Labour's share of the cake is getting smaller.

Corporations in the U.S. and elsewhere have rarely had it this good.
In 2004, after-tax corporate profits in the U.S rose to 14% as a proportion of GDP, the highest for 75 years and in Europe and Japan, corporate profits are the highest in 25 years. That's why you see so many big corporations paying out huge dividends to their shareholders and even buying in their own shares on the stock market. Big banks with pockets full of money like HSBC and Citigroup are looking to use their cash reserves to buy up competitors, probably sparking another wave of 'wealth-creating' mergers (numerous studies have shown that over 70% of big mergers turn out to be economically unprofitable)
What's the problem, you say, this must be good for the economy as a whole, since the employees surely also benefit.
Well, actually they don't. Officially, U.S. corporate profits have risen 60% over the past 3 years, opposed to 10% for wage income. But this does not take into account the fact that extralegal benefits such as healthcare and pension plans have been slashed over the last few years. In certain areas, wages have actually fallen (NYTimes 28/02/05: 'Last year, the real wages of hourly workers, who make up about 80 percent of the work force, actually dropped for the first time in more than a decade')
The economic theory goes that eventually these higher corporate profits will be syphoned away to the pockets of workers through lower prices as firms compete with each other to grab market share. The problem is that in most sectors, there is a concentration in the making that will lead to less competition, not more.
When you confront a neoliberal economist with a real, actual problem or negative side-effect of the capitalist economy, he always produces the economic theories of Adam Smith, Milton Friedman or Hayek: don't regulate and the problem will work itself out. But they never say how long it is going to take and also conveniently forget to mention that the many assumptions of the classic economic theories (perfect information, perfect competition...) are never fullfilled in the real world.
I have a question for the rightwingers in the U.S.; why is the evolution theory by Darwin only a theory and why are the theories of Smith, Friedman, Hayek considered to be laws of nature???