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..extra point. This is the most ridiculous part: Continued tightening in labour markets might yet boost workers’ bargaining power enough for that to happen, as
by dalbasal 8y ago
..extra point. This is the most ridiculous part:
Continued tightening in labour markets might yet boost workers’ bargaining power enough for that to happen, as was the case during the late 1990s and late 2000s, two unusual periods in which labour’s share of GDP rose across the rich world.
Labour’s share of GDP is a fraction. labour/gdp. you can make it bigger by having higher wages or lower gdp. Anyone remember 1999 or 2008? Anything "unusual" about those years?
- harryh 8y agoGDP was still increasing in the late 90s in the US. The recession didn't start until March 2001.
- ethbro 8y agoThe interesting corollary would be that in the run-up to a recession, all other assets and opportunities are so over-valued that capital has nowhere else to go. And that increasing wages for labor is in fact capital's least-preferred option. Which would be sad, but more or less jive with how the modern global, publicly traded economy works.
- eli_gottlieb 8y agoWell, that sounds pretty accurate: today's economies are so thoroughly dominated by the interests of monopoly capital that it takes a long-running bubble/overheat to actually raise wages.
- harryh 8y agotoday's economies are so thoroughly dominated by the interests of monopoly capital How do you measure this?
- chibg10 8y agoEhhh, I think you're fudging the causality here and reading your own incorrect perspective into the article. Recessions hit the lowest rungs of the economic ladder hardest, and those same rungs are last to fully get in on the recovery. Hence, labor's share of GDP tends to be highest at the end of the business cycle... which necessarily coincides with an imminent recession.
- droidist2 8y agoOr is it that when wages rise and inflation kicks in, the Fed raises rates to "cool off" the economy, and then the recession comes?