Wage growth from 1980 on...

Here is an interesting link that provides a truly enlightening graph on Worker Pay following President Reagan.

http://mikenormaneconomics.blogspot.com/2012/02/supply-side-destruction-worker-pay.html

Below is a quote from a commentator who gets it dead right:

Volcker would claim this as his crowning achievement. A superb job managing to keep incomes suppressed for decades. If only they were more effective at containing the price of food, energy and housing at these low levels while raising incomes.
Odd that countries from Chile to China are trying to grow incomes faster than inflation with great success while the US tries to grow incomes less than inflation to manage inflation.

This is what leads to an accumulation of wealth at the top. The bit about Chile and China is also very important as the models of economic growth promoting low inflation (one central tenet of monetary policy and those advocating a return to the gold standard) does not increase wages efficiently or quickly.