Wednesday, September 30, 2020

The inflation of the 1950s and 60s and 70s wasn't wage-push inflation. It was finance-push

The first graph shows corporate interest costs (red) and corporate employee compensation (blue), with each shown as a percent of total corporate deductions. (I'm using total corporate deductions as a proxy for total corporate costs.)  Compensation costs run much higher than interest costs; that is as it should be.

However, as you can see, compensation falls while interest costs rise:


Look at the same data with the red shown as an addition to the blue:

The blue region on the second graph shows employee compensation. The red region shows interest costs. 

The blue line shows the total of everything below it. It shows employee compensation just as we saw it on the first graph.

The red line on the second graph shows the total of everything below it. In this case, it shows the total of the two regions -- interest and compensation costs, combined.

The red line runs close to horizontal: Combined, the two costs make up close to 25% of deductible corporate expenses. But the blue line falls five percentage points, from near 25% to near 20% of corporate costs

Essentially, during the three decades from 1950 to 1980, employee compensation fell by 5% of corporate expenses. At the same time, interest costs increased by 5% of corporate expenses. Essentially, all of the money for the interest cost increase came out of wages.

Economists have always said that rising wages caused the inflation of the 1960s and 70s. It is simply not true. Increasing financial cost caused that inflation.

1 comment:

The Arthurian said...

For Adam Smith's take on wage-push versus profit-push inflation, see Wage-push inflation, my ass.