The chart is good but it's also something we've been experiencing for quite some time. Downward pressure on wages has been a screwed up attempt to close the gap between the U.S. labor market and others, principally our Asian competitors. That is a dumb idea because our economies are so different.

One of our biggest problems on the manufacturing side is China, the state, heavily subsidizes the cost of energy on a nationwide basis. I know it isn't possible for us to do that but core services such as energy, where it's a for profit service in some countries and where it's nationalized in others makes a plate of scrambled eggs for competition. In the U.S. energy is one of our biggest cost factors.

And you correctly point out healthcare cost is another that on a national basis hurts us a lot. We really need a single payer system to get those costs into single digits.

It is a bit crazy that we brag about our high productivty but have some notable segments which are anything but efficient in relative terms.

The other thing where we have a big differential is for those items where other nations have nationalized something it keeps the cost for them low and reduces wage pressure. In the U.S. our costs for many of those same things keeps going up. If workers have any hope of getting their kids a good education so we can compete, wages have to at least stay even. That hasn't been the case for going on three decades.

There is one more piece to this crazy pie worth mentioning. The U.S. has made it attractive for corporations to seek those places on a global basis which have the overall least cost of manufacturing. That is great for profits but in large measure on the tax side it's broken. For U.S. corporation they have the upside and mitigate the downside. This has also served to accelerate the shift of wealth up our economic ladder and made worse our issues with class struggles.

For far too long we have legislatively put profits before everything else and have effectively excluded other equally important outcomes. This imbalance now has us in a bind. This is true on the domestic and foreign side alike. There has to be an accommodation made to account for nations managing their various national cost centers differently. The mantra of free trade without effective mechanisms for achieving trade and currency equity to keep things in balance cannot work. That scheme has devastated our middle class and turned our socio-economic scheme on its head. Our particular economic unit has to provide an overall outcome that satisfies requirements for all contributing elements which then yields a self sustaining economic unit.

Exclude or short change one piece and you impact the overall unit. This means take all the revenue and distribute those to meet the needs of all contributing elements and then what is left is profit. Profit comes last. If there isn't any, so what? At least you will have guaranteed that the overall unit is sustained.

Having lived in Europe and Asia I am familiar with this. Both make it work out so in the end there is the appearance of not having made any money. But all the needs are in fact met. And there is a lot more money there than meets the eye. It's just allocated differently to meet a broader set of requirements with no negative influence on the overall national wealth.

We have one more thing that is horribly out of whack. On the public side we have states and municipalities that actually work a regular contractual 32 hour work week. Their labor productivity is in the toilet. In the private sector, especially in manufacturing, the norm is in excess of 50 hours. U.S. productivity numbers look great. But government isn't part of that equation. If you add all the people in government our numbers look very different. Government is just as much a part of our workforce and the productivity equation as any other.