Sunday, March 6, 2022

RICH-POOR GAP: A SYNOPSIS (revised 8/23/21)


abstract:

A dramatic concentration of income and wealth, disproportionally rewarding relatively small elites in society, has become evident especially in the last four decades in the United States, but similar disparities also exist worldwide. The phenomenon has become perhaps the most glaring deficiency in the functioning of modern capitalism. Economists address this issue in terms of free-market and non-market (government policy) solutions or approaches; but government interventions have not worked and even free trade has rewarded owners of corporations rather than workers, including in the foreign countries where investment has migrated. The strong rationale for rewarding capitalists is still lauded as the source of entrepreneurialism and innovation, but rising inequality and decreasing social mobility have discredited “trickle-down” theories and foment social discord. The most intractable disparities prevail in rewards garnered by individuals whether from their personal efforts, inheritance, or just good luck. Corporate payroll systems are clearly out of balance, which indicates that shareholder capitalism has not been functioning properly. Few politicians believe that regulation and taxation of higher income and wealth are the best or only recourse. Resolution must revolve ultimately around notions of social control, especially realistic shareholder control over managers. However, getting rich as an executive in a top-tier corporation indeed seems appropriate, perhaps as much as for talent in professional sports or Hollywood. Of course, the issue subsides in a growing economy.

keywords:

rich-poor gap

middle class

technological unemployment

globalization

utility maximization

trickle-down effect

ultra-high net worth individuals

shareholder capitalism

integrity of the market

incentive pay

minimum wage law

 

Introduction

Debate about the rich-poor gap, though it is an ancient conundrum, continues unabated; indeed wealth and income inequality has special salience recently as the Biden administration in the United States attempts to address the issue. Especially during the last four-five decades in the United States, a dramatic concentration of income and capital, disproportionately rewarding a relatively small elite in society, has become manifest. Compensation to top earners has skyrocketed while inflation-adjusted earnings of the median American household have been essentially unchanged. Widening income and wealth disparities have become perhaps the most glaring issue in modern capitalism, increasingly evident in almost every country in the world.

A variety of figures supporting this trend are commonly cited, for example by Business Week, Credit Suisse Wealth Report, and many others. The World Inequality Report 2018 presented systematic data designed for society to conduct informed debate on inequality. Since 1980, the global top 1% captured twice as much income growth as the 50% poorest individuals. (This bottom 50% has nevertheless enjoyed pivotal growth rates.) While the top 1% captured 27% of total growth, the bottom 50% captured 12%. Projections to 2050 do not represent much improvement. The global middle class, which contains all of the poorest 90% income groups in the European Union and United States, has been squeezed.

According to USA Today (7/1/20), taxable income declared by the top 1% of Americans soared from 10% in 1980 to 20% in 2019 (of a much larger total). Meanwhile, the lowest-earning 25% accounted for less than 4% of income. Graphics in Domhoff (2012) showed that compensation for top executives was less than 50x workers’ pay until around 1980; whilst figures cited today have increased as high as over 400x. The same ratio is about 25:1 in Europe.

From 1990 to 2005 American CEO pay increased almost 300% (adjusted for inflation) while production workers gained a scant 4.3% (Ibid). Piketty’s (2014) figures indicate since 1973 the share of GDP garnered by the wealthiest 1% of Americans has risen from less than 8% to more than 19%. The share of American employment in manufacturing has declined from nearly 30% in the 1950s to under 10%, such that even drudgery gives way to unemployment.

Piketty argued that America has pioneered a hyper-unequal economic model in which a top tier of capital-owners and “supermanagers” grab a growing share of national income and accumulate more and more of the national wealth. The figures show that income and wealth gains in the last 4 decades have gone to a tiny percent of the rich, while real wages to labor have been stagnant. Both economic and political forces allow and even favor the concentration of wealth into the hands of the very top elites, which is manifest in and also attributable to this worldwide trend cited by Piketty toward higher returns from economic growth going to capital than to labor. The steady elimination of jobs and squeezing out an entire economic middle class has generated more antagonistic, unstable, even dangerous politics. 

 

The role of free trade

Largely explained in terms of technological change and globalization, American middle class jobs have been turned over to machines or migrated overseas. Yet even overseas average job holders have benefitted less than investors. Worldwide since the 1980s, owners of capital and top managers have captured an increasing share of the world’s income from production while the share going to labor has fallen. The realization that both globalization and technological progress have rewarded the owners of capital rather than their workers is not a new phenomenon: John Milton Keynes lamented a “new disease ...technological unemployment. … due to our discovery of means of economising the use of labour outrunning the pace at which we can find new uses of labour.” (1930) Substituting capital for labor, or cheaper foreign labor for domestic, became increasingly attractive in the modern era. Many American jobs created domestically have been in low-wage industries such as retailing and food service.

