Shrill insight ‘o the day
by digby
It does seem absurd that corporations would refuse to pay higher wages if the result is a booming economy.
Krugman explains why corporations might not mind moderate depression:
Profits took a hit during the financial crisis, but have soared since then, and are now 60 percent above pre-crisis levels; meanwhile compensation has grown hardly at all, and indeed fallen in real per capita terms.
The point is that we have a depressed economy for workers, but not at all for corporations. How much of this is due to the bargaining-power issue is obviously something we don’t know, but the disconnect between the economy at large and profits is undeniable. A depressed economy may or may not actually be good for corporations, but it evidently doesn’t hurt them much.
Now, about the political economy: I don’t think we have to believe in a cabal of CEOs trying to keep the economy depressed. All that we need is for the big money to find the state of the economy OK from its point of view, so that politicians who listen to that money lose interest in the unemployed. You can round up a who’s who of CEOs for Fix the Debt; you can’t even get started on a power-list drive to Fix the Economy.
And so it remains unfixed.
There you have it.
