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So why *did* U.S. wages stagnate for 20 years?

There are a few theories, but none of them really satisfies.

Nobody knows exactly why productivity slowed down for two decades, but in my opinion the leading candidate explanation is that the oil shock of 1973 inaugurated an era of energy scarcity that forced industrial economies to shift away from energy-intensive growth. Is it also possible that the same underlying shifts that made productivity slow down during those two decades also caused inequality to rise, and labor’s share of income to fall from 63% to 61% over the exact same period? The Japanese and European auto and machine tool industries really did put American companies under intense competitive pressure starting in the 1970s.

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