What interesting is looking at world oil production over the last 100 or so years. Oil production follows a smooth exponential curve right up till about 1970. And then it becomes supply constrained.
Unions lose a lot of power during globalization anyway. Even if they had hung on to membership, what would they do?
Re:WTF Happened in 1971? (2019)
by complexworld on Monday November 23, 2020 @10:06PM
(#25194843)
Organized labor can negotiate with corporations and politicians to defend the interests of their members.
The way things are now in the US wasn't inevitable.
Another thing I didn't see in that data set was the relative growth / decline of union membership; i.e. how that affected wage growth, indirect effect of negotiating power. It would also be interesting to see whether that was a leading co-factor or a following co-factor.