 

The classical economists’ argument is that free trade is a win-win arrangement because the generally lower consumer prices that may arise from imports will exceed the wage losses in the home market. Thus, despite so many middle-class jobs lost as a result of out-sourcing production (and contributing to an ever-rising trade imbalance), the overall home economy is supposed to be better off because of lower prices for consumers – a utility-maximizing outcome. Obviously, our longstanding adherence to this theory has its victims – the American economy has suffered a persistent deficit and American workers are not better off.  Since the 1970s, the proportion of American adults participating in the work force has been hitting new lows. The gains that have been achieved through free trade have gone to the richest percent of the population.

The Peterson Institute of International Economics estimated that 39% of the increase in income inequality in America is caused by its trade deficits – we have moved so much middle-class manufacturing overseas. While in theory the gain to American consumers from cheaper imports offsets the loss of income to American workers, the gain from cheaper costs is garnered increasingly by capital, not labor. Since labor's share of economic growth has been declining worldwide, the relatively higher return on capital becomes part of the inequality debate. Though foreign labor has been grabbing American jobs, those foreign workers are robbing us to reward plutocrats, just as our labor has been doing.

 

The Trump Administration’s trade wars did not rectify the problem. Trump argued also that many trade deals (such as Nafta and Asian Free Trade negotiations) have not been in the direct interest of “America First”. However, classical economics would hold that free trade is in the global interest, and global benefit is what free trade is supposed to accomplish.

 

Donald Trump won the 2016 election on the platform that free trade was not “fair trade”, and our trading partners –even Europe- were “laughing at us”. But national protectionism has garnered legitimate support from economists. Paul Krugman and others in the 1980s identified the “free trade fallacy” that trade relationships are disadvantageous for some traders because of oligopolistic advantage. Now it can be further argued that it is the corporate owners of companies that benefit from free trade agreements, not the workers nor even the countries.

 

Economic rationale for rewarding the capitalists

The United States is generally cited as the most unequal advanced country in terms of income differentials between rich and poor. This circumstance is lauded by many as a source of American dynamism – for driving wealth creation, hence thrift, innovation, enterprise. Thus, inequality in theory should boost economic growth through the implicit incentive for seizing opportunity and for hard work, and because riches are saved and invested to “trickle down” to the rest of society. Inefficiencies arise today due to ebbing trickle-down effects and even barring talented poor people from education or other opportunities that money can buy. Today’s dual circumstance of rising inequality and inadequate social mobility feeds social dissension and has promoted ill-conceived populist policies. To the extent public policy does address these issues rationally, the favored position of the few, especially the power of money interests, can tilt policy in favor of even more concentration of wealth and influence.

Despite the accepted wisdom that rising income incentivizes free enterprise —i.e., entrepreneurism, innovation, etc— rising inequality has immense political salience within countries because it is regarded as unfair and detrimental to the vast majority of citizens. The perceived unfairness becomes more controversial during recessionary times as broader society is deprived of the benefits of asset bubbles, cheaper credit, etc. In the financial crisis of 2008-9, rich bankers were bailed out while many others lost homes and jobs. In the current boom in securities’ markets, those already on the “inside” benefit inordinately. Without a compleat equality of opportunity, income inequality might only be resolved by resorting to wealth redistribution as in the old communist societies or democratic-socialist states of 20th century Europe, which formulae are perceived as failures. Ever since, neither market enterprises nor governments have found satisfactory solutions.

Nobel-laureate Joseph Stiglitz (2013) cited Singapore as providing lessons for the United States. Very high saving is driven by government policy – 36% of income for young workers goes into self-funded nest eggs to pay for healthcare, housing, and pensions. Ninety percent of Singaporeans are homeowners. The government also invests heavily in education, R&D, science and technology. Since 1980 Singapore’s economy grew 5.5 times faster than the US. 

Robert Reich’s 2013 documentary “Inequality for All” showed how the United States, while not the richest society, is more unequal in wealth than any other advanced country, and the problem is not abating. A “World Ultra Wealth Report” by Wealth X cited the number of “ultra-high net worth” individuals through 2020, with net worth exceeding $30 million (in constant 2018 dollars); and the United States accounted for more than 1/3 of them –China was a distant second with less than 10% of them). Expansion of wealth even during the pandemic was attributed to monetary expansion from central banks and strong financial market performance. US chief executives still are making it big, with compensation in 2019 up nearly 1000% since 1978, while typical worker salaries rose little more than 10%. Executive compensation was as much as 386 times the typical worker –up from 195 to 1 in 1993, 42 to 1 in 1980, and 20 to 1 in 1965.

