I am currently working through the entire Commissaire Maigret detective series written by Belgian author author Georges Simenon. I read a lot as I travel around and I have 74 (out of 75) Maigret novels to read. But don’t let that fool you, I am already becoming familiar with Maigret’s forensic way of thinking (-:. So for the next two blog posts we will be conducting a forensic examination of data to solve a puzzle that appears to be confusing people. This is the sort of puzzle that people (like me), who are interested in data and have a penchant for spy and detective novels like to investigate. For others though, while the nuances might appear to be rather obscure, the importance of this sort of puzzle cannot be understated. Community perceptions are influenced by what I am talking about today. Policy decisions are taken. Industrial relations strategies are designed, implemented, and, in some cases, fought out with significant consequences. The data I am analysing today and tomorrow can provide information about the state of the economy. It can inform us of the way in which the economic is changing in structure over time. It can provide guidance to fiscal and monetary authorities as to the likely impact of policy changes. So, as you will see, ambiguity is not going to be very helpful. The data I am dealing with in this blog post explores the relationships between nominal wages, prices and productivity in the Australian economy. The principles established, though, apply to all economies. What I will show you is that the choice of how we choose to measure key variables can fundamentally alter the way we think and act. This is Part 1 of a two-part series. Now, if only I had a pipe to light! (Maigret joke for insiders)....Bill Mitchell – billy blog
Is capitalism compatible with decent living standards for the worst off*? This old Marxian question is outside the Overton window, but it's the one raised by Ed Miliband's promise to raise the minimum wage to £8 by 2020.…Stumbling and Mumbling
My own view, for what it’s worth, is the real rate of inflation for consumer goods is higher than the official rate of 2.2 percent (over the past 12 months), thereby understating the extent to which working people are facing rising prices for the commodities they need to purchase in order to maintain themselves and their families. In addition, most people are receiving wages and salaries that simply are not rising much more, from one year to the next, than the official inflation rate.
Therefore, it’s not surprising that people are feeling squeezed and find the kinds of economic policies advocated by mainstream economists quite strange—both the call for austerity by conservative economists (based on the idea that galloping inflation is right around the corner) and the call for more inflation (based on the idea that real interest rates should be negative, in order to boost economic activity). Neither policy—abounding as they are in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties—would help working people who, right now, are facing both rising prices and stagnant incomes.Then there is the issue of assets "appreciating" (good) but not "inflating" (bad) whereas goods prices are never said to "appreciate" but only "inflate." Disconnect?
Earlier this week I updated my commentary on Five Decades of Middle Class Wages, an analysis of Real Average Hourly Earnings of Production and Nonsupervisory Employees. During the 21st century and especially since the end of the Great Recession, wages have clearly been stagnant.
But, as Mark Twain famously remarked, "there are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."
I was, therefore, not surprised when a reader sent me a link to a blog article entitled "Real Wage Stagnation Is a Bit of a Myth." Seriously! The article featured a chart that included the very same earnings data series that I had used, but it came to quite the opposite conclusion:dsshort.com"Contrary to popular belief, wages have been rising a bit faster than prices. In other words, real wages haven’t stagnated as widely believed, but have been moving higher, albeit at a slow pace."All it takes is a simple statistical manipulation to paint a smiley face on the real wage data. And what is that? Choose a tame deflator for your inflation adjustment.…
In a report issued for clients earlier in the week, McCulley said "behind the curve" is exactly where the Fed wants to be—for now. The goal is to keep interest rates low not until unemployment falls below 6 percent or inflation eclipses 2 percent—the previously stated goals from the Open Market Committee for when it would begin to consider raising rates—but until consumer buying power gets considerably stronger."Monetary Keynesianism"? The above link to McCulley's letter is revealing about the capital to labor share ratio. It's also revealing how McCulley thinks. Worth a read.
Multiplier EffectIt’s well known that the wages of US workers have become disconnected from productivity growth, with real wages growing much more slowly than advances in productivity over the last several decades. This is a key part of the story of widening income inequality.
But these observed trends actually understate the degree to which working people have been left behind. New research reveals that the US economy is doing a worse job passing on productivity gains to workers than the wage growth (or even stagnation) numbers suggest.
The Levy Institute’s Fernando Rios-Avila and the Atlanta Fed’s Julie Hotchkiss looked back to 1994 and tried to see what proportion of real wage growth since then can be accounted for by key changes in the demographic profile of the labor force: principally, the fact that the average worker has become older (i.e., more experienced) and more educated.
What they found is that over 90 percent of real wage growth between 1994 and 2013 was due to demographic shifts. And the 2002–13 period, commonly referred to as the decade of flat wages, is more accurately described as “a decade of declining real wages within age/education worker profiles.” If we control for demographics, wages are back to where they were in 1998.
Common Sense Macroeconomics
Producers and Consumers are like two wings of a bird. If either of the wings gets hurt, the bird will no longer be able to fly. If that bird is not nursed quickly and properly, it would be disabled and either die from hunger or fall prey to a predator. With the same analogy, both producers and consumers have to prosper for a robust economy.
Before we get into more details of macro-economics, let us see where the economic profession stands at this juncture. In a recent article in The New York Times, Professor Robert J. Shiller of Yale University and a best-selling author argues that even now we don’t understand what really causes a recession and layoffs [2]. But another best-selling economist, Professor Ravi Batra, seems to have solved the puzzle of recessions by offering a new theory of unemployment. His theory relies on common sense as he argues that recessions and depressions occur when worker productivity keeps rising faster than the economy’s average real wage. He demonstrates that this happened in the 1920s, which were followed by a depression. The same thing also occurred during the 2000s and the world has been in The Great Recession since 2007.
Batra argues that worker productivity is the main source of supply while wages are the main source of demand. If productivity rises faster than wages, then supply rises faster than demand. This results in overproduction and forces the manufacturer to fire workers. Producers are the suppliers of goods, and consumers generate the demand for these goods. Consumer demand, being dependent on wages, is sustainable only if the consumers as workers earn higher salaries. If the wages of consumers do not catch up with increased supply of goods, the supplier of goods is unable to sell all that he/she has manufactured.truthout
Some of my readers have asked me if there really is any difference between solving the liquidity trap by lowering real wages via inflation or by lowering nominal wages. Are they not equivalent measures?
No, they are not!Lars P. syll's Blog
On the whole, wages for workers aren't keeping up with the inflation rate, causing them to fork out more just to afford the basics. Median weekly wages rose just 1.6 percent in the fourth quarter over that quarter in 2010. In contrast, prices rose 3.3 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. As a result, consumers dipped more into their savings: The annual personal saving rate plunged 29 percent in the fourth quarter (compared with that stretch of 2010), to 3.7 percent. This is the lowest saving rate since 2007's fourth quarter, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis.
Spending failed to keep up with the production of goods at the end of 2011 because most newly created jobs paid close to the minimum wage, Vitner said. Seventy-seven percent of the jobs created since the end of the recession are in the low-paying sectors of retail, leisure and hospitality, home health care and temporary staffing, according to Vitner. With credit still tight and wages falling (once adjusted for inflation), Americans aren't boosting their spending, he said
