Great Graphic: Lost Decade Ahead?

Here is a Great Graphic from Pew Research Center. It shows that median household income in the US has returned to roughly the level it was at in 1990.  

That is what is so irksome about pundit claims that Americans need to brace themselves for a "lost decade". They already are on their second lost decade.  Hello?

Given the stubbornly high unemployment level, the low participation rate, and the meager pay increases, there is little reason to think that we have seen the end of the erosion of the real median household income in the US.

There are many factors that have led to this outcome.  I do not want to suggest a mono-causal explanation.  The point I would like to make here is that all the factors are not economic in nature.  The fact is that wages have not kept pace with inflation or productivity for more than 40 years.  It pre-dates the emergence of China on the world stage.  It pre-dates the new technologies, such as computers and the internet.  

It is a function of politics and by that I mean power. The key issue is how the productivity gains distributed between profits and wages.  To suggest a more equitable distribution, one is often accused of conducting class warfare.  However, the generation of the disparity in the first place, and the decoupling of wages from productivity, is rarely understood as class warfare in the popular press.