As a result, the share of income produced in the country that is flowing to workers’ bank accounts has been steadily shrinking.

Of every dollar of income earned in the United States in the third quarter of 2011 — the latest period for which data is available — just 44 cents went to workers’ wages and salaries. That is the smallest share since the government began keeping track in 1947, according to the Commerce Department, and it continues a trend that predates the Great Recession. The average share of national income going to wages and salaries over the last 50 years has been about 57.6 cents on the dollar."

So what does that mean? It means that economic growth has decoupled from benefits to actual workers. Corporate profits are at an all time high, but the slice for actual workers has been declinining steadily, glacially, unavoidably, no matter how much activism gets thrown out for education, job retraining, re-unionization, living wages, and the like. 

In the political realm, this makes our clamoring after whichever party promises more jobs, jobs, jobs seem naive and desperate. If economic growth has not produced equitable results for the last four decades, why would we expect it to do anything different in the future? Corporate 'success' has not needed decent wages for quite some time. This is the engine of today's massive and lopsided allocation of wealth. More growth will just bring more f the same.

If economic growth and corporate success has come uncoupled from everyday citizens and livelihoods, it's time for us to abandon the idea that growth can be the political promised land. Growth cannot be surrogate for human well-being any longer, and we can't keep pretending that awesomely-paid work is just around the corner. This is the twilight of careerism, and we better get used to the new landscape.