This op-ed was originally published on MS NOW. Read the full piece here. 

Affordability—or the lack of it—is dominating the public discourse. “Affordability, affordability, affordability: Democrats’ new winning formula,” proclaims Politico. “Trump tries to seize ‘affordability’ message,” reports The New York Times. Election results in New Jersey, Virginia, New York and elsewhere showed that voters are responding to candidates who speak directly to the cost of living.

Today’s affordability debate, however, focuses almost entirely on prices, as if the only way to make life affordable is to make things cheaper. But that approach misses the bigger picture. Affordability depends on both prices and wages. The roots of today’s affordability crisis actually lie not in recent price spikes, but in the long-term suppression of workers’ pay. 

For more than four decades, employers have been actively suppressing the wages of working people, so that corporate managers and owners can claim an ever-larger share of the income generated by what workers produce. Government policies facilitated these efforts. 

Read the full piece here.