The Audacity of Nit-picking

Greg Mankiw reads The Audacity of Hope and mostly likes what he finds. But he does find something to quibble with:

The sloppiest sentence so far (page 146):

Over the past decade, we've seen...hefty corporate profits, but a shrinking share of those profits going to workers.

I am pretty sure that the share of profits going to workers has been stable--at zero. Profits are what owners get to keep after workers have been paid.

In strictly econo-speak, Mankiw is right, of course. But Obama is not an economist, and neither are 99.99% of his readers. What Obama meant is clear: corporate profits have been increasing, while salaries have remained stagnant -- or declined, in real terms -- for most of the population. This is also an economic statement, with empirical backing, which Mankiw completely ignores.