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Noah Smith
@Noahpinion
, 5 tweets, 1 min read Read on Twitter
Interesting fact: Nominal wages increased at a more-or-less constant rate from 1964 through 2018:
But, another interesting fact: REAL (inflation-adjusted) wages fell from 1973 through 1994.
And a third interesting fact: Real wages have risen fairly steadily from 1994 through 2018.
In other words, during the heyday of globalization, automation, immigration, and market concentration, we have seen a fairly steady rise in real wages.

It was earlier, during the 70s, 80s, and early 90s that real wages fell.
This makes me suggest that America's long-term wage stagnation was due to something other than the usual suspects (automation/globalization/immigration/concentration).

Was it de-unionization? Financialization? Incomplete adjustment of wages to inflation?

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Noah Smith
@Noahpinion
Two things that America is almost certainly going to get if we're going to continue as a functional, first-rate economy:

1. Government health care

2. Higher taxes on the rich

I don't know exactly *how* these will be implemented, but in some form I think they will be.
Two things that America also really needs but might *not* end up getting:

1. A system for increasing labor's share of income relative to profits

2. A program for housing affordability and redistribution of land rents
The reason I think we might not get a system for increasing labor's share of income relative to profits is that American workers have gone a long time without unions, and so might not understand the potential of collective bargaining, co-determination, etc.
Read 8 tweets
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Noah Smith
@Noahpinion
Four measures of real wages since 1964:

Blue = average hourly earnings of production and nonsupervisory workers (AHAPNW), CPI-adjusted

Red = AHAPNW, PCE-adjusted

Green = average hourly compensation, CPI-adjusted

Purple = average hourly compensation, PCE-adjusted
Now here's the same four measures since 2000.

The gap between wages and total compensation hasn't risen much recently. But PCE and CPI inflation measures are still diverging.
To me, the most important lesson of these graphs is that replacing employer-based health insurance with government (or government-paid) health insurance would open up lots of space for cash wages to go up.
Read 3 tweets
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Noah Smith
@Noahpinion
United States per capita carbon emissions are still high relative to other countries, but have actually fallen about a third since their peak in 1973, and are now back to about what they were in 1918.
Because of population growth, total U.S. emissions have fallen far less than per capita. But they're back down to around where they were in 1993.
In terms of consumption-based emissions, the drop has been slightly less, since the U.S. outsources a little bit of its emissions via imports.
Read 6 tweets

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Millennial Macro
@MillennialMacro
#inflation #bonds $TLT
Charts from last night Australian time. Not updated for most recent ISM number.
1/
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#USA #growthslowing
2/
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#USA #growthslowing
3/
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Nick Hanover
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I always get pretty depressed when I see old union cartoons from the late 19th century that are still super relevant to today, like this one
This specific cartoon was inspired by the situation with the serfdom tycoon George Pullman built outside Chicago, which led to the Pullman Strike of 1894 paleofuture.gizmodo.com/blood-on-the-t…
If you read the article on Pullman's worker community, you'll notice a lot of similarities between him and modern tycoons like Jeff Bezos, especially with how he convinced people the community he was building would help laborers and be a technological and social marvel.
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Michael Otsuka
@MikeOtsuka
Below are updated graphs I've made, which show how much the salaries of academics have fallen in real terms, by different measures of inflation, during the last 20 years. These graphs represent negotiated increases to the pay scale (illustrated via point 51). 1/
In all of the graphs, the lower blue line represents actual pay, in nominal terms. Steps indicate when negotiated increases took effect. The higher red line indicates how much salaries have changed in real (inflation-adjusted) terms. 2/
This red line indicates how much our salaries have declined in RPI terms: 3/
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@reiver ⊼ (Charles Iliya Krempeaux)
@reiver
"Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past"

by David Reich

goodreads.com/book/show/3574…

(genetics, aDNA)
It has arrived.
“Ancient DNA is rewriting human (and Neanderthal) history. The genomes of the long dead are turning up all sorts of unexpected and controversial findings.”
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Eric Electron
@ericelectron2
#Fact 1 - The Wage Gap is real. People who says it's not haven't read the data.

However, in places like the USA, the wage gap is *not* mostly due to sexism like many #femnist #WomenInScience are claiming it is today. Disparate outcomes doesn't imply disparate treatment.
Women typically choose fields that are lower paying; even in the #STEM fields. To attribute that to sexism only or even mostly is a very dishonest way of deriving an answer for this complex disparity.

Sources:

cew.georgetown.edu/wp-content/upl…

npr.org/sections/money…
When the US Department of Labor Statistics took into consideration personal choices, non-wage benefits, hours worked, experience, education, and other variables that contributes to the wage gap the percentage of earnings decreases to approximately 3%.

shrm.org/hr-today/publi…
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Parabolic Chad
@parabolictrav
1/ This is the Gym Theory of Markets. It is a diagram to help identify and explain the groups that act on price in markets (especially BTC). Imagine this as an actual gym, with a line down the middle and 2 doors (both on the sell/cash side of the gym). Imagine the dots are people
2/ People enter the gym first by being in cash (entering through the door and sitting on the sell/cash side). When they move to the buy side, price increases. When those on the buy/hold side move to the sell side, price decreases.
3/ How fast they come through the door and go to the buy side defines the long-term trend of the asset. I would argue Bitcoin has one of the greatest trend velocities in all assets, maybe in history. As well, the buyers have one of the highest "demand to hold" and don't sell.
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