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That 70s Show – Episode 2
That 70s Show – Episode 2
In Episode 1 we showed how the US labour market changed dramatically from the 1970s on back of excess money printing which allowed Americans to buy tradable goods on the international market, hollowing out its own manufacturing base, and essentially creating an unsustainable consumer driven economy where the broad masses get their employment within service sector.
We will now take that a step further and look at what this has meant for the US worker. As our first chart shows, non-supervisory real wages stagnated in the early 1970s and has essentially remained flat ever since.
Measured labour productivity on the other hand continued upward, but its rate of growth shifted down. More on this in our next blog post.
Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), Bawerk.net
The American middle class, i.e. the non-supervisory workers, managed to grow their consumption in the midst of stagnating wages through
- moving to two income households (women constitute almost 50 per cent of the labour force today)
Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), Bawerk.net
- by increasing debt
Source: Federal Reserve – Flow of funds Z.1, Bawerk.net
It should be clear that when the share of women in the labour force has reached 50 per cent and further leverage of a shrinking household income has become counterproductive the end-game has started. The only way to increase living standards from here will be the old fashioned way; consume less than you produce and productively invest the surplus.
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A Comprehensive Breakdown of America’s Economic House of Cards | First Rebuttal
A Comprehensive Breakdown of America’s Economic House of Cards | First Rebuttal.
I was going over some of my older posts to review what was being discussed at the beginning of this year and what the perspectives were at that time. I found an interesting piece I wrote at the beginning of the year. I had just watched Janet Yellen’s inaugural panel hearing in front of the congressional finance committee members on Cspan. It’s basically a forum to allow the congressional financial committee members to directly pose comments and questions to the world’s most influential banker, namely, the US Fed chairman.
There were a few hardball questions but mostly just buttering up on Ms. Yellen from both sides of the aisle. Picking out a few of the interesting bits that came up in the course of discussion I was certain I saw a glimpse of honesty indicating that problems are on the horizon, from Ms. Yellen. The most notable commentary was her fairly forthright perspective that the CBO forward guidance depicted an imminent problem for America. What caught me a bit off guard was how easily the congressional finance committee members shrugged off the repetitive warnings from the Fed chair regarding this imminent problem. There was no discussion about possible solutions to the problem or even calls for further investigation to the warnings. It was simply dismissed. I found it incredibly ironic the one person in the world who is mandated to continuously increase leverage to the US was the one warning congress to get its fiscal house in order. Yet the congressional committee before her, acted as though they didn’t hear it.
However, subsequent to that initial committee hearing I’ve not heard any additional warnings from the Fed about getting the America’s fiscal house in order. It was a rare moment of honesty from a rookie chair and she apparently received a memo shortly thereafter informing her of the mistake. Now let’s take a look at specifically what Ms. Yellen was warning congress about. The CBO publishes annual long term forward guidance to give the world an idea of where things will be for the US 25 years out given where we are today. Forecasting so far into the future is no exact science and it relies heavily on assumptions. And so let’s take a look at the typical process.
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