In Upton Sinclair’s, “The Jungle,” it eventually emerges that some of the Chicago meatpacking workers lose body parts in the factory gears. If memory serves, at one point even one of the workers falls in. The implication being that the owners are literally making mincemeat of their workforce. Similarly, in the NYT this morning, “Real Wages Fail to Match a Rise in Productivity“

“As a result, wages and salaries now make up the lowest share of the nation’s gross domestic product since the government began recording the data in 1947, while corporate profits have climbed to their highest share since the 1960’s. UBS, the investment bank, recently described the current period as “the golden era of profitability.”

And yet, somehow they can’t afford meatier customer service.

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