“Exorbitant CEO pay is a major contributor to rising inequality that we could safely do away with. CEOs are getting more because of their power to set pay, not because they are increasing productivity or possess specific, high-demand skills. This escalation of CEO compensation, and of executive compensation more generally, has fueled the growth of top 1.0% and top 0.1% incomes, leaving less of the fruits of economic growth for ordinary workers and widening the gap between very high earners and the bottom 90%. The economy would suffer no harm if CEOs were paid less (or taxed more).” Economic Policy Institute, 8/14/2019

 

Market response for top-tier wages: Executive compensation

Corporate payroll systems are clearly out of balance, increasingly since the 1970s favoring the very top income earners. Economists can address this phenomenon in terms of free-market and regulatory approaches, but practice does not conform to theoretical idealism. Managers and unions, as well as policy makers, simply resort to collective bargaining, ad hoc pay negotiations, or political activism. Yet there seems little prospect of robust systemic reform. Even after the 2008-9 financial crisis, bankers’ bonuses quickly resumed their upward climb – their financial crisis did not change mindsets.

Notions of “shareholder capitalism” underpin business logic, and these views are widely understood and accepted: Owners of any enterprise are depended upon to compel managers to maximize long-term profitability, certainly net of the payroll burden. However, application of this theory is very imprecise in practice. Stockholders cannot exactly determine value added by particular managers or company departments in isolation. Value added by managers may be calculated simply in terms of profits or losses, but obviously there cannot be accurate knowledge of alternative performance; and what the financial crisis clearly demonstrated was that risk was not properly calculated.

In practice, executives at the very top of enterprises can reward themselves at a level that often seems out of proportion with actual performance: bonuses, golden parachutes, and a winner-take-all division of rewards while losers take the dire burden of losses in terms of workforce reductions or firings among those with less power to influence such decisions. This tendency is indeed predominant. Despite productivity being up by 80% since the 1970s the average worker’s pay has been essentially flat, increasing less than one quarter of that in the 4 decades up to 2019.

Nothing depicts this rich-poor gap, and payroll discrimination, better than Wall Street. No one doubts that banking and finance in America should evoke shame in someone, be it private bankers or the government. Despite the Dodd-Frank Act and volumes of other new laws, the regulatory system remains in a mess; and if free-market competition instead would work its magic, why has the integrity of Wall Street not been secured? In theory financial institutions exist to provide trust in the provision of capital because their reputation and the integrity of the market is valued above all else by the financial intermediaries themselves. Yet, Goldman Sachs profited from the financial crisis in 2008 by selling mortgages to its clients that were deliberately designed to fail. Bank of America was found liable for fraud in the sale of faulty loans (through its acquisition of Countrywide Financial Corp). Morgan Stanley offered inside information about Facebook’s initial public offering to selected customers only. International banks rigged LIBOR, an interest rate used to peg contracts worth trillions; and the “London fix” which is a benchmark for global currency markets, where turnover is $5 trillion daily, is suspected to be manipulated through a practice called “banging the close” whereby banks submit a succession of orders just as the benchmark is set at 4 pm.

Major penalties were assessed against JP Morgan Chase, which was fined a record $13 billion for its involvement in faulty mortgages, having already lost $6 billion in its “London whale” trades. The bank’s 2012 annual report revealed legal exposure in numerous other cases – facing investigations into alleged manipulation of international interest rates and also the California electricity market, bond dealing involving the city of Milan, its energy trading business, its collections litigation practices, and its role in Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme. All the while, ratings agencies published opinions about banks’ financial health that were completely wrong, seemingly oblivious to their own malfunction. Clearly, all this indicates “market failure” (and non-market –government— failure to intervene). What illustrates this best is the fact that throughout the banking crisis and the aftermath, bankers continued to reward themselves with generosity unmatched in history.

Many studies have charted alleged abuses in executive pay. In 2013 the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington revealed “widespread poor performance within America’s elite CEO circles. Chief executives performing poorly –and blatantly so— have consistently populated the ranks of our nation’s top-paid CEOs” for many decades.” Taking a sample group of the nation’s best-paid chief executives over two decades, nearly 40% of the CEOs were either fired, their firms either collapsed or took a bailout (22%), or the CEOs’ firms paid major fraud claims (8%). Only 8% were given the ax, but they exited with an average $48-million golden parachute.

Public disapproval of “golden parachutes” rarely has much impact, since the deal was contracted in advance. Similarly, “say on pay” votes only curb some of the most egregious excesses. Company boards facing such votes can manage to win them by dropping particular overgenerous perks. Some practices have been curtailed, such as big severance awards vested simply by quitting or retiring, or topping up pensions when bosses retire earlier than planned. Boards have been compelled to more carefully cost out and justify perks that may have previously been regarded as practically free.

Golden goodbyes are more difficult to change for various reasons. Pay consultants use more generous existing pay packages as basis for negotiating with a new boss, to attract the desired talent. Contesting a past pay package can easily dissuade new candidates. Often candidates for the top jobs also employ law offices specializing in pay negotiations, and PR firms to sell their talents; and by the time the chosen candidate fails to perform it is too late. Public outcry tends to be after-the-fact, rather than in the optimism of a new hiring. Lawsuits only can “claw back” mistakenly generous pay packages if there is firm evidence of, say, financial misstatement.

