"Re: "Last week, Fisher argued that a so-far unpublished (i.e. secret) paper by his staff showed that “declines in the unemployment rate below 6.1 percent exert significantly higher wage pressures than if the rate is above 6.1 percent.”
First we had the 90% cliff and now we have the 6.1% cliff. OMG! Where are the grad students when we need them?"
At the moment, however, I like to think of Maurice Baring’s remark: “If you would know what the Lord God thinks of money, you have only to look at those to whom he gives it.” I realize that’s not much help when the wolf comes scratching at the door, but it’s a comfort.Wikiquote:
Man and the Gospel (1865) by Thomas Guthrie "and you may know how little God thinks of money by observing on what bad and contemptible characters he often bestows it."
“We may see the small Value God has for Riches, by the People he gives them to.” -- Alexander Pope (1727).And via MaxSpeak:
“In Capital in the Twenty-First Century, French economist Thomas Piketty documents how wealth is becoming concentrated in ever fewer hands.
This might not be a problem, were it not that capital is increasingly owned by shitheads.”
— Harry Hutton
Thomas Edsall has a good discussion of the shift of income from labor to capital in the years since 2000. His piece puts the blame largely on the way the United States has structured global trade to put downward pressure on the wages of ordinary workers.
While Edsall's discussion of the period since 2000 is largely on target (it does miss the impact of macroeconomic fluctuations and the fact that we have been well below full employment for most of this period), it errs in telling readers:
"Until 1999, median household income (as distinct from wealth) rose in tandem with national economic growth. That year, household income abruptly stopped keeping pace with economic growth and has fallen steadily behind then."
While median household income did keep pace with economic growth from 1993 to 1999, it actually lagged far behind in the years from 1978 to 1993. Over this period real per capital income rose by 30.0 percent, while median household income barely changed. This divergence of median income from growth was associated with an upward redistribution of wage income, with high end earners (e.g. Wall Street types, CEOs, and doctors) gaining at the expense of most workers.
In this period, most college graduates (@ 25 percent of the workforce at the time) were among the winners. By contrast, in the period since 2000 only workers at the very top of the income distribution and owners of capital have been winners.America Out of Whack by Thomas Edsall
“a big-picture solution involves higher marginal income tax rates for the top 1 percent and some sort of wealth tax on the top of the top, combined with stronger labor market institutions (minimum wage, unions, paid leave/sick days/vacations, etc.).”We need wage inflation and full employment via demand management (fiscal, monetary, trade/currency) policy.
SS: I did this interview for various reasons. One: I’m a fan of The A.V. Club. That’s always who I look up to look at television reviews. Two: I have a love-hate withThe A.V. Club because they broke my heart many times reviewing my show. And three: I’ve got a record coming out! Come on! The We Are Miracles album comes out September 22. September 23 worldwide.
To own a piece of land means you have certain legal rights with respect to other people — to exclude them from the use of that land, to receive some equivalent from them if you do permit use of the land, to transfer those rights to someone else — and that no one else has those rights with respect to you. However, that’s only the first step. Next, we have to recognize that what constitutes “use” of piece of an asset is not a physical fact, but a social one. (As in the old story, the baker can exclude others from eating his rolls, but not from enjoying the smell of them.) So it would be more accurate to say that ownership of a piece of property is simply a form of social authority — a bundle of rights over other people. Indeed, if we want to relate the world of money flows to broader social reality, the most fundamental fact is probably this: The person who receives a money payment labeled “profit” gives orders, and the people who receive money payments labeled “wages” have to follow them. To say you own a piece of property is simply to say there is a set of commands that, if you issue them, other people are compelled to obey. Those rights are metonymously referred to by a label which bears a picture of some tangible good, just like the insignia on an officer’s uniform bear a picture of a leaf or a bird.