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Monday, March 23, 2026
The Observer

Opinion









The Observer

How to wage war on low pay

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The American economy is suffering from forty years of flat wages, the result of a profound, and profoundly unequal, productivity-pay gap. From the end of the Second World War to the mid-1970s, productivity and hourly compensation tracked very closely, with both growing by over 90 percent; since then, on the other hand, productivity has risen 77 percent while real hourly pay has grown only about 12 percent. This is nothing less than a chronic crisis, a stalling of the American dream.




The Observer

Washington's wacky watershed week

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During the Trump era, the President’s early morning tweets routinely sculpt a fast-paced, short-term and tension-filled political terrain each week. This week seems to have topped them all since the inauguration. It began with Trump’s rebuttal of why world leaders laughed at him at the United Nations. The week sped along with the President’s phone call to the Deputy Attorney General, who was to personally meet him on Thursday at the White House with expectations of the President firing him. However, Thursday’s senate confirmation hearing rose high above the weekly landscape when Dr. Christine Blasey Ford testified against Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh, alleging that Kavanaugh assaulted her when she was 15 years old.