Shareholder capitalism assumes effective monitoring by owners, as represented by the Board of Directors. However, corporate boardrooms have historically been largely ceremonial, often just friends of the boss, who might not contribute much in terms of oversight and expertise. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 and new rules at the New York Stock Exchange in 2003 obliged boards of directors to take more responsibility for preventing fraud and self-dealing by corporate executives. Arguably there have been ill-effects such as more paperwork, but in “Boards that Lead” (2013) the authors argue that boards of directors are in a “third revolution” as strategic partners with management. The authors depict better relationships between company directors and executives where directors act proactively in recruiting top talents and also preparing for their departure.

Legal structure of enterprises also has changed the degree of control of owners over managers. The conventionally-structured corporation is ostensibly required to be mindful of the wishes of stockholders in such matters as compensation, but diverse other structures have evolved that allow more freedom from owners and regulators, more akin to partnerships. The essence is a move towards types of firms which pay out more of their earnings rather than accumulating reserves. Examples emerging since the mid-1970s include Real-estate Investment Trusts, Energy Master Limited Partnerships, and Business Development Companies. Compensation in these special entities can amount to a distribution of profits, which are not kept as Retained Earnings.

 

Non-market response: Regulatory approaches

An indicated course of action is for governments to impose binding measures on firm directors, payroll committees, etc, or else raise taxes on exorbitant incomes. However, empirical evidence is ambiguous on prospects for success of government policies to regulate business. The 2008 bailout agreements reached by the Bush and Obama administrations, though attempting to curtail excessive bonuses, did not immediately restrain executive self-aggrandizement. Existing pay contracts protected prevailing compensation levels, and when those contracts ran out new contracts did not seem to change things. The Pay Czar appointed by President Obama was quick to observe that he had no intention, nor sufficient power, to actually dictate payroll decisions; and it seems doubtful the existence of such an office had any real effect.

The Securities and Exchange Commission proposed a new rule regarding CEO pay in compliance with a mandate in the Dodd-Frank Act. The SEC voted in September 2013 to open its proposed version to comments for 60 days, but what finally went into effect in 2015 was a rule that required most large corporations to calculate the ratio of the pay of their CEO to the median pay of all their employees. It was designed to provide transparency on the diversion of corporate resources from workers to top management. By extension, wealth goes to shareholders because stock-related bonuses provide executives the incentive to boost share prices. The implication is that managers will direct corporate capital towards dividends for stockholders, rather than investment which might set up their companies for future profit and benefits to all stakeholders but not typically reflected in near-term stock price.

One mitigating factor, whether imposed by market or regulatory forces, might be lesser risks and returns. Probably the most important international non-governmental institution regulating global finance is the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland, which has a historically conservative reputation. BIS primarily affects European banking, where higher capital ratios under Basel 3 imposed limits on risk, and thereby windfall profits and the associated pay bonuses. Basel 3 (the Third Basel Accord, devised under the auspices of the BIS) is a global, voluntary regulatory standard on bank capital adequacy.

Various measures were initiated in Europe to limit bonuses for high-income earners, with indefinite success. The logic of controlling payroll decisions with administered caps on bonuses, mandatory director votes or employee “say on pay”, etc appeals to liberal governments. Pre-crisis evidence indicated that lavish bonuses rewarded big, risky gambles that seemed to pay off; but when everything went wrong starting in around 2008, few top bankers seemed to be fairly penalized. We can theorize that risk favors asymmetric bets, with large gains more likely to be identified and rewarded than indefinite losses. Big cash bonuses then encourage further risk taking.

Where company payroll policies are inclined to reward exceptional performance highly, the unintended consequence of government-administered caps on variable pay such as bonuses is to drive up fixed pay. A higher fixed-cost base limits ability to cut costs in a downturn and also to build incentives into pay structures.

Private firms have adapted by deferring all or part of bonuses, to enable firms to “claw back” bonuses that led to some long-term detriment. A simpler approach is to award bonuses in the firm’s equity or subordinated debt, meaning the bonus will be directly impacted by poor firm performance.

 

Toward resolution

As noted earlier, the issue revolves around the notion of realistic stockholder control of managers. If disgruntled stockholders adopt the “Wall Street walk” by simply selling stock when managers engage in too much risk, this might be less constructive than trying to improve management. It is assumed that hedge funds for example are too short-term oriented, quick to buy or sell stock rather than engage management directly through ownership control. However, probably disengaged stockholders are worse than hedge funds. At least, the behavior of bankers, CEOs etc especially that was uncovered as a result of the financial crisis, was a wake-up call to stockholders who recognized either they must be more vigilant or governments will be more inclined to step in. However, governments remain chary to intervene in free-market capitalism.

Trends in compensation policy in the banking industry are slowly turning course from the halcyon days prior to the 2008 financial crisis. However, political efforts are less the reason than the mechanisms of shareholder capitalism. In fact industry reform often runs counter to lawmakers’ intentions. For example, legislative limits on bonuses have made banks rely more on basic pay awards; but this makes incentivizing pay more difficult –basic pay is not be tied to performance, and remuneration cannot be deferred to a future point where performance becomes more manifest.

