nots" members.  The rumor being that if the "haves" did not make concessions to those backward nations making up the Third World, there'd be war waging soon.  The "have-nots" were insisting on recognition and respect.  But to recognize their potential, the "haves" were adamant that standards of business transactions be in place throughout the world, e.g., adherence to GAAP in accounting practice.  This argument I believe was behind initiating trade agreements that has bloomed across the world in recent years.  (Incidentally, C-SPAN  is currently airing an excellent series on trade deals, including the illustrious and successful WTO.)  

But, if trade agreements became the way in which countries were to principally engage in commerce and trade, where would the equalization or parity exist in wages, since the "have-not" countries were low-end on the totem-pole of the wage scale.  When I went to Mexico, to examine how NAFTA would be implemented, I could only surmise an answer to that question--"Mexican labor unions would have to take up a fight to realize higher wages for their workers!  Such has not happened to any notable degree.

What has happened is an obvious stagnation in wages of workers in the "have" nations, while workers of the "have-nots" hardly pull greater than poverty-level earnings.  Who has benefited are companies that have moved their production facilities out of the US and installed abroad automated means of production and distribution.  That is to say--to a greater degree than could have been imagined--with the advent and implementation of automated systems, what with their artificial intelligence utilization and systems integration, the worker has been marginalized, and his productivity-quotient radically gone spiraling.  This same phenomenon is about to hit agriculture, too, making current farming techniques obsolete and out-of-date.

So, today, companies willing to keep technologically advanced and are in position to re-locate virtually anywhere in the world, can keep up-grading their operations even as they change addresses!

Workers of the world, recognize your plight!   There's worldwide human competition for available jobs, and there's computer-driven machinery capable of doing what only humans were capable of performing till such machinery has become available at lower cost than a worker's wages.