Wages and salaries as a proportion of GDP in blue, contrasted with government expenditure as a proportion of GDP in red:

Yes; correlation does not prove causation. Yes; there are lots and lots and lots of other factors involved — the end of Bretton Woods, globalisation, deindustrialisation, the birth of the computer and the internet, financialisation, the United States’ growth into a global imperial power and more recently the beginnings of a decline.

But whatever the exact causality this does not make happy reading for those who lean toward the idea that more government involvement in the economy translates to a bigger share of the pie for the working class.

Quite the opposite — while wages have just hit an all-time low, corporate profits have just hit an all-time high: