To argue that wages are rising or falling (either in nominal or real terms) is simply a fraud unless you take into account household expenditure on housing, health, education and payments to financial institutions.
If the math were done honestly, it would quickly become apparent that today’s Western economies are underperforming compared to the Western European welfare states of the 1970s and 1980s. They would even struggle to compare with some of the former Soviet bloc regimes. It would also be clear that the privatisation, liberalisation and deregulation of the 1980s and 1990s led to a dramatic decline in economic performance…
An honest count of wages also shows that what is sold to people as a “tax cut” is very often a tax increase. Wages go up a bit, but the state is unable to fund some existing services, people have to pay for them out of their own pockets and are at best in the same situation. The only thing that will change is that we will not be paying money to our nation state, but to some foreign corporation. Within a few years this will be reflected in bankruptcy.
Tax cuts are only justified if the government knows where else to put the money. As in Hungary, for example, where tax cuts have been offset by higher corporate tax revenues.
This explains why the public is generally sceptical about tax cuts. It’s not that people are jealous. Nor is it that they love socialism. It’s just that they have had some experience of life.