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The labor share of income in the US is at its lowest post-war level

libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org

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Re: The labor share of income in the US is at its lowest post-war level

#551

Post by eudamoniac »

mschuster91 wrote: post #184
gruez wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>and half of the US is living in abject poverty Source? All the ones I know of use questionable methodology like: "being able to afford a 2 bedroom apartment at median wage".

> All the ones I know of use questionable methodology like: "being able to afford a 2 bedroom apartment at median wage". Well, that's (at minimum) what you need to raise a family and replace yourself in the labor pool.

Someone should inform all of the poor children being born and raised everywhere in USA and earth that they need a 2 bedroom apartment to exist, actually

Re: The labor share of income in the US is at its lowest post-war level

#552

Post by tadfisher »

palmotea wrote: post #548
sapphicsnail wrote: post #495

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you aware of the irony of complaining about people being hypersensitive while you're overreacting to someone explaining why some people might find a word offensive?

You misunderstood me: I'm complaining about people being sensitive/offended due to the origin of a word. It's not a workable standard. Language changes and evolves, and the etymology should considered little more than a historical footnote not some significant, controlling thing. If I open etymological dictionary and find out the word "pineapple" was originally coined to demean my ancestors (a fact I and a majority o…

There's one difference between your experience and mine, and that is that I learned about the etymology from people with uteruses on separate occasions after I had used the word. So it's not some meaning lost to time, at least to people I associate with.

In any case, I made a suggestion. Do with it what you will.

Re: The labor share of income in the US is at its lowest post-war level

#553

Post by AngryData »

PaulHoule wrote: post #258
digitaltrees wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I own a Medicaid home care agency in 13 states. We serve low income families and our caregivers, who earn $12-18hr which is higher than minimum wage, absolutely struggle. We have created food banks and housing assistance because even working people are a few sick days or one car repair away from homelessness. I would encourage you to go work with average Americans in average towns. The facts on the ground are stark a…

Someone could interpret that as a lack of capitalism rather than the opposite. That is, Henry Ford changed the world because he deployed capital to make workers so productive that they could afford to buy the cars they make. A person paid to do child care in an organization with overhead, who has to pay taxes, etc. is not productive enough to put their own children in child care. So child care fails to revolutionize…

That story about Ford is just PR. Ford had to increase wages because he was churning through so many employees from injury and burnout that he had to convince people even living 1000 miles away to consider moving to Detroit and working on an assembly line. Otherwise he literally could not fill all the positions needed to run an assembly line.

Re: The labor share of income in the US is at its lowest post-war level

#554

Post by AngryData »

IncreasePosts wrote: post #251
mschuster91 wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All the ones I know of use questionable methodology like: "being able to afford a 2 bedroom apartment at median wage". Well, that's (at minimum) what you need to raise a family and replace yourself in the labor pool.

In the 1950s Americans were doing a good job at replacing themselves in the labor pool, and household size was larger and houses were smaller. Why is it impossible for Americans to live with 300 sq ft per person like baby boomers did as kids, but now we must live with 600+ sq ft per person?

Because margins on building smaller housing is lower so nobody with capital is investing in it. The same reason the US doesn't build cheap commuter cars, nobody with money to invest is investing their money on such a slim margined product with no windfall conditions.

Re: The labor share of income in the US is at its lowest post-war level

#555

Post by AngryData »

cool_dude85 wrote: post #87
TrackerFF wrote: post #57

Obviously the solution here is for workers to also become shareholders.

The US has historically been quite opposed to the workers becoming shareholders.

Only if you call it socialism or communism. Otherwise Americans like co-op businesses and employee shares.

Re: The labor share of income in the US is at its lowest post-war level

#556

Post by AngryData »

feverzsj wrote: post #241

Because labors in China are extremely cheap. And they are getting cheaper and cheaper in last decade, despite the GDP growth.

Chinas wages have been rising for decades and now many Made in China products are outsourced from China to produce. Your ideas about China feel a decade or so out of date to me.

Re: The labor share of income in the US is at its lowest post-war level

#557

Post by AngryData »

arthurptj wrote: post #80
aeternum wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Marx fails to imagine a world in which labor actually has little to no value. His worldview is primarily that capitalists 'steal' the valuable labor. However it doesn't seem that that is actually the world we are in. Instead the intrinsic value of human labor seems to be slowly trending towards zero. And it kind of makes sense, same has happened with oxen labor, horse labor, etc.

Then why does every plumber I know own a yacht

Because you live in a prosperous area and the plumbers unionized in order to maintain wage growth along side their neighbors.

Re: The labor share of income in the US is at its lowest post-war level

#558

Post by tokai »

wqaatwt wrote: post #94
tokai wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Other countries in the world have manage to keep workers bargaining power in the face of globalization and technological progress. I think in the case of US literally killing workers and union people is a huge part of why US workers lack power and why US unions are so impotent.[0] [0] see Battle of Blair Mountain and what work Pinkerton mainly did from its founding to WW2, as examples.

> Other countries in the world have manage to keep workers bargaining power Such as? They might have managed to maintain it for privileged subgroups of the workforce but not for the average worker.

The Nordic countries.

Re: The labor share of income in the US is at its lowest post-war level

#559

Post by stymaar »

SideQuark wrote: post #519
stymaar wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Automation, robots, software etc. they are all capital share. I highly doubt automation and robots are a meaningful factor here, but IP and outsourcing have the exact same as automation.

There’s plenty of papers showing exactly this. What do you think has driven productivity? People simply bring smarter? The fact is capital expenditure from company or investors has bought machinery, compute, pipelines, transport, and massive investment to make those workers more productive for decades. As such, the returns to capital as a share has increased. Those places able to deploy capital to add productivity wi…

> What do you think has driven productivity?

“Productivity” is a terrible metric for such a discussion, it's not what it sounds, it's merely “real” GDP/worked hours.

> The fact is capital expenditure from company or investors has bought machinery, compute, pipelines, transport, and massive investment to make those workers more productive for decades. As such, the returns to capital as a share has increased. Those places able to deploy capital to add productivity win over those that don’t.

This is the fairy tale you learn in econ 101, but in reality that's not what happened in the period, the businesses that won during the 2000-24 period (the so-called “tech” companies) were companies for which capex were well below average.

> This is all well known, and easily checked.

That's not “well known”, you're just saying the gospel. It doesn't matter if it's contradicted by evidences, you believe that how the world work so it must be true.

Re: The labor share of income in the US is at its lowest post-war level

#560

Post by stymaar »

mech998877 wrote: post #538
stymaar wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Automation, robots, software etc. they are all capital share. I highly doubt automation and robots are a meaningful factor here, but IP and outsourcing have the exact same as automation.

Robots (and other tools) are capital. A way I think of it: if you formed a co-op of sorts, with let's say 20 people, starting with no land ownership and hardly any tools, they could try to make a business. Whatever they end up starting would be a fairly low-productivity business- washing windows, janitorial services, lawn service, etc. The more tools and land a co-op has to work with, the more productive they can be.…

That's econ 101. But that doesn't mean that's what happened in the real world.

The thing is you won't be able to name a single industry for which automation has had a significant impact on labor productivity during the 2000-2020.

The US lost almost half of its manufacturing jobs in the 2000s and it has pretty much nothing to do with productivity, and everything to do with businesses moving their production abroad.

Robots can have a huge impact in the coming decades, but you can't argue that they had negligible impact on the past two decades.

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