Axios

If you ask almost anyone whether the world of retail has utterly changed, they'd probably say, "heck, yes." Since 2007, the share of e-commerce sales has nearly tripled, while several iconic brick-and-mortar stores, like Circuit City and Sports Authority, have disappeared from the landscape. Others, like Sears and Macy's, are conducting massive layoffs.

Economists especially look at retail and see a stagnant industry that has failed to adopt new technologies and become more efficient. In fact, according to an analysis by McKinsey, between 2005 and 2015 there has been no growth whatsoever in retail productivity. And while e-commerce does thrive on technological advances, it has failed, unlike previous waves of innovation, to enrich the nations where it's used.

The U.S. is in the third-longest economic expansion in post-war history. There are more jobs, but wages have been a sore spot: since the financial crash, the typical American's earnings have barely grown when you account for inflation. To track this dynamic over time, I worked with Jed Kolko, chief economist at Indeed, who analyzed U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data and projections on which this animated chart relies. Sector by sector, the chart follows employment and wages since 2006, just before the crash.

For four decades, the U.S. and the West at large have seen a stark and almost-uniform trend: the number of jobs has grown and the unemployment rate dropped, but average incomes have not. The bulk of the economic fruits in the U.S. and much of Europe has steered to the top, while relatively low-paying jobs -- now almost a quarter of Germany's working-age population, versus 15% in the mid-1990s -- have swelled.

Over the last year, this economic dynamic has spilled over into political instability on both continents. Manufacturing belts with outsized financial anxieties unexpectedly went to Donald Trump's column last year, and he was elected president; a similar phenomenon played out in the U.K. They and other countries have sought to buck the "establishment." And there is no sign that the economy in the U.S. and elsewhere is going to suddenly lift many more boats — fuel for more political chaos.

We asked five experts the following question: How do we avoid the political instability of stagnant income?

• Robert J. Gordon, economics professor, Northwestern University, author The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The political pendulum will swing back
• Darrick Hamilton, director of urban policy, the New School: The dice should not be loaded
• Edmund S. Phelps, Nobel laureate and economics professor, Columbia University: Give us grassroots innovation
• Lyman Stone, agriculture economist, USDA: Resist the taker-state
• Tobias Stone, founder, Newsquare: Inequality shatters societies

"'Lie after lie after lie': Fox News's Shepard Smith has a Cronkite moment on Russia," by WashPost's Aaron Blake:Shep, to Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace: "It's pilin' up. ... We're still not clean on this, Chris. If there's nothing there — and that's what they tell us: They tell us there's nothing to this and nothing came of it, there's a nothingburger, it wasn't even memorable, didn't write it down, didn't tell you about it, because it wasn't anything so I didn't even remember it — with a Russian interpreter in the room at Trump Tower?""If all of that, why all these lies? Why is it lie after lie after lie? ... The deception, Chris, is mind-boggling. And there are still people who are out there who believe we're making it up. And one day they're gonna realize we're not and look around and go: Where are we, and why are we getting told all these lies?"Chris Wallace: Trump staff should be summoned and told, "from the first time you had beef stroganoff to the last shot of Stolichnaya, you put down every contact with a Russian you know about and let's get it out. It may be bad, it may be embarrassing, but we can't keep having this new information dribble out."

"Come clean! Tell it now! Let the chips fall where they may. And if, in fact, there was no crime committed, you'll survive it. It'll be embarrassing, but it'll be better than this."New Yorker Editor David Remnick in next week's issue, "Trump Family Values": "Social-media wags delighted in reviving the Trump-as-Corleone family meme and compared Donald, Jr., to Fredo, the most hapless of the Corleone progeny. This was unfair to Fredo."