stickman’s corral: Quick links – Saudi Arabia edition

stickman’s corral: Quick links – Saudi Arabia edition.

Prices are Lower with less Inflation, but so are wages

 

Ron Paul’s Money Illusion (Sequel)
David Andolfatto
Wed, 23 Mar 2011 15:11:00 GMT

As I promised to do here, I am posting a sequel to my original column: Ron Paul’s Money Illusion. I want to thank everyone who took the time to comment and criticize the views expressed there because it has led to me to sharpen my thinking on the matter. I doubt that what I have to say here will sway opinion one way or the other, but I at least hope that the nature of my criticism will be more

To put things another way, people eat bread, not money. The nominal price of bread, in of itself, is an uninformative measure. What would be informative is its nominal price in relation to one’s nominal income (or wealth). The first graph above has nothing to say about how nominal incomes have evolved.

Let me now combine the two graphs above into one picture, with both series inverted, and with both the price-level and nominal wage rate normalized to $1.00 in 1948 (the actual nominal wage rate was $1.43).

According to this (publicly available) data, the price-level (CPI) has increased by about a factor of 10 since 1948. But the average nominal wage rate has increased by a factor of 25. (There is, of course, considerable disparity in wage rates across members of the population. But I am aware of no study that attributes significant wage or income heterogeneity to monetary policy. Of course, if readers know of any such studies, I would be grateful to have them sent to me.)

The figure above implies that the real wage (the nominal wage divided by the price-level) has increased by a factor of 2.5 since 1948. This is undoubtedly a good thing because it implies that labor (the factor we are all endowed with) can produce/purchase more goods and services. More output means an increase in our material living standards (Though again, I emphasize that this additional output is not shared equally. But surely a laissez-faire world advocated by some is not one that would generate income equality either.)

Now, an interesting question to ask is how the picture above might have been altered if the price-level had instead remained more or less constant. Judging by the emails I receive, many people evidently believe that the nominal wage path depicted above would have largely remained the same (that is, they apparently seen no connection between nominal wages and the price-level).

If this was indeed true, then the average real wage in America would have increased by a factor of 25, instead of 2.5 under a regime of price-level stability. And if you believe this, or something close to it, then the conclusion would indeed be startling: the inflation generated by the Fed has apparently served only to reduce the purchasing power of labor (diverting resources to powerful capitalists). This claim–or some variation of it–is implicit in the quoted passage above.

I suggested, in my original post, that there is reason to believe that under an hypothetical regime of price-level stability, the nominal wage rate in the graph above would instead have ended up increasing only by a factor of 2.5 (more or less)–the factor by which real wages actually rose. This is what I meant by my claim of long-run neutrality of the price-level increase; and it is also what I meant by Ron Paul’s Money Illusion (which is subtly different than claiming the superneutrality of money expansion; more on this later).

Some evidence in favor of my "long-run neutrality view" is to be found in the time-path of labor’s share of income (GDP):

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Conservatives need to Remember Milton Friedman’s writings on the Depression

I’ve really become quite intrigued with the idea that tight money was a driving force behind the 2008 recession.  It’s unfortunate this view isn’t at least being aired outside of among economists.  Conservatives like Milton Friedman used to emphasize the critical importance of monetary policy and how the private sector’s role in recessions is limited.

A dilemma for conservatives
ssumner
Thu, 24 Mar 2011 01:44:28 GMT

Milton Friedman helped revive capitalism when he showed that the Great Depression didn’t show capitalism was unstable, but rather that monetary policy had been unstable. 

…I believe that abandoning the Friedman/Schwartz view of the business cycle was a big mistake.  It’s not that this view would have magically absolved the private sector from any role in the sub-prime fiasco, I’m somewhere in the middle on this issue, believing both regulators and private actors made huge mistakes.  Rather the F/S view would have absolved the financial crash from being the primary cause of the Great Recession.  It would be much easier to live with the occasional financial fiasco if it didn’t lead to a Great Recession.  Remember 1987?

If RGDP hadn’t fallen sharply in 2009 then the banking crisis would have been resolved much more easily, with far less public money. 

…In 1930-33 the policies advocated by Friedman and Schwartz would have been viewed as being highly progressive.  Later Friedman moved away from steady monetary growth toward policies that would offset velocity shocks—even more progressive.  It’s a pity that so few liberal and conservative economists picked up the torch when Friedman died in 2006.  What is “the torch?”

1.  Demand shocks drive the business cycle.

2.  Monetary policy is the best tool for demand stabilization.

3.  Monetary policy is very powerful at the zero bound.

How many economists believed all three in October 2008?

Alex Tabarrok on the Implications of Excess Money Demand

I’ve recently come to understand the tight money as a cause of the recession story better.  It might imply barter, so can one thing of examples of that?

Nick Rowe recently made the case that excess money demand is the fundamental reasons behind the Keynesian and Monetarist theories of recession.  Alex Tabarrok responds that if Nick is correct there should be a rise in barter transactions and the use of alternative currencies.  He shows that there was extensive use of both during the Great Depression.  Tabarrok has a harder time finding evidence of these occurring during the recent recession. Some commentators provide anecdotal evidence that barter trade has risen.  Whether it has or hasn’t, the bigger point is that barter and the use of alternative money assets is a way to mitigate the impact of money demand shocks.  Even if the data were to show these mitigaters are not being used, such a finding could simply mean that the recovery will be prolonged rather than being evidence against Nick’s hypothesis.  After all, there is compelling evidence of a serious excess money demand problem in the U.S. economy.

P.S. Some places in the Eurozone are using alternative currencies.

Alex Tabarrok on the Implications of Excess Money Demand
david.beckworth@gmail.com (David Beckworth)
Mon, 21 Mar 2011 16:03:00 GMT