The fundamental problem with the world economy

… is that wages are sticky.

With increased globalization, it has become significantly cheaper to produce certain goods and services in countries that were hitherto “low income” or “less developed’ or whatever you call it. In the past, in part due to protectionism at various levels and in part due to high transaction costs (transport, communication, etc.) “developed economies” such as the US or Europe had got adjusted to a reasonably high wage structure. In fact, it is possible that in the absence of trade with the rest of the world these countries might still be able to support that structure.

However, with the walls of protectionism and transaction costs falling, these traditionally high wage economies haven’t been able to compete with the up and coming economies where production costs are significantly lower. And because wages are sticky, i.e. it is impossibly hard to cut wages across the board, this has resulted in unemployment. Worse, a lot of other benefits (such as Social Security or Medicare in the US) have been set based on the high wage structure these countries used to enjoy.

And then you have unions, which makes it even tougher for you to cut wages which might make you competitive. It’s a combination of sticky wages and unionism that the various austerity measures in Greece haven’t managed to go through (of course, Greece has another set of problems in terms of law enforcement and tax collection).

And so, in short

1. Wages are sticky. Even though your current wages are not competitive enough, you can’t cut wages

2. That leads to high unemployment

3. That leads to lower economic activity and thus depression

4. The government needs to spend more to “stimulate” the economy, but hasn’t collected enough in good times. And the “level” of the economic cycle itself has gone down now. And the government itself has other obligations linked to the high wage levels

And so it goes. One thing I can think of is “devaluation” (in these times of floating currency rates, that term has lost all meaning), but then now these countries import so much that will again not be a good idea.


PS: please note that this post has been filed under “Arbit”