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I've read some of the arguments on both sides. The statement that real wages HAVE stagnated mostly seems to holds up (for example pewresearch.org/short-r…) with two important caveats you touched on here: 1) "stagnant wages" doesn't include non-wage benefits, which seem to have risen at a much better 20%+ overall, and 2) it matters techni…
I've read some of the arguments on both sides. The statement that real wages HAVE stagnated mostly seems to holds up (for example https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2018/08/07/for-most-us-workers-real-wages-have-barely-budged-for-decades/) with two important caveats you touched on here: 1) "stagnant wages" doesn't include non-wage benefits, which seem to have risen at a much better 20%+ overall, and 2) it matters technically whether the intended meaning of "stagnated" is "didn't effectively improve at all" (not quite true if taking relative costs for now ubiquitous convenience into account) versus "didn't keep pace with increases in worker productivity" (by which standard wages have arguably fallen and total compensation is relatively stagnant even with non-wage benefits factored in). But yeah, it gets complicated fast once the discussion gets down to the minutia of what starting year to use and which indexes to use for purchasing packages.