Are the Poor Getting Poorer?
28 May 2016 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, applied welfare economics, economic history, economics, labour economics, poverty and inequality Tags: pessimism bias, The Great Enrichment
Gap in GDP per Australian, Canadian, French, German, Japanese, New Zealander and British hour worked with the USA
28 May 2016 Leave a comment
in economic growth, economic history, labour economics, labour supply, macroeconomics, politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA, public economics Tags: Australia, British economy, Canada, Eurosclerosis, France, Germany, Japan, labour productivity, measurement error, taxation and labour supply
This data tells more of a story than I expected. Firstly, New Zealand has not been catching up with the USA. Japan stopped catching up with the USA in 1990. Canada has been drifting away from the USA for a good 30 years now in labour productivity.
Data extracted on 28 May 2016 05:15 UTC (GMT) from OECD.Stat from OECD Compendium of Productivity Indicators 2016 – en – OECD.
Australia has not been catching up with the USA much at all since 1970. It has maintained a pretty consistent gap with New Zealand despite all the talk of a resource boom in the Australia; you cannot spot it in this date are here.
Germany and France caught up pretty much with the USA by 1990. Oddly, Eurosclerosis applied from then on terms of growth in income per capita.
European labour productivity data is hard to assess because their high taxes lead to a smaller services sector where the services can be do-it-yourself. This pumps up European labour productivity because of smaller sectors with low productivity growth.
@PikettyLeMonde pension fund socialism has finished taking over #capitalism #Piketty
28 May 2016 Leave a comment
in economic history, financial economics, politics - USA, public economics Tags: company tax, Leftover Left, pension fund socialism, Peter Drucker, tax havens, taxation and entrepreneurship, taxation and investment, Twitter left
Peter Drucker first pointed out in the 70s that the retirement savings of ordinary workers will end up opening the majority of public listed companies. That day has come much to the disappointment of the Leftover Left ranging from Thomas Piketty to Max Rashbrooke.
Source: CONVERSABLE ECONOMIST: US Corporate Stock: The Transition in Who Owns It.
Any call for higher taxes on investment incomes and capital and even tax havens is an attack on the retirement savings of ordinary workers.
One of the rich countries so glum
28 May 2016 Leave a comment
in development economics, economic history, economics, economics of information, economics of media and culture, growth miracles Tags: pessimism bias, The Great Escape, The Great Fact
Europe in 1226
26 May 2016 Leave a comment
in economic history Tags: British history, dark ages, European history
The geography of U.S. poverty since 1960
26 May 2016 Leave a comment
in economic history, labour economics, poverty and inequality Tags: child poverty, family poverty, regional economic development
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The minimum wage and teenage age labour force participation
25 May 2016 Leave a comment
in economic history, economics, labour economics, labour supply, minimum wage Tags: living wage, teenage unemployment
The decline and decline of the rentier class in the USA
24 May 2016 Leave a comment
in economic history, entrepreneurship, human capital, industrial organisation, labour economics, labour supply, occupational choice, politics - USA, poverty and inequality Tags: entrepreneurial alertness, superstar wages, superstars, top 1%, top incomes
Looks like the Reagan Revolution coincided with the American rich going out to work for a living. They started earning most of their incomes from wages, salaries and pensions or from entrepreneurial income. The American rich are now working rich; top wage earners, not top income earners.
Source: The World Wealth and Income Database.
More on the top 1% giving women a pass on the great wage stagnation
23 May 2016 Leave a comment
in discrimination, economic history, economics of media and culture, gender, human capital, labour economics, labour supply, occupational choice, poverty and inequality Tags: gender wage gap, middle class stagnation, reversing gender gap, wage stagnation
Source: Read Online — Visualizing Economics.
Why were 1970s fashions just so bad, so loud?
23 May 2016 Leave a comment
in economic history, economics of media and culture Tags: fashions, The Great Enrichment
My explanation is the rapid income growth in the 1950s and 60s caught fashion designers short.
Comparing different income growth series 1900-2010 bit.ly/195NbKb http://t.co/9Uazhmayd4—
Catherine Mulbrandon (@VisualEcon) August 18, 2014
Up until the 1970s, and the swinging 60s in London where a tastes of that, clothing design for the masses is very much functional. It took 10 to 15 years for the fashion designers to work out how to respond to this sudden increase in demand for clothing as an expression of individual identity.
By the 1980s and 1990s, people were able to dress with distinction in finely cut clothing without the need to be gauche and loud.
% of top incomes from wages, salaries and pensions
23 May 2016 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, applied welfare economics, economic history, entrepreneurship, human capital, industrial organisation, labour economics, labour supply, occupational choice, poverty and inequality, survivor principle Tags: entrepreneurial alertness, envy, superstar wages, superstars, top 1%, top incomes
Everybody from the top 10% to the top 0.01% have to work for their living these days with much of their income coming from wages.
Source: The World Wealth and Income Database.
Bryan Bruce’s boy’s own memories of pre-neoliberal #NewZealand @Child_PovertyNZ
23 May 2016 Leave a comment
in applied welfare economics, comparative institutional analysis, economic history, economics of regulation, income redistribution, industrial organisation, politics - New Zealand, poverty and inequality, Public Choice, rentseeking Tags: child poverty, conspiracy theories, expressive voting, family poverty, Leftover Left, living standards, neoliberalism, Old Left, pessimism bias, rational irrationality, reactionary left, top 1%
New work by Chris Ball and John Creedy shows substantial *declines* in NZ inequality.
initiativeblog.com/2015/06/24/ine… http://t.co/f94fw4Bhae—
Eric Crampton (@EricCrampton) June 24, 2015
You really are still fighting the 1990 New Zealand general election if Max Rashbrooke makes more sense than you on the good old days before the virus of neoliberalism beset New Zealand from 1984 onwards.
Source: Mind the Gap: Why most of us are poor | Stuff.co.nz.
Bryan Bruce in the caption looks upon the New Zealand of the 1960s and 70s as “broadly egalitarian”. Even Max Rashbrooke had to admit that was not so if you were Maori or female.
The present rate of technology adoption is nearly a vertical line —@blackrock https://t.co/3oS3YAI4ld—
Vala Afshar (@ValaAfshar) January 22, 2016
Maybe 65% of the population of those good old days before the virus of neoliberalism. were missing out on that broadly egalitarian society championed by Bryan Bruce.
As is typical for the embittered left, the reactionary left, gender analysis and the sociology of race is not for their memories of their good old days. New Zealand has the smallest gender wage gap of any of the industrialised countries.
The 20 years of wage stagnation that proceeded the passage of the Employment Contracts Act and the wages boom also goes down the reactionary left memory hole.
That wage stagnation in New Zealand in the 1970s and early 80s coincided with a decline in the incomes of the top 10%. When their income share started growing again, so did the wages of everybody after 20 years of stagnation. The top 10% in New Zealand managed to restore their income share of the early 1970s and indeed the 1960s. That it is hardly the rich getting richer.
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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