The Reserve Bank is worried wage rises and inflation could follow the same path they did in the 1970s.Credit: Matt Davidson
Now that the bank’s preferred measure of inflation is within its 2 per cent to 3 per cent target range and经济逐渐减慢(随着美国总统唐纳德·特朗普(Donald Trump)的关税触及家的风险,这些批评的危险都大声。
因此,为什么储备银行仍然确定要保持经济增长的潜力低于其潜力呢? A lot of it comes down to the bank’s phobia of pay rises – which, like many modern-day fears, served us well in the past but aren’t so useful today.
One of the first rules we learn in economics is that the prices we pay are determined by the balance between supply and demand: when supply of a good or service outstrips demand for it, prices fall, and when demand exceeds supply, prices rise.
Then, we learn all the reasons why this rule不是那么简单。例如,如果企业具有很大的力量(也许很少有竞争对手),那么它可以为商品和服务收取更多的收费。
在过去几年中,几乎每个利率决策中的几乎每个利率决策都在过去的几年中都提到了其他企业的理由,当时,
权力,它们可以推动价格下跌。您如何看待澳大利亚政府设法谈判从其他国家购买的药品价格便宜的价格?通过充当代表数百万澳大利亚人的单一买家,与您或我个人试图与药品巨头进行谈判相比,这给它提供了更多的议价能力。 This is what’s called a “monopsony”.
Put simply: prices are determined by the balance of supply and demand – but also the power balance between buyers and sellers.
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Our wages are determined in a similar way, which is what the Reserve Bank has been worried about.在过去几年中,几乎所有利率的决策都提到了强大的劳动力市场,这是其不愿降低利率的原因。
The Reserve is expected to cut the cash rate when it meets next week.Credit: Louie Douvis
For one thing, the bank relies on a relatively neoclassical view of how the economy works, one in which demand and supply (in劳动力)确定了包括工资在内的价格水平,个人公司对工人的支付数量很少bank is constantly surprised by the strength of the labour market – and waiting (with little avail) for wages to spring up out of it like a jack in a box.
Meanwhile, this lack of a wage explosion comes as no surprise to a lot of labour economists, including Professor Emeritus David Peetz from the Carmichael Centre.
That’s because the neoclassical view of economics tends to assume everyone has roughly equal bargaining权力虽然许多劳工经济学家都承认并非如此 - 尤其是近年来。到2022年,政府政策(例如工作选择权)夺走了工人的议价能力。
“自1970年代上一次工资爆炸以来,工人已经失去了很多力量,”劳工经济学家少年教授David class。因为只有七分之一的澳大利亚工人是工会的一部分(在1970年代二分之一)时,这样做的压力不大。罢工等工业行动的威胁要小得多。 Only 100,000 working days were lost in 2021 compared with 6.3 million working days lost to industrial action in 1974.
While workers in 1974-75 managed to win wage rises of 10 per cent accounting for inflation, workers went backwards by 3 per cent in 2021-22.
This is because of several changes including legal changes in recent decades which have made collective bargaining (in which workers across an entire industry band together to谈判)不如企业讨价还价,在该谈判中,工人直接与雇主进行谈判。
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