I have long suspected that a money supply based on nothing other than faith in government could be a productivity killer.
Last November I wrote:
During 1947-73 (for all but two of those years America had a gold standard where the unit of exchange was tied to gold at a fixed rate) average family income increased at a greater rate than that of the top 1%. From 1979-2007 (years without a gold standard) the top 1% did much, much better than the average family.
As we have seen with the quantitative easing program, the newly-printed money is directed to the rich. The Keynesian response to that might be that income growth inequality can be solved (or at least remedied) by making sure that helicopter drops of new money are done over the entire economy rather than directed solely to Wall Street megabanks.
But I think there is a deeper problem here. My hypothesis is that leaving the gold exchange standard was a free lunch: GDP growth could be achieved without any real gains in productivity, or efficiency, or in infrastructure, but instead by just pumping money into the system.
And now I have empirical evidence that my hypothesis may possibly have been true — total factor productivity.
In 2009 the Economist explained TFP as follows:
Productivity growth is perhaps the single most important gauge of an economy’s health. Nothing matters more for long-term living standards than improvements in the efficiency with which an economy combines capital and labour. Unfortunately, productivity growth is itself often inefficiently measured. Most analysts focus on labour productivity, which is usually calculated by dividing total output by the number of workers, or the number of hours worked.
A better gauge of an economy’s use of resources is “total factor productivity” (TFP), which tries to assess the efficiency with which both capital and labour are used.
Total factor productivity is calculated as the percentage increase in output that is not accounted for by changes in the volume of inputs of capital and labour. So if the capital stock and the workforce both rise by 2% and output rises by 3%, TFP goes up by 1%.
Here’s US total factor productivity:
As soon as the USA left the gold exchange standard, total factor productivity began to dramatically stagnate.
Random coincidence? I don’t think so — a fundamental change in the nature of the money supply coincided almost exactly with a fundamental change to the shape of the nation’s economy. Is the simultaneous outgrowth in income inequality a coincidence too?
Doubters may respond that correlation does not necessarily imply causation, and though we do not know the exact causation, there are a couple of strong possibilities that may have strangled productivity:
- Leaving the gold exchange standard was a free lunch for policymakers: GDP growth could be achieved without any real gains in productivity, or efficiency, or in infrastructure, but instead by just pumping money into the system.
- Leaving the gold exchange standard was a free lunch for businesses: revenue growth could be achieved without any real gains in productivity, or efficiency.
The authors of the report noted:
Overall the gold standard appeared to perform reasonably well against its financial stability and allocative efficiency objectives.
Still think it’s a barbarous relic?
azizonomics 
This post is gold
Aziz, you brought up scads of topics here, but I believe you forgot the most important one which is the fact that once fiat money was introduced [1971], the balance of international trade [overseen by the BIS], could be settled with counterfeit money instead of gold.
Although societal productivity [in the U.S.] has been skimmed-off by the bankers since 1913 via their inflation targets, productivity, in and of itself, is a relative measure promising only increasing wealth disparity.
More stuff does not equal a happier population [all things being equal]. Instead, its equitable distribution through just remuneration that counts. Productivity junkies, akin the asset bubble junkies, are so, because they understand that increasing productivity means more for the few [during most times in human history].
As I have proven, pure fiat money is directly correlated to growth in income inequality.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/guest-post-why-left-misunderstands-income-inequality
By the way,equating productivity with asset bubbles makes me cringe. Asset bubbles are by definition increases in price beyond underlying productivity or utility.
Give people the tools to counterfeit money, and it would follow that they [the bankers] and those associated [corporations] would benefit. This is how the U.S. was able to outsource its manufacturing base, which, of course, led to a great deal of wealth disparity.
As far as asset bubbles and productivity are concerned, the analogy I was making is the similarity in fervor that those who genuflect at at these two economic alters, demonstrate.
In both cases, it is held out that money-pumping, on the one hand, and increases in productivity, on the other, are beneficial for the majority, when the opposite is true.
Increasing productivity should be a social benefit [and was during most of the 19th century] realized through increasing over all living standards via a currency that is WORTH MORE.
Agreed.
You smacked this one for a 6!
Ask any MEDIAN WAGE worker. They have gone backwards in the UK, USA and Australia, anywhere in fact. They should measure the minimum wage and what it takes to buy a square metre of living space. Any increases outside an acceptable range indicate inflation and rates should be increased. But no. Rates were held too low for too long,and the pigs at the trough borrowed and gorged on cheap credit, making it more difficult for people on fixed incomes to buy into real assets or worse maintain living standards.
Statistics always refer to averages. Why note median numbers. If we are getting one man one vote, then why not use the most COMMON numbers.
It is well known thatthe richest most connected got access to the best rates early on in the bubble and bought up assets very cheaply, holding onto their gains and bailing when they got inside information that things were going to burst. At the same time the COMMON man was getting bombarded with advertising to take out loans they could not afford.
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Bernard Lietaer’s view is coherent and addresses this issue very well:
Video 1:
Video 2:
This is probably the best video on this issue which Lietaer addresses using complementary currencies – I couldn’t find it first. Enjoy!