Pay and employment for bankers did decline after a peak in 2010, as the investment-banking industry faced a structural downturn. Higher capital standards and tougher regulations emerged, for example forcing derivative trading onto exchanges where fees are less exorbitant than in negotiated “over-the-counter” transactions. Revenues and profitability fall faster than costs as pay and employment adjustments lag. Bonuses have been limited by regulations, for example Europe beginning in 2014 prevented bonuses bigger than annual salaries. Also stockholders may rise to the occasion and become more careful, after watching their top employees pocket large bonuses while stockholders (and taxpayers) suffered the industry’s losses in 2008.  Still, many banking subsidiaries have only the parent bank as stockholder, and that type of ownership may be more amenable to management decisions on pay.

Bankers’ pay may illustrate the social consensus on the compensation issue best. “Few issues rile the public, and politicians, as much as bankers’ pay, for obvious reasons. Investment banking is an industry that in the past seems to have been run mainly for the benefit of its employees rather than its shareholders or its customers.” (The Economist May 11th 2013:15) However, after the 2008 crisis shareholders finally exerted some downward push on pay. “Both the number of people employed in banking and the amount they are paid are falling fast… Average pay has probably fallen by about 20% since the crisis.”(16) The causes and direction of this trend are complex, and as argued at the outset, excessive pay still prevails. Managing the banking business manifests a need for reform in the cost and pay structures despite strong profitability.

Ad hoc evidence indicates that management is indeed pursuing reform at banks. Goldman Sachs holds training programs for top management, and is adjusting its approach to disclosure and transparency, pulling back on its world-beating (but of course controversial) proprietary-trading business, realigning internal incentives, for pay and promotion for example, all in a mood of post-2008 introspection. However, Goldman Sachs remains committed to a business model that is designed to put it in difficult situations. Stephen Mandis (2013) charts the journey of the bank from partnership to public company, from trusted advisor to amoral trader, listing conflicts that arise when you underwrite debt, advise on deals and take your own proprietary positions. 

 

Should CEOs really be paid less?

The dramatic inflation in executive pay since the 1970s has contributed to the still-growing problem of inequality. The guiding principle of modern payroll systems at the top levels (as well as bottom levels traditionally) is that pay be performance-related. Managers ostensibly will work harder in the interests of owners (employers) if they become stockholders themselves, and the vehicle for this is stock “options” as part of their pay (usually bonuses). Typically, options are granted for achievement of particular performance targets. Executive pay especially benefits from a roaring stock market. Michael Dorff (2014) contended that performance-based executive pay should be scrapped in favor of the more sensible salary system that prevailed until the 1960s. He argued that a basic salary system would be good for companies by reducing the payroll burden, good for executives in terms of more stable, sufficient income; and certainly it would be good for countries and society to reduce the rich-poor gap.

However, many members of society make inordinate fortunes from their talents (market speculators, entrepreneurs, leading lawyers or consultants, superstars of sports and entertainment, etc); why shouldn’t management talent? Rigid salary structures that ignore ways to reward superior performance may inevitably lose out to incentive-based payroll systems. Getting rich as an executive in a top-tier corporation indeed may seem appropriate.

Shortfalls in job seekers in particular sectors –such as hospitality, retail, many others-- has compelled employers to raise wages. In America job vacancies are at the highest level in decades. Job vacancies seem to be in low pay industries where pay does not compensate for perceived risks. For the past 4 decades, the tide favored capital over labor, especially with the power of multinational corporations in the globalization era and the weakening of labor unions, and the potential for technology to replace workers. Workers have acquired bargaining power.

Whereas the financial crisis a decade earlier had caused the share of global wealth held by the top 1% to actually decline in 2008, during the pandemic the wealth gap increased. The financial crisis of course wrecked its havoc on wealthy bankers and the like, while in contrast the pandemic led to a rescue response that benefitted holders of wealth. Central banks’ policies of cutting interest rates and amassing assets led to huge inflation in the value of securities and property held by the rich. “Another example of Wall Street winning and Main Street losing” (Mary Daly, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco).

 

Non-market response for bottom-of-the-ladder wages: The Minimum Wage Debate

It seems an absurdity that politicians, not economists, should determine a fair floor level to compel employers to pay employees (alas, not just civil servants), especially because it is impossible to give accurate consideration to skill levels and job realities, market competition, economic disparities in different regions, etc. But that is the basis for the existence of minimum-wage laws, and even many economists feel this political intervention in the labor market is beneficial. Society generally feels a “living wage” to be a moral imperative.

The obvious argument against government-mandated pay levels is that such laws are effectively equivalent to an employment tax, and the question is who will pay this “tax”. It might be offset by improvements in productivity and reduced turnover, but more likely employers avoid the tax by reducing employment, or they increase prices or move to a lower-wage location. The tax might also be offset by replacing workers with technology, or by dropping benefits to keep total compensation the same. The more direct response is that businesses simply curtail operations.

