"there’s reason to believe the link between falling unemployment and rising wages has been severed"

[TheKentuckian]

86. I don't think he missed it all seeing the same point is right there in the blurb

"It still could happen – but the unemployment rate would have to sink far lower than it is today, probably below 4 percent".

The problem is that we are now looking at contextually absurd numbers to make the impact.

That 4% is a rare, rare bird in modern times for this purpose I think we can agree 1970 is not an unreasonable place to start from and only once in that four and a half decades has it been down to 4%, never below.

Tough row to hoe, I don't think he sees a path to the required conditions and I not sure even that would work because of the pretty drastic changes in the very nature of employment now versus times when we last saw the required numbers.

We are talking the late 60's, the 50's, and 1944 (1.2%), the likes of which we will never see again it is probably pretty safe to say.

We now have all kinds of part time cap sub - subsistence crap, a ton of people contracting and temping, near destruction of organized labor, right to work laws all over, gutted and often captured labor boards, and a very, very different worldview about and value on labor. Then you have to account for global environment, laws passed, treaties and "agreements" entered, resource depletion, and Lord knows what else.
Even from the the late 90's to 2000 when we saw that 4.0 and low 4's is now a long time ago and a different world in a way, way deeper hole.

I might be cynical because I've never fully recovered from the FIRST Bush recession in real dollars much less accounting for inflation but I think a serious counter argument is hard to come by.

Reich is right again but is too optimistic, I fear. I hope I'm wrong but from here the shit looks insanely deep.