Wendy,
At best the WSJ article is cherry picking the data. At worst it is a political hit job as usual. Must say that the punchbowl has been taken away and labor wont get a raise but that has nothing much to do with misattributing the decline in output to labor costs. In fact if labor was doing better so would the economy. Has the esteemed WSJ ever been wrong? Why so often does the paper use being wrong to someone’s advantage?
Output is down? So are the marginal profits. The punchbowl has been taken away. The top got most of the gains as usual. The WSJ is fully aware of that when writing their trash.