Forum Post: Reversing income disparity starts with real wage growth
Posted 12 years ago on Dec. 1, 2011, 11:49 p.m. EST by RogerDee
(411)
from Montclair, NJ
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
In a tight labor market employers have to compete to fill job vacancies, thats when wage growth happens. When workers can fairly vote to unionize a workplace, then more workers can bargain for better wages. When Union wages grow, non union wages grow.
Read more here: http://rdanafox.blogspot.com/2011/12/real-wage-growth-starts-with-widespread.html
I wonder if anyone knows a good study on "types of jobs created and lost in today's economy." I ask this because I suspect that in addition to macroeconomic, financial and political issues, other factors related to new technologies and forms of consumption are distorting the evolution of employment. In my country, Argentina, the government is trying to promote a process of re-industrialization and regeneration of employment. However, this process is faced with problems of specialization of labor supply, especially among young people. Simplifying this trend can say that there is an excess of candidates to work with computers and a shortage of young people who want to work with lathes, milling machines or presses (although the salaries are good). Moreover, the many years of industrial destruction caused by neoliberalism "cut" the chain of transfer of expertise in industrial trades (for example in the tooling sector) and this is still a serious problem. Thanks and sorry my poor English.
RogerDee - that's a cool name, very cool. Yes your idea is correct! Wages are best raised when the demand is high and supply is low, or when unions work. Unions work very well for some industries. But trying to teach the science of economics to the average Occupy forum participant, is frustrating and often fruitless.
But good luck!
I have been "foruming" for about a week - and its kind a fun, I learned a little, but I am not impressed with most of the people here. A few are good and intelligent and not rude, but most of these forum bloggers are quite difficult and annoying to deal with... good luck with this post!
I'm an old vet on forums, pleased to meet ya. Thanks for the good luck.
When union wages grow artificially American jobs get shipped overseas and Americans at home lose them. You have to understand the unintended consequences of good intended legislation. Job growth and wage increases need to occur organically and not because of some artificial imposition by a government enforced monopoly on labor known as a union.
Being powerless at work is organic? The power of the workers is artificial? Then fuck natural. Rise up, cyborgs, rise up! Eat with a fork and go on strike. Send the Koch brothers to prison in hemp sweat pants. Let the days of bosses and slobs come to an end simultaneously--and really the ideology of the rulers is simply a matter of slovenliness transposed onto the realm of ideas. We'll put on neck ties and sing the Marseillaise at the funeral of the natural economy, natural law, human nature, and every other bit of nonsense that some neo-cavemen fabricated as a justification for inequality. Sink your monkey toes into the soil all you want, boss's pet, the working class is through relying on luck and happenstance. We're ready to make plans.
You want to kill the goose to get all of the golden eggs. The trouble is that the real world just doesn't work that way. If you're pissed off at the laws of physics then blame God or the big bang or whatever. Acting like a spoiled adolescent won't solve your problems.
Oh, tell us, inarticulate assistant manager at Whole Foods, how the world works. Tell us, Caliban, how you overthrew Prospero and attained the "golden eggs." Tell us how the speculative economy was magically switcherooed into the place of the wholesome productive economy by the enchantment of fiat currency. Tell us how each will find his right and proper place once the great shmoo of the free market regains the kingdom.
Some of us know what you are, creature. We recognize the servility, the cravenness. We know you tell yourself that obeisance before a dimly perceived abstraction isn't real slavery, that all men are equal before Moloch. We've heard the excuses, and we never bought a word of it. For you: Scorn and defiance; slight regard, contempt. As for God, the laws of physics, and the big bang, you can keep it all, both the real things and your uninformed fantasies about 'em. I'll stick with courage, good humor, and human reason. As Margaret Thatcher said, there's no alternative.
Don't get mad at me if you're unemployed. Maybe you should have studied something useful in college. As for the rest of us we owe you nothing. Maybe you should've studied something besides English Lit then you wouldn't be so irrationally bitter at the wrong people. Your precious fiat currency is the very reason you have no future. Well...that and your own bad decisions.
