The leading Keynesian bloggers have been discussing the causes of inequality again. In particular, they have highlighted the apparent decline in labour’s share of national income in most advanced capitalist economies since the early 1980s. According to an ILO report, in 16 developed economies, labour took a 75% share of national income in the mid-1970s, […]
a través de Labour’s share — Michael Roberts Blog
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Our country has suffered from rising income inequality and chronically slow growth in the living standards of low- and moderate-income Americans. This disappointing living-standards growth—which was in fact caused by rising income inequality—preceded the Great Recession and continues to this day. Fortunately, income inequality and middle-class living standards are now squarely on the political agenda. But despite their increasing salience, these issues are too often discussed in abstract terms. Ignored is the easy-to-understand root of rising income inequality, slow living-standards growth, and a host of other key economic challenges: the near stagnation of hourly wage growth for the vast majority of American workers over the past generation. Countering that by generating broad-based wage growth is our core economic policy challenge.
With a group of simple charts, this paper brings the challenge we face into sharp focus, and lends clarity to the steps we must take to meet it.
It should not be surprising that trends in hourly wage growth have profound consequences for American living standards. After all, the vast majority of Americans rely on their paychecks to make ends meet. For these families, the bulk of income comes from wages and employer-provided benefits, followed by other income sources linked to jobs, such as wage-based tax credits, pensions, and social insurance. Wage-related income also accounts for the majority of total income among the bottom fifth of households.
Seguir leyendo US Wage Stagnation in Nine Charts
Customers shop at a Walmart Neighborhood Market store in Chicago, Illinois. US retail sales edged higher in August at a weaker than expected pace, led by auto and home furnishing sales, official data released Friday showed.
After cutting employees’ hours so deeply that stores could not keep their shelves stocked, Walmart is adding more full-time workers in time for the holiday shopping season. The retail giant has been shedding customersrecently due to disorganized stores and empty shelves. Seguir leyendo Walmart Cut Employee Hours So Drastically They Can’t Keep Shelves Stocked, Losing Customers
por
Michel Husson
La teoría dominante del desempleo es de una simplicidad bíblica: el desempleo es el resultado de una distorsión de precios. El precio del trabajo es demasiado elevado en relación a su productividad e induce a los empleadores a no comprar esta mercancía; pero, por otro lado, es demasiado bajo en relación a los ingresos sociales de reemplazo, lo que casi no incita a los desocupados a vender esta mercancía. Como científicos, la misión de los economistas es aceptar y enunciar esta dura realidad porque sería en vano querer ir al encuentro de leyes que tienen la misma ineluctabilidad, la misma densidad que, por ejemplo, la ley de la gravedad. Los cuerpos caen, y únicamente la baja del costo del trabajo y de las prestaciones de desempleo permiten la creación de puestos de trabajo.
Este artículo se propone examinar como semejante discurso puede dominar a pesar de su difícil adecuación a la realidad. El problema con la ciencia, es que es necesario aplicarla. Ahora bien, la economía dominante tiene dificultades para validar este lazo entre salario y empleo que tiende a desvanecerse a partir que se busca validarlo empíricamente. Sin embargo,dicho vínculo es el eslabón faltante que permitiría darle a la ideología dominante su máximo fortaleza. Y por eso la historia reciente de la modelización econométrica puede leerse como una serie de tentativas tendientes a restituir el esquema de base, al precio de incumplimientos cada vez más graves a las reglas metodológicas más elementales.
Descargue el artículo completo: http://hussonet.free.fr/ideoleco.pdf
Ensayos de Economía. Vol 20, No 36 (2010), pp. 97-120
Texto completo: PDF