Today’s technology is different from earlier technological waves that were “labor augmenting”, rather it seems to reduce employment, particularly of workers without technological skills. Technology in the current generation has destroyed large swathes of work in the middle of the wage and skill distribution. This has contributed to the hollowing out of labor markets –polarizing into high- and low-skill occupations with fewer jobs in the middle. Highly-skilled workers design and manage technology, but low-skilled workers who might have once been laborers in factories are displaced. Today there are too many such job seekers competing for low-wage positions. The simple reality is that the bottom tier of job markets can expect depressed wages. Indeed, the share of income going to labor worldwide has fallen in recent decades.

The counterpart of the declining remuneration of labor is the rising return on capital. (Labor would have lost out to capital even more dismally except for soaring pay awarded to a relatively small population of high earners according to Elsby and Hobijn (2013) – so-called “labor-force polarization”.) Economists such as Tomas Piketty argued that this disparity indicates a need to once again focus on distribution, as happened in the 19th and early 20th centuries, to allay the social strains that sometimes have threatened capitalist systems.  Redistribution is most often addressed through taxation.

The “employment tax” of a Minimum Wage can be taken directly out of profits, reduced benefits to keep total compensation the same, or alternatively passed on to customers, shareholders, or providers of debt or capital assets by reducing their “rents” on the assets. It seems unlikely the “tax” can be assessed against the pay of higher-wage employees. To many, the wage gap between top and bottom earnings obviously warrants some redistribution, but still we see little indication of that happening. The more ready recourse is usually to raise prices.

The direct cost of not mandating a “fair wage” might be more government welfare such as food stamps, inherently subsidizing employers. There is also an indirect cost of having an increasingly unequal society, which is a national calamity and we have only begun to see the consequences. Human capital is being paid too little to generate wealth for employers, leading some to think in terms of social revolution.

The argument that better wages stimulate consumption is ambivalent. The counter-argument is that lost jobs due to minimum-wage increases will decrease demand in the economy. So any mandated wage increase is experimental –as were other government programs such as the Social Security system. 

Some reforms that might be considered in the longer term include:

1.      Minimum Wage law might include provision for compensatory reduction in top-level wages. How to administer this idea is problematic. We might concoct a mathematical formula, say, by calculating the added wage cost at the bottom and taking that amount from executive payrolls.

2.      The earned income tax credit is available only to low-income working families, which more directly addresses the real problem of poverty instead of low individual wages.

Of course, the entire issue largely disappears in a growing, full-employment economy.

 

The Biden agenda

The pandemic caused some changes in capitalism as we knew it, though the longevity of new trends is indefinite. In terms of employment (and wages), the earliest stretch from winter to spring 2020 witnessed a loss of 20 million American jobs. Workers stayed home, and businesses were wiped out even faster than during the 2008-9 financial crisis. However, in the summer new businesses and jobs recovered dramatically. Much of this occurred in home-based cottage industries, often sole proprietors and online; and new business was created in retail, food preparation and delivery, trucking, accommodation, healthcare, scientific and technical services, as skilled individuals had been cut loose from large corporations. With generous government support, as well as the banking system remaining sound, entrepreneurs and consumers both resurfaced. Historically such trends portend high economic and productivity growth. Although employment is still well below levels before the pandemic, high demand for workers seems to be exerting upward pressure on wages, hence may have some positive impact on the rich-poor gap. 

President Biden promised to start narrowing income and wealth gaps, which underpinned every part of his economic program, from multi-trillion dollar spending plans to a proposed tax increase which would be the biggest in a generation.

Both Trump and Biden administrations introduced major rescue and recovery initiatives to combat the pandemic. However, the U.S. wealth divide widened further during the pandemic –the top 1% of households added $4 trillion in net worth.

 

Biden outlined plans to

·         broaden union rights; and create well-paid, union jobs with infrastructure investments

·         support families and help restore women to the labor force with measures including expanded child tax credit and child care

·         reform and bolster the social safety net, including expanding support for healthcare and education

·         increase taxes on corporations and wealthy households, including international accord on a minimum tax for big global companies; and address tax loopholes

·         boost minimum wages, and

·         fight racial injustice in the economy.

 

On all these fronts, Biden seeks political redress to reverse trends exacerbated over decades, even centuries. However, Republicans inevitably resist government spending, debt, and taxes. Biden’s proposals struggled to make headway, despite US having the highest levels of inequality in the developed world.

