Lets get real!

i'm currently putting together a workshop/power point that discusses the historical context and imporatance of organized labor. Here's a graph that i use and recently found. its fucked up. i'm sure you all know how to read a graph--so i'll spare that but really what we see is the increased buying power of our minimum wage exploding--we don't have any data prior because before then there was no minimum wage(you can thank organized labor for that--but even at its establishment our dollar had some gurth) at the peak of our real dollar value was also the peak of organized labor--through out the 1950's almost half of the labor force was union. the 1950/1960's were years of opulence for our entire country! the housing market is a big deal in our economy now so i'll speak in terms of houses. back then the average cost of a house was 3,000 to 5,000 dollars. a much large percent of our country could purchase and OWN homes--(which could probably explain thedevelopement of the suburban standard) our buying power began to plumit as we have entered a less labor freindly era and moved more towards free trade economics--infact that huge drop we see in 1980 was the act of one man--formely the president of a union, the screan actors guild, he fired 11,345 air traffic controlers --since reagan's administration our minimum wage buying power has fallen 29% since 1979!!--what happened?