Post
Topic
Board Economics
Re: An interesting case of a widespread misconception
by
deisik
on 23/06/2020, 12:15:58 UTC
However, what these forum members forget to account for is the rise in wages during the same time span. And the irony is that wages in the US have been outperforming inflation since WWII, barring a few rather short periods. It basically means that people become wealthier over years despite a declining dollar
Except for the stagflation period Smiley
https://www.investopedia.com/articles/economics/08/1970-stagflation.asp

Well, that actually remains to be seen

Here's a chart which invites you to reconsider the definition of that period:



As everyone can confirm, productivity continued to rise while real wages either flatlined or outright declined during the following 20 years. This looks like a paradox because the growth in productivity is how higher real wages come to be and which had been the case prior to 1973 (all other things being equal)

However, there is no paradox as this phenomenon has a very simple and established explanation. It is the wages of simple workers that stagnated but as the table in this post clearly shows, the super rich had started to steal from the working class. If it weren't for them, we would see something like that:



If it were for the change in inequality, real wages would have grown significantly even despite the stagflation of 1970's