Cost pressure

If we have a "cost pressure" problem, it impacts the whole economy. The cost pressure works the way an oil crisis works -- (1) by creating a general inflation and (2) by slowing economic growth. But with cost pressure it is not necessarily the oil producing nations that benefit.

1. I think we have a cost pressure problem. I think this because we never really did stop the inflation. Oh, we slowed it, yes. But prices did not stabilize. Instead, policymakers quit trying to achieve "stable prices" and started trying to achieve "stable inflation" instead. Stable prices means zero inflation. Stable inflation (with a two percent target) means they shoot for two percent inflation every year.
   
   
2. I think we have a cost pressure problem. I think this because economic growth has been slowing for almost the whole time since the end of World War Two. Economists do acknowledge bits and pieces of the slowing, and try to explain it. But they certainly have not reversed it. The slowing continues. Pay does not keep up with prices, and it gets harder and harder to find a better job.
   

We have had inflation and slowing growth for many years. So I think we have a cost pressure problem.

The rapid growth of finance since the end of the second World War suggests that finance is the sector which benefited from the increasing cost pressure that we were living with. The rapid growth of finance suggests that the growing income received by finance is the growing cost that causes inflation and slows the growth of jobs and income in the general economy. 

Again, the growth of finance is responsible for the cost pressure, the inflation, and the slowing growth that we have been living with now for half a century and more. And finance was growing the whole time.