It's attitude. Are you personally "management" or are you "labor?" And for those who think that such a rigid demarcation doesn't exist, I point to the one metric that says everything: the difference in salaries between the average top-paid spots within companies vs. the average hourly worker's over the past 3 decades. That ratio went from a range of dozens (from average hourly workers' salaries to management's) around 1970 to HUNDREDS today.

Most people don't quite realize that if that trend were fully reversed, exactly how much more money would be released to keep the "average Joes" employed. You can blame a portion on the Evil Globalization, but don't forget the three-decade long "padding of pockets" by our Management teams. And besides, what happened to those days when laying people off in-and-of-itself was widely accepted as a failure by management?

My advice? Ride through this economic downturn where you are, keep your skills constantly improving, and always, always keep resumes in the mail and accept all the offers for interviews you can. Live a constant job search, even at those jobs you're "happy enough" with, and don't be shy to jump at an offer of higher salary.

Nothing will get you a raise faster than having a job offer in-hand … whether that raise is at your current company or a new one.

In the last 8 years wages and salaries as a share of gross domestic product GDP) dropped from almost 50% to 46.2%. That's means workers are collectively getting about $500 billion a year less than if their share were at the average of the years 1947-2000.

Labor's share of GDP strongly correlates with the top marginal tax rate and the capital gains tax rate. As tax rates go down so does labor's share in the economy. Apparently, the lower the rates the greater the incentive for CEO's to squeeze workers in order to pump up short term profits and their own compensation.

Low tax rates have a poor economic record. In 1925 Coolidge cut the top rate to 25% while leaving the capital gains rate at 12.5%. Four years later we descended into the depression with these tax rates. Our crisis began four years after Bush in 2003 gave us the lowest capital gains tax rate since the depression. Since Reagan's famous tax cut, the top tax rate averaged 38.5% from 1982-2008. In years the top rate was below that average (1988-1992, 2003-2008) GDP averaged growing 2.5% a year. When the top rate was above the average (1982-1987, 1993-2002) GDP averaged growing 3.3%. In the 28 years before Reagan's tax cut GDP annualized growing 3.5%.

Don't be upset with your boss be upset with a system designed to reward existing wealth rather than create prosperity. The way to tell if a tax cut advocate favors existing wealth or prosperity is whether they support lower tax rates or higher tax brackets.

The key to sustained growing prosperity is to have a high enough top tax rate that the wealthy have strong incentive to put the marginal dollar into a business where it can be deducted or depreciated as opposed to taking the dollar as personal income. While having a high enough tax brackets that the average tax rate is low so that the most productive among have a dramatically above average after tax income.

Reagan was right the 70% tax rate for income above $215,400 was way to high. If he had raised the bracket so only the portion of a persons income above say $25 million was taxed at 70% growth in the 28 years since the tax cut would probably been stronger rather than weaker than the 28 years before the tax cut.

Let's say they give you the pay bump, promotion, etc. and all the extra duties and then you completely fail to perform the new duties? Then the manager is either forced to fire you or decrease your pay, remove the promotion, etc. and that is probably a huge headache for them.

At my job, to earn a promotion I have to perform as if I hard earned the promotion for 6 months to prove myself. Then, I get the promotion because already I've proven that I can do the work. My bosses won't just give me a major raise, because if I can't do the work they would've lost the money because of my lack of performance.

Sit down with the manager and discuss the situation. Are you willing to accept the new responsiblilties? If so, will you receive extra compensation for those new responsibilities? Perhaps a trial period to see if you are capable of the new position and duties for X weeks. Then, with satisfactory performance you get the promotion, etc. Any decent manager should be willing to discuss the situation and try and set things up to make the change reasonable for the employee in the long term.