Arthur Alexander tries to convince Peter Cave that the poor Japanese are being cheated by spendthrift managers whereas the American worker is so much better off.

the American labor share of national income has averaged around 78% versus 63% for Japan over the past 20 years. That is a huge amount of income not received by Japanese workers.

Note, "workers" The one lasting impact of the Occupy movement has been to make people so aware of America's 1% /99% divide that it even gets dscussed in Davos.

Only the most unreconstructed Marxist attaches much important to the labour share/capital share diviison these days. It was a ressonable index in 1970 when the average American boss was paid 30 tims the average worker wage.
It bears far far less relationship to any index of equality/inequality nowadays when the ratio is variously calculated to be something like one to 700-800. It is the one per cent of "workers", employees not rentiers, who have been taking a rapidly increasing share of that 78%.

Ronald Dore