 

References:

Charan, Ram, Dennis Carey and Michael Useem, Boards that Lead, Harvard Business Review Press, December 10, 2013

Credit Suisse 2013 Global Wealth Report

Domhoff, William, Who Rules America: Wealth, Income and Power, University of California Santa Cruz, 2012

Dorff, Michael, Indispensable and Other Myths: Why the CEO Pay Experiment Failed and How to Fix It, University of California Press, August 2014

The Economist, Special report on international banking, May 11th 2013; and various editions

Elsby, Michael and Bart Hobijn, The Decline of the US Labor Share, Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Fall 2013

Institute for Policy Studies, Executive Excess 2013: Bailed Out, Booted, Busted, Washington DC August 28, 2013

Keynes, John Maynard, “Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren” (1930)

Mandis, Stephen, What Happened to Goldman Sachs: An Insider’s Story of Organizational Drift and its Unintended Consequences, Harvard Business Review Press 2013

Piketty, Tomas, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Harvard University Press, 2014

Reich, Robert, Inequality for All (Sundance Film Festival) 2013

Schwarz, John E, Common Credo: The Path Back to American Success, Liveright Publishing, August 19, 2013

Stiglitz, Joseph, Singapore’s Lessons for an Unequal America, New York Times, 3/18/2013

Tuesday, March 1, 2022

liberalism and misdirection

High-minded Liberal causes draw even Conservative sympathies. However, whatever the liberal cause, political correctness in “woke” political factions on the left often leads to a certain il-liberal inclination.

The illiberal left holds Democrat Party members to embrace left-leaning political pressure groups, extending that embrace to Black Lives Matter, MeToo, LGBT, Occupy Wall Street, etc. Conceptual basis for such socio-political movements may leak out from university graduate research projects (eg, Critical Race Theory). CRT, albeit rigorously researched, may not be ready for K-12 classrooms; nevertheless advocates take such ideas to political or educational fora in a quest for justice of oppressed people.

Illiberal tendencies (epitomized by “cancel culture”) are a means to achieve ideological purity. It resembles the “confessional state” that characterized European thought before classical liberalism took root by the end of the 18th century, with loyalty a primary value instead of openness.

Neither the illiberal left nor conservatives are satisfied with the process of reform. They want reform said and done, eg, stop racial and sexual discrimination; yet some discrimination still prevails and may endure indefinitely. Reform awaits fairness in education, labor, taxation, hierarchies, indeed all social structure. Means are as important as ends—reform must be achieved thru classical liberal processes.

Fairness in this way is not an imposition – equity cannot be imposed. It is individuals, not acronym groups who must progress through open debate and resulting change. Social equity anyway is only one priority of society, which is also concerned with law and order, economic ends, welfare, etc – ultimately survival and the environment.

Group social equity requires a sort of grass-roots debate where privileged elites or others in power must be “cancelled” to some degree. Otherwise power comes before process, ends before means, groups and parties before individuals.

Group loyalty to Party can supersede loyalty to truth; end designs supersede fair process. This is how the left and the right have created political hatred which has seriously damaged the democratic process. It has become tribal. Criticizing one’s own party is blasphemy; transgression against Donald Trump is treachery. On the left, focusing on one’s selfish democratic rights or historic injustice to one group bogs down the patient progress of civilization for which liberal debate should strive. The only winner becomes extremism on the right and the left. 

Western democratic processes have diverged from classical liberalism since the Enlightenment, a severe challenge for society to address. Liberalism (ie, “classical”) has evolved robustly with progress intentionally brought about by open debate and deliberate reform. Certain principles have guided progress, such as valuing the individual, open markets and free enterprise, limited government and separation of powers, legal due process and democratic restraint (plus respect for science and its methodologies).

In China, Western democracy is seen officially as selfish and unstable. In America, controversial liberal values are seen by some populists as imposed by privileged elites.

Classical liberalism embraced free trade and (ultimately) globalization. Today liberal principles still compel a realization that global integration of economies and people (globalization) is the manifest destiny of world society.

Trump’s populism fomented distrust of ”experts” who ostensibly had foisted liberal priorities and institutions on the people. Trump turned to economic nationalism and away from multilateralism; but Biden also has resorted to unilateralism and protectionism –little improvement, in principle. The GOP depicts Biden as a hapless Bolshevik whose government must be thwarted. With Democrats, Biden seems a hostage of his own illiberal left and loyalty to woke causes. Thus, policy “gridlock” continues.

Political division seems irreconcilable in America –and indeed worldwide. Individual freedom threatens social order or vice versa, from the most riotous protests to government crackdowns. A left-right divide prevails even within the American Catholic Church, eg, contesting the Pope’s more liberal handling of “sins of modernity”, in contrast with the less lenient response of his two more traditionalist predecessors. 

Perhaps Pope Francis’ emphasis on “pastoralism” (rather than advocacy of morality) poses a lesson for politicians: to simply stress comforting of constituencies rather than engage in divisive argument advocating a righteous cause. The Pope certainly retains similar moral scruples as conservative Catholics, but he adopts a non-confrontational, caring approach.

