"Economic growth used to shrink the top and bottom while expanding the middle. Now, for reasons that are also partly mysterious, it does the opposite." Partly mysterious, Mike? Really? But since 1980, the gap between CEO pay and the average worker has exploded by more than ten times: in 2004, the average CEO made $11.8 mil., which was 431x more than the average worker, as compared to 1980, when the average CEO made "just" 42x more. Also, in 2004 the typical CEO received a raise of 15% while the average worker got just a 2.9% bump up in pay. (And note that about 1/4 of CEO pay is from bonuses).

I don't think there's much mystery as to why economic growth is not "expanding the middle" like in the good old days....