4 ms·

I do broadly agree with you. However, all of those things are things that happen over time (except assasination, and Kennedy's assassination happened 8 years b

I do broadly agree with you. However, all of those things are things that happen over time (except assasination, and Kennedy's assassination happened 8 years before), which does not explain the obvious inflection point in those graphs. I honestly think that some of those things may have been caused by the removal of the gold standard, especially neoliberal economics. (Obviously, things like minorities and women's rights probably not so much; those things were already happening.) So yes, you are right that those things also changed, but what caused what?

api 5y ago
Thing is in a closed system that is steady in other ways, wages should keep up with inflation. It would be interesting to graph inflation adjusted wages per capita ignoring employment rates to test whether increased women or minority participation in the workforce explains the lag of wages behind inflation. Once again I have to point out that supply and demand economics are as amoral and apolitical as physics. Don't read any opinion commentary into that. There is talk of labor shortages now and employers are being forced to increase wages. If workforce equality is a major explanation then maybe the change in employment demographics has played itself out and now wages will start keeping up a little better. Maybe. Or maybe more jobs will get replaced by robots and industry in other countries. Any remaining gap is probably attributable to outsourcing. What I do wonder is whether the decoupling of the dollar from gold and consequent monetary inflation masked the effects of all the other things I mentioned enough that we could impoverish the middle class without people rioting in the streets. If we'd stayed on gold people would have seen their paychecks decline in both nominal and real terms.

4 ms·

I do broadly agree with you. However, all of those things are things that happen over time (except assasination, and Kennedy's assassination happened 8 years b

by ghoward 5y ago

api 5y ago
Thing is in a closed system that is steady in other ways, wages should keep up with inflation. It would be interesting to graph inflation adjusted wages per capita ignoring employment rates to test whether increased women or minority participation in the workforce explains the lag of wages behind inflation. Once again I have to point out that supply and demand economics are as amoral and apolitical as physics. Don't read any opinion commentary into that. There is talk of labor shortages now and employers are being forced to increase wages. If workforce equality is a major explanation then maybe the change in employment demographics has played itself out and now wages will start keeping up a little better. Maybe. Or maybe more jobs will get replaced by robots and industry in other countries. Any remaining gap is probably attributable to outsourcing. What I do wonder is whether the decoupling of the dollar from gold and consequent monetary inflation masked the effects of all the other things I mentioned enough that we could impoverish the middle class without people rioting in the streets. If we'd stayed on gold people would have seen their paychecks decline in both nominal and real terms.