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0 pointsgiantg22y ago0 comments

"Wages as a proportion of GDP, ie the so called 'labour share' has been relatively steady. If you believe that real GDP has increased, then real wages have increased."

Distribution is important. The high earners are the ones eating up the GDP increase. The middle class and lower class are mostly flat or negative.

https://www.epi.org/publication/charting-wage-stagnation/

"says it's about 62.5%."

Which is relatively low over the past 20 years, and somewhat low compared to other countries with strong economies.

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eru2y ago· 2 in thread

> Which is relatively low over the past 20 years, and somewhat low compared to other countries with strong economies.

Maybe, but it's not 'extremely low'. See https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/rankings/labor_force_partic... for a global comparison.

Yes, the distribution is important. Alas, the article that you linked is mostly rubbish. Eg their figure 2 is that infamous misleading graph that I commented on in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38953586

They also seem to imply that minimum wage legislation is good for poor people. The evidence is mixed at best. (The original supporters for the introduction of minimum wage laws were more honest, and admitted that it was about cutting black people and cripples etc out of the workforce.)

Figure 9 seems to forget that correlation ain't causation.

giantg2OP2y ago

"Eg their figure 2 is that infamous misleading graph that I commented on in"

If it's so infamous, do you care to point to something explaining what is wrong with it?

"They also seem to imply that minimum wage legislation is good for poor people."

I wasn't discussing this point, but agree that it's mixed.

"Figure 9 seems to forget that correlation ain't causation."

Figure 9 is just data. Sure, the explaination that goes with figure 9 talks of it as causative. I haven't read the journal article that data comes from, so I can't objectively say if there is a causative mechanism in that study that supports the text or not (can you?). That figure isn't really part of what I was discusing, although it does demonstrate the increase in top earners (not as well as charts comparing it to the changes for other labor groups).

eru2y ago

> If it's so infamous, do you care to point to something explaining what is wrong with it?

See my own comment that I linked there. Duh. See also their own implicit admission that the graph has problems: https://www.epi.org/blog/nothing-misleading-about-this-typic...

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