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posted by martyb on Friday January 19 2018, @12:06PM   Printer-friendly
from the Invisible-hand dept.

Found this interesting, you may too.

A new research paper that may help unlock the mystery of why Americans can't seem to get a decent raise. Economists have struggled over that question for years now, as wage growth has stagnated and more of the nation's income has shifted from the pockets of workers into the bank accounts of business owners. Since 1979, inflation-adjusted hourly pay is up just 3.41 percent for the middle 20 percent of Americans while labor's overall share of national income has declined sharply since the early 2000s. There are lots of possible explanations for why this is, from long-term factors like the rise of automation and decline of organized labor, to short-term ones, such as the lingering weakness in the job market left over from the great recession. But a recent study by a group of labor economists introduces an interesting theory into the mix: Workers' pay may be lagging because the U.S. is suffering from a shortage of employers.

[...] argues that, across different cities and different fields, hiring is concentrated among a relatively small number of businesses, which may have given managers the ability to keep wages lower than if there were more companies vying for talent. This is not the same as saying there are simply too many job hunters chasing too few openings—the paper, which is still in an early draft form, is designed to rule out that possibility. Instead, its authors argue that the labor market may be plagued by what economists call a monopsony problem, where a lack of competition among employers gives businesses outsize power over workers, including the ability to tamp down on pay. If the researchers are right, it could have important implications for how we think about antitrust, unions, and the minimum wage.

Monopsony is essentially monopoly's quieter, less appreciated twin sibling. A monopolist can fix prices because it's the only seller in the market. The one hospital in a sprawling rural county can charge insurers whatever it likes for emergency room services, for instance, because patients can't go elsewhere. A monopsonist, on the other hand, can pay whatever it likes for labor or supplies, because it's the only company buying or hiring. That remote hospital I just mentioned? It can probably get away with lowballing its nurses on salary, because nobody is out there trying to poach them.

[...] Harvard University labor economist Lawrence Katz told me that he suspected the findings about market concentration and wages were directionally correct but that they may be a bit "overstated," because it's simply hard to control for the health of the labor market.

"They are getting at what is an important and underexplored topic ... using a creative approach of using really rich data," he said. "I don't know if I would take perfectly seriously the exact quantitative estimates."

Still, even if the study is only gesturing in the direction of a real problem, it's a deeply worrisome one. We're living in an era of industry consolidation. That's not going away in the foreseeable future. And workers can't ask for fair pay if there aren't enough businesses out there competing to hire.

Article summarizing study:
Why Is It So Hard for Americans to Get a Decent Raise?

Actual study (limited access): http://www.nber.org/papers/w24147

FYI: Number of companies on America's stock exchanges has decreased by 50% since 1998


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  • (Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 19 2018, @12:36PM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 19 2018, @12:36PM (#624657)

    I... saw a vision. A vision about the future. A vision about the future of a particular thing. Yes, that's right: I can see the future of your ass. I'm the Assteller.

    You can't stop chuckling. "What a bunch of idiots they were to fall for such an obvious scam!" you think to yourself. Just remembering what you did makes you laugh uncontrollably. You scammed innumerable cabbage patch kids out of their billion buck bills by trading envelopes supposedly containing more than one billion buck bill for their billion buck bills. Of course, the envelopes were completely empty. Now you're rich and those suckers are poor. All you have to do is figure out how to use the money.

    All of a sudden, you sense countless entities in the room with you. You look around and notice that you're surrounded by the various cabbage patch kids you scammed, and all of them are furious. You begin laughing at them, and then you turn your bootysnap into a spaghetti noodle of colossal proportions and suck every last one of the of those foolish toys right up your butt. Once again, you're the number one winner. You begin celebrating your victory, but then notice that something is amiss.

    What is this feeling? You find a mirror and use it to look at your bare ass. "What is that thing!?" you shout. "It's an abomination!" An abomination had replaced your ass! The thing that was now where your snap used to be shared absolutely zero similarities with your previous ass. Where did it come from, and who stole your real ass? Just then, it hit you.

    Knowledge entered your brain. Ancient knowledge. The thing where your ass used to be is, in fact, your ass! However, the cabbage patch kids you sucked up turned it into a rumblehouse and are about to use it as a bouncehouse. Though you cannot fathom what it would be like for your ass to be used as a bouncehouse, every fiber of your being is stricken by a sense of imminent danger. But even that sense of extreme danger pales in comparison to what you feel next: Tickle! Your ass... it tickles! This is the sort of tickle that would render any being a mere shadow of its former self. You scream. Oh, yes, you scream. If you weren't trapped in an enigmatic alternate dimension, your scream is such that it could be heard in every corner of the world. The cabbage patch kids, however, continue to mercilessly bounce off of every molecule in the mazes of your ass...

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  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Friday January 19 2018, @12:50PM (2 children)

    by GreatAuntAnesthesia (3275) on Friday January 19 2018, @12:50PM (#624662) Journal

    I thought Jenkem was just an urban myth, but this latest shitposter is making me question that.

    • (Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 19 2018, @03:24PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 19 2018, @03:24PM (#624710)

      Every time I see it, I get more and more curious to know just WTF he's on about. Is it copypasta from somewhere? Original work? Is there a hidden meaning? Sexual fetish? Stenography or some other form of code? Does he know de wae?

      • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday January 19 2018, @09:22PM

        by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Friday January 19 2018, @09:22PM (#624912) Journal

        Probably just one guy, maybe a few, who wrote some basic template and just play with it every iteration for laughs. They're probably proxying too, so the forum's software can't just go "Nope, this IP sends nothing but shit."

        --
        I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...