 

Monday, February 14, 2022

STATE ROLE IN BUSINESS

Government role in business has always been controversial, often inefficient and even illiberal. Communism was the most problematic. Postwar experiments in liberal European countries with state planning and state-owned enterprises became largely discredited by the 1980s. For example, industries at the “commanding heights” of the British economy were nationalized in the late 1940s but that experiment was reversed by privatization under Margaret Thatcher’s government.

There were exceptional results with state enterprise, such as in Singapore where state-owned enterprises became a more efficient sector than the local private sector (dominated by property and trading enterprises). Even so, Singapore emulated Thatcher’s privatization to some extent, to bring in private-sector efficiencies and capital. Other government roles had some success, such as Japan’s Ministry of International Trade and Industry coordination of national industries.

Free societies are today demanding more elaborate control of business, if not by state ownership then other state interventions. The state is expected to solve complex needs for control of enterprise, as political leaders are under pressure from their constituencies to resolve issues with capitalism –including interventions that are not necessarily within the power of political elites or even wise such as a role in labor relations, finance and banking, and lately the pandemic lockdowns and safety protocols for industry and education. Under intense political pressures, democratic leaders are intervening in their businesses, expected to resolve modern problems ranging from global warming, technology monopolization and data abuse, banking and financial stability, social responsibility of private enterprises for diversity, eliminating poverty, etc.

State ownership is only one means of government intervention, and generally declining. Much state ownership constitutes minority interests, or by holding companies, sovereign wealth and pension funds, or other professional owners and managers. Today, governments mostly intervene in other ways.

President Trump was critical of globalization and adopted populist policies, including trade wars with China and even American allies. President Biden engages in protectionism, requiring domestic suppliers and union labor, and general policy priorities to return wealth and power to American workers. Biden has engaged his administration in resolving supply-chain problems, bailing out businesses, promulgating pandemic safety policies in businesses, and many other interventions. Even China is tinkering with its communist model to achieve “common prosperity” and also tame its free-wheeling entrepreneurs and compel political obedience.

America never relied on state ownership of enterprises as much as Europe and East Asia. Yet today America has broadened the range of national security concerns where government intervention is justified, notably energy industries. Technology export controls, punitive sanctions on foreign countries’ trade and finance, and screening foreign investment are increasingly frequent options. Subsidies are devised for more R&D and capital spending, such as Biden’s $52 billion program to support semiconductor production.

The primacy of shareholder wealth maximization –in vogue from at least the 1970s, is finally being questioned, as firms are expected to raise their concern for other stakeholders – consumers, employees, the environment, and even respect for competition and healthy markets including helping smaller firms. Governments have promulgated “ESG” investment codes to score firms’ wider responsibility for energy efficiency, worker safety, board independence, etc.

Negative impact of state intervention is pervasive, but more subtly includes both the state and its firms’ need to balance conflicting interests. For example, fossil-fuel firms must protect jobs and prosperity in their community (and long-term profits), and so may avoid any divestment needed to protect the environment. Trade embargos against China about human rights blocks cheaper imports. Businesses anyway cannot make these judgements, which are government decisions. Such decisions increase costs and impair open competition. If businesses attempt any role, they find more need for political involvement, including even corruption. 

Government investment, through ownership or simply subsidies, has always been a means to direct national resources toward desired industry. It seems illogical to engage in industrial policy for ideological reasons, but some countries have been more encumbered by political or bureaucratic pressures and may invest unwisely. Although the record in America has been less propitious at “picking winners”, than for example East Asia, the US government has played a crucial role in creating so much of American industry in internet, biotechnology, and many of the other strong industries of today. Now it invests in AI, quantum computing, medical science.

Where a need for industrial policies is obvious, such as energy industries in the age of global warming, certainly the US government is obligated to play a role. During the pandemic governments focused their investment to enhance domestic capacity. France’s “2030” plan earmarks expenditures of 160bn euros over five years in medicines, small nuclear reactors, but also cultural investments. With respect to the last mentioned state initiative, grand dreams are obviously a government proclivity.

Competition between governments to make their industries international “winners” may simply result in an “industrial policy arms race” –competitive government subsidies. Governments are also notoriously mercurial, wanting not only to create new national champions but also not letting losers fail.

A frequent tendency of industrial and competition policy is to police private sector behavior that may have socioeconomic impact, such as antitrust, improper pricing or other harm to consumer welfare. In China, children have been prohibited from playing video games more than three times per week, it being a distraction from studies. Antitrust concerns are broadening to the kind of concerns reflected in the way companies like Facebook compete, including the “killer acquisition” to takeover Instagram to prevent that enterprise becoming a competitor with Facebook. Regulators such as the Fair Trade Commission look to long-range and global competitive outcomes in business decisions.  

Thus, bureaucracy and politics are rising in their impact on business. In China the state holds the power in business interventions, while in Europe or the USA the courts and legislatures are preeminent.  In any case, interventions are increasingly prevalent in the modern world. The result is more bureaucracy and “red tape”; and once new regulators are created and funded, politics and bureaucratic inertia stymie efforts to defund.