Dimed, then nickeled

America's younger workers losing ground on income. As always with articles like this, a dark thicket of conflicting data obscures the trail we're walking. But there is this:

• Rising debt levels. Over the past decade, the volume of federal student loans tripled, reaching $85 billion in new loans last year, according to a new book by Anya Kamenetz, "Generation Debt." Nearly a quarter of college students are using credit cards to pay some of their tuition costs, she writes.

• The median income for men under age 44 was significantly lower in 1997 than in 1970, after adjusting for inflation, according to a long-term analysis by the Census Bureau in the late 1990s. For those over 45, incomes barely held their own during that period.

• The entry of women into the workforce in those decades has helped push median family incomes up over time. But even when men and women are included together, younger workers (age 25-34) are earning well below what they did in 1970. And at all ages, evidence suggests that families are putting in more hours of work to make their household incomes rise.

• Even with extra time at work, median family income has barely budged since 1995 for householders below 45, up about 5 percent after inflation through 2004.

For similar news, read why consumer pocketbooks had a rough start [sic] this millennium, an article that includes this Mark Weisbrot quote: "Globalization is part of the process by which the bargaining power of most employees in the United States has been drastically reduced so that they don't capture most of the gains from the economy."

To which I respond: Bargaining power??