ON FEB. 12, REUTERS REPORTED THE FOLLOWING:

“U.S. consumer spending barely rose in January as households cut back on purchases of a range of goods, suggesting the economy started the first quarter on a softer note.

“Sluggish spending came despite cheap gasoline and a buoyant labor market, leaving economists to speculate that consumers were using the extra income to pay down debt and boost savings.

“‘There is a risk of a temporary soft patch for the economy as it is somewhat surprising the consumer has stopped spending their savings from gasoline prices,’ said Chris Rupkey, chief financial economist at MUFG Union Bank in New York.

“The Commerce Department said on Thursday retail sales excluding automobiles, gasoline, building materials and food services edged up 0.1 percent last month.

“That followed a 0.3 percent drop in December and was below Wall Street’s expectations for a 0.4 percent increase. …

“Despite a 39.5-percent decline in gasoline prices since June, consumer spending has been soft in the past two months.

“Still, cheaper gasoline prices and robust employment gains are expected to provide a powerful stimulus to consumer spending and keep the economy on an expansion path, despite sputtering growth in Asia and Europe.

“‘Should we be worried about the weakness of underlying sales over the past two months? Possibly,’ said Paul Ashworth, chief U.S. economist at Capital Economics in Toronto.

“‘But all the conditions are in place for a period of very strong consumption growth. We still expect to see that strength come through in the retail sales data soon.’

“Consumer spending, which accounts for more than two-thirds of U.S. economic activity, expanded at its quickest pace since 2006 in the fourth quarter.”

I think the next year or so will be a key test of this economy.

So far, the recovery has been based on more people being added to the workforce as the Great Recession finally loosens its grip. More workers being hired means the paychecks of those newly hired workers are adding demand to the economy.

However, once the vast majority of formerly surplus workers are finally reabsorbed into the workforce — as should happen some time in the next year or two — there will be a moment of truth for the economy: unless wages start growing in a way that they haven’t so far in this recovery, then growth will become much more difficult.

The trends in wage growth of the last few years are not encouraging — and I’m not only referring to low-skilled workers. Wage growth for men with a college education, both bachelor’s degrees and above, peaked in the late 1990s and has been on a slowly declining path since then.

Paul Krugman diagnosed the cause in a recent column in The New York Times:

“(S)oaring inequality isn’t about education; it’s about power.

“Just to be clear: I’m in favor of better education. Education is a friend of mine. And it should be available and affordable for all. But what I keep seeing is people insisting that educational failings are at the root of still-weak job creation, stagnating wages and rising inequality. This sounds serious and thoughtful. But it’s actually a view very much at odds with the evidence, not to mention a way to hide from the real, unavoidably partisan debate.

“The education-centric story of our problems runs like this: We live in a period of unprecedented technological change, and too many American workers lack the skills to cope with that change. This ‘skills gap’ is holding back growth, because businesses can’t find the workers they need. It also feeds inequality, as wages soar for workers with the right skills but stagnate or decline for the less educated. So what we need is more and better education.

“My guess is that this sounds familiar — it’s what you hear from the talking heads on Sunday morning TV, in opinion articles from business leaders like Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase, in ‘framing papers’ from the Brookings Institution’s centrist Hamilton Project. It’s repeated so widely that many people probably assume it’s unquestionably true. But it isn’t.

“For one thing, is the pace of technological change really that fast? ‘We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters,’ the venture capitalist Peter Thiel has snarked. Productivity growth, which surged briefly after 1995, seems to have slowed sharply.

“Furthermore, there’s no evidence that a skills gap is holding back employment. After all, if businesses were desperate for workers with certain skills, they would presumably be offering premium wages to attract such workers. So where are these fortunate professions? You can find some examples here and there. Interestingly, some of the biggest recent wage gains are for skilled manual labor — sewing machine operators, boilermakers — as some manufacturing production moves back to America. But the notion that highly skilled workers are generally in demand is just false.

“… Finally, while the education/inequality story may once have seemed plausible, it hasn’t tracked reality for a long time.

“… So what is really going on? Corporate profits have soared as a share of national income, but there is no sign of a rise in the rate of return on investment. How is that possible? Well, it’s what you would expect if rising profits reflect monopoly power rather than returns to capital.

“As for wages and salaries, never mind college degrees — all the big gains are going to a tiny group of individuals holding strategic positions in corporate suites or astride the crossroads of finance. Rising inequality isn’t about who has the knowledge; it’s about who has the power.”

The lion’s share of the gains in the economy have been going to the very top of the income scale because they have the power to demand it, and no one else has the power to deny it to them.

Except that’s not really true. I have said it before, but it bears repeating: There are more of us than there are of them.

One of the consequences of living in a democratic system is that the blame for systemic injustice rests as much on the people, when they fail to act, as on the oligarchy. It is time we demanded a bigger share of the gains.

Matt Talbot is a writer and poet, as well as an old Benicia hand. He works for a tech start-up in San Francisco.