That comment really brought a smile to my face and almost made me laff. Yes, because in that creatures world, Fiat is not a car, it is the cure of all evils.
"Some of us know what you are, creature"
Our wages have not grown in 30 years, the US is no longer the high wage nation it once was, YOU have to understand the facts.
I'm not denying that there is a problem I'm disagreeing with your solutions. The reason that our wages don't grow is largely due to our monetary policy that takes the savings and wages of hard working Americans and inflates them into oblivion as cheap money that Wall Street can speculate with. If you stop the inflation then the wages will grow in real purchasing power because wealth will stop being siphoned from the productive economy to the speculative "too big to fail" economy.
Doesnt explain wage growth from 1938 to 1973, when we had inflation, when we had keynesian jobs stimulus.
Actually interestingly enough you may notice that right about the time when that job growth ended, the early 70s is when the dollar was totally decoupled from gold. So thanks for proving my point. Since then inflation has been off the charts by the old method of determining it which is the correct method. Of course if you take the government's current estimates for inflation then its a wonder that everything keeps getting more expensive despite the "low inflation" based on the core CPI.
Dollar was decoupled in 1970.
Now lets get into the 1980's workforce wasnt growing as fast as the previous 50 years, we reduced Gov and private investment in US jobs, the '86 Tax Reform Act gave tax breaks for outsourcing, and the incentive for capital to go into speculation. The wealth shift is shifted into hi gear.
Oil rising from $16 a bbl to $40+ had nothing to do with wages that stopped growth in 1973 caused By getting off gold in 1970. :~ )
Unemployment hit 8.5% by 1975, Winding down of Vietnam. So as job creation wanes so does wage growth. Rarely do we see wage growth with unemployment over 5.5% to 6%. And by 1973 that was true. Trade deficits were a fact of life by 1965. http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/csmonitor_historic/access/201599352.html?dids=201599352:201599352&FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:AI&date=May+15%2C+1965&author=&pub=Christian+Science+Monitor&desc=U.S.+trade+deficit+cut&pqatl=google
With Americans buying more goods from overseas, those purchases supported fewer US jobs.
Kidding about the price of oil, that slowed the economy down, in a recession you shed jobs, we dont see wage growth normally unless unemployment is below 6%.
When people buy more stuff from overseas that means that the wages that they make stretch further because the reason their buying that stuff is because it's cheaper. That's not a bad thing in and of itself. It's the concept of comparative advantage where individuals and nations produce the goods and services that they are the best positioned to produce. The wealthier a country is the more expense it's labor is and the less it is able to compete in industries that can easily be outsourced. This is fundamental to economics. Protectionism only helps a few people and it hurts the many. If protectionism was such a great thing then why stop at the national level? Why not have State protectionism or City or neighborhood? Why not just say that every household should produce everything by itself in order to create more jobs?
4% unemployment in 2000, job growth ended? Okey Dokey
You know I meant wage growth. Don't dodge my point.
lolz. Yeah Ok.
Couple the union demands with the highest corporate tax rate in the world and mountains of regulations and you get what we got.
No, couple a newfound ability to break unions with tax breaks and incentives to send jobs overseas and an incredible squeamishness about protectionism and you get what we got.
You just spelled out the real issue. It was TRADE POLICY that changed. Not the gold standard. Not the Fed.http://economyincrisis.org/content/america-shutting-down-0
Right> by 1965 the trade deficit was becoming an issue. By 1970's we were breaking 25 year records with larger trade deficits.
And please dont count anti union efforts like the Taft Hartely Act and the PATCO strike or the elimination of deductions and exemptions to incentivize the flow of capital to US jobs in the 1986 Tax Reform Act. Or the increase of undocumented aliens being hired by corporations. Or the price of oil going from $13 brl to $40 during the 1970's
Nooooo we cant count those things.