Miscellaneous material to start your week.
- Brian Nolan
examines the relationship between inequality and median incomes in developed countries, and concludes that there's little basis to view inequality as an inevitable outcome of international forces:
Globalisation and technological change are often portrayed as
exogenous forces sweeping across the rich countries, inexorably driving
up inequality and forcing workers to accept wage stagnation (and often
less security) if they are to hold on to their jobs. Instead, the
variation in country experiences shows how much institutions and policy
responses matter to how these forces – themselves subject to human
agency rather than God-given – play out in the job market and affect
household disposable incomes. Wage-setting institutions clearly have a
critical influence. The Belgian combination of wages indexed to
inflation, collective agreements covering most workers, and a high
minimum wage underpinned significant wage growth across the
distribution. In Australia, the extension of collectively negotiated
employment terms and conditions over much of the work force, together
with a very high minimum wage, play a key role. By contrast, the
remarkably poor earnings performance of the UK over the last decade is
in a context where wage bargaining has become individualised.
Broader welfare state institutions also play a critical role in
levels and patterns of employment. Countries with reasonably strong
income growth over recent decades have generally combined some increase
in real wages with a rise in the overall employment rate and especially
female employment. Recent UK and much longer US experience shows,
however, that rising female employment when combined with very weak real
wages still equates to stagnating living standards. The welfare state
is also key to whether the costs associated with increasing women’s
employment are borne by the families themselves or socially, with
implications for their welfare generally missed by current metrics.
Furthermore, countries have made very different choices with respect to
the regulation of employment contracts and conditions, offsetting or
accelerating the effects of forces making work more precarious.
Country contexts really matter, and policy responses must be framed
in light of the institutional point of departure and distinctive
challenges each country faces. Promoting economic growth and ensuring
that its benefits are transmitted to middle and lower income households
need equal attention; redistribution can be strengthened, while wages
generated in the market remain fundamental. The current political
salience of inequality and stagnation provides a window of opportunity
for a fundamental reassessment of how growth and prosperity are being
pursued; the US experience should not however dominate in the search for
explanations and effective responses.
- And Salvatore Morelli
studies (PDF) the shape of income concentration around financial crises, concluding that market shocks don't have any lasting effect in equalizing income unless paired with meaningful public policy changes.
- John Vandermeer and Ivette Perfecto
point out how privatization and financialization set Puerto Rico up for the humanitarian disaster resulting from Hurricane Maria.
- Alexi White
warns that the Doug Ford PCs are likely just getting started in slashing programs needed to support the most vulnerable people in Ontario. And Alissa Tedesco, Jon Herriot and Katie Boone
discuss how Ford's attacks against basic social benefits will endanger the health of the public at large, while Farrah Merali
notes that the PCs' threats to safe injection sites similarly stand to end lives to accomplish nothing more than political posturing.
- Finally, Zack Beauchamp
reports on new research which examines terminations arising out of public commentary at U.S. universities, and finds both that any concern about speech is overblown, and that it's left-wing speech that's actually more likely to result in reprisals.
