Yes, you can. You can raise the wages of the poor by raising the minimum wage, aggressively promoting unionization instead of aggressively fighting it, compressing the net income distribution by raising taxes on the high earners, and restricting the number of dollars that the fed will accept from overseas markets limiting the number of foreign trade deficits every year to say 150 billion dollars a year. These measures would go a long way to address the fifty-year-long conversion of the workers' wages into profits. Excessive profits are bad for the economy, wages stopped growing in the first quarter of this year meaning that all of the inflation that we are seeing now is caused by excessive profits.
Both minimum wage and unions are ways to make higher wages for fewer people, while making more people unemployed.
And yet when we have had a relatively higher minimum wage and a much more unionized economy none of what you said happened. Wages were higher and profits were lower. This is what happens in the real economy where profits are what is left after the bills are paid, wages are what you negotiate and prices are set by the company to generate an ROI, but not in your fantasy economics 101 where everyone is paid what they are worth, the lower wages are the more people will be hired, and every transaction is a bartered one determined by supply and demand setting prices. You believe that the economy is supply-driven where corporations invest because money is available and not that the economy is demand-driven where corporations invest because there is unfulfilled demand for the product.
Before 1980 personal debt ran at about 40% of personal income, aggregate %GDP. After 1980 personal debt climbed to 300%. How does your economics explain this? My understanding of your fantasy economics is that it isn't a problem because we owe it to each other. Is this your understanding too? In the real world, this is a major problem because money is created by debt but not the money to pay the interest on the debt. This means that we need, you guessed it, more debt to pay the interest.
From 1980 to 2008 corporate profits went from 2 times corporate investment to 7X while real wages grew by 8%, all based on % GDP. Yet again I have to ask you what do you consider to be an excessive amount of corporate profits?
You argued that the post-war economy was based on a positive trade balance. When I looked it up the current account balance was negative or less than 1% of US GDP for the US through the post-war period.
And you're talking a trade war--a game nobody wins. Besides, we don't have the big trade deficit that's routinely pointed out by leftists--we are importing a lot of goods but exporting services. It's a lot more balanced than the left would have you believe.
Do you mean the current account balance, the sum of all money entering or leaving the US that was at zero 4Q 1981 and at last quarter was 854 billion dollars? This is how you support your arguments?
Graph and download economic data for Balance on Current Account, NIPA's from Q1 1947 to Q4 2023 about current account, BOP, balance, GDP, and USA.
fred.stlouisfed.org
We should put up a poll- is the US winning the trade wars? I would vote No. You and one other here would vote Yes, presumably because free trade lowered the price of goods?
It is absurd to blame Biden for the high gas prices. Every nation on earth is experiencing high gas prices. You would have to argue that Biden is responsible for every country's high gas prices no matter what energy policies each country has. This should be enough to tell any critical thinker that the cause of the high gas prices isn't energy policy-based. The oil companies are rent-seeking in the absence of any economic and governmental pressure to increase their production of oil.
Agreed. Blame Pootin.
and COVID-19
