This next paper is funny. Notices the decoupling and tries to hand wave it away without explaining why there was no decoupling before the 80s. At any rate note that the graph is from FRED.
The FRED blog discussion makes an interesting point about whether deflators are calculated from import or export prices changes (or both), and the effects it has on the analysis.
Reminder of how difficult it is to make real-terms adjustments to economic measures over multiple decades spans when a country's balance of trade with the world in different sectors is also changing!
Notice though that the FRED blog post does not explain away the discrepancy but merely mitigates it a bit. Note the decoupling still starts in the 70s. The great wealth disparity that exists today started at the same time. I don’t believe this is a coincidence.
"A bit" is imprecise for the adjustment. I'd say more than a bit.
It also suggests that if you dice it up by sector you might get different amounts of decoupling, which makes logical sense given productivity gains aren't equally spread.
Sure. But in general there was no decoupling prior to 1970 and there is now decoupling. There has been wealth extraction from labor. That it is more prominent in some sectors than others is not too relevant in my opinion.
The fact is that the FRED blog post shows there is decoupling starting at 1970 and they give an analysis about this to show isn’t as bad as it seems. But this analysis shows that there is still a decoupling that starts at 1970. I don’t think one can credibly believe that there hasn’t been massive wealth extraction from labor the past 40 years.
The link is absurd. The productivity data is for everyone while the wage data is for a subset of data. If you look at compensation for everyone against productivity it tells a different story
Reminder of how difficult it is to make real-terms adjustments to economic measures over multiple decades spans when a country's balance of trade with the world in different sectors is also changing!