The State-obliged money is simply in place to insure that the State (the monopoly of law and order) can keep on over-taxing its “forced” customers(Price fixing).
Fiat money is a consequence of switching from privately-owned monopolies of law and order(Monarchy) to publicly-owned monopolies of law and order (Democracy). Simply put, a King would not have destroyed the productivity of his kingdom(Long term value of his assets) for a short gain in income, as a publicly-owned government does; the assets not being owned by the people in place who are only “leasing” the State’s income but do not own the assets. In plain English, Democracy “squeezes the juice”.
Fiat money can only exist at the open end of a gun barrel. Thus, it is not the money itself that kills productivity, but the open violence used by one group to enslave others. Both parties end up losing; real growth(energy-efficient heightening of the standard of living) is lost.
Please bring some comments.
I’m not a monarchist, but yes I recognise democracy does result in a kind of tragedy of the commons.
Who is a Monarchist but a King? Even then, a smart King could leave the door open to competition, and simply offer a better service than his competitors, truning him into a capitalist. Perhaps it is easier for a King to transition his kingdom into a free market than it is for a Democracy.
Production per calorie has been doing horrible; only a tremendous caloric oversupply is able to support such a “development” for such a long time. In other words, lower energy concentrations, e.i wood and wind, “forced” man to remain energy efficient.
If wars are the downfall of Monarchism, then a sort of cannibalism of production capacity is the downfall of Democracy. In short, Statism is bad. But hopefully yall knew that!
The UK has the best moat and the best runways to launch bombing raids.
Long live the Queen!
Money is like replacing your parents with crash-test dummies.
Abstracting labor-value might be the shortest path to Hell yet discovered by Man [although I have great faith in His ability to exceed even this non-sense].
So I guess we have replaced our parents with crash test dummies 5 thousands years ago. Real parents have not existed for hundreds of generations.
Money is simple tool. You don’t need violence and coercion to create money. It arises in similar processes in all countries and groups that trade with each other. One of the commodities that has some good features for it is used for it. Fiat-money is another story, I hope you’re referring to it and not just flaunting ignorance and silly lefty rage.
Also it is the welfare state that replaces parents. Physically. There is no stay in home parent anymore, with both working to keep up the burdens of socialized medicine, social security, extremely useless and expensive social education, feed bureaucrats and fuel wars. In France families start to kick their kids off to nurseries at age of 3 MONTHS old! Talk about destruction of family.
“the burdens of socialized medicine, social security, extremely useless and expensive social education, feed bureaucrats and fuel wars.”
Well, I would go even further; The last bout of “technology” has given us giant plastic houses and pavement everywhere. But if you were to start again and take that amazing thing which is called crude oil, and feed it to evolved beings, the results would amaze even the most daring science fiction writers. Simply, by temporarily lowering the general time preference(consumption/investment), oil would have allowed for incredible leaps of knowledge and understanding. Here are a few of my theoretical ideas;
– Organic dwellings, or more plainly said, trees that naturally grow into houses to share a symbiotic existence with its occupants who, in turn, trim away the older(edible!) parts of the tree and protect it from predators.
– Atmospheric pressure variations-fed water canal systems, which bring plant-filtered, crystal clear water in abundance to strategic regions occupied by the evolved beings.
– Telepathy(why not? it’s already been experimented with, and if the experimenters were more sensitive…)
– No need for stereos, as everyone would have enough free time to become an amazing musician
– etc.
So this last bit of human decivilization has cost us more than most can imagine. It has cost us the alternative!
But, as they say, it’s never too late to do good. Permaculture!
Piotr, what I was getting at is that the conversion of labor-value into its money-form creates the opportunity to financialize human labor [in a sense, de-humanizing it].
“…equating productivity with asset bubbles makes me cringe…”
Me too. Find me an asset bubble that wasn’t accompanied by a rapid expansion of credit directed toward said bubble. Fiat is the great enabler of mis-directed credit, and IMO misdirected credit kills productivity by aiding “survival of the most unfit.”
You really are good at grappling with these complex issues.
Exactly. You can’t have an asset bubble without something make-believe behind it. Sometimes that is make-believe profits, or make-believe fundamentals. Sometimes it’s make-believe money (credit).
The real make believe is the faulty belief that we can get something for nothing.
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All things have two sides or more than two sometimes. One must be objective.
Speaking or money printing, no one beats China’s effrontery desire of fait money. The U.S. printed much less paper money in comparison. China’s economy is all about cocktail drinks of massive Fiat money printing mixing with political policies manipulation + investment + cheap labor manufacturing . So far they have been succeeded for the last 20 something years though not perfect at all. Nonetheless they have successfully built huge fortune. What’s going to happen from this point going forward? Time will tell.
If productivity can match up money printing and making live better for the masses, why not?
As for productivity killers. heard that Gold does much better job than fait money.
Yes but the graph proves the idea that gold kills productivity wrong.
Does the evidence from all the other countries in the world who moved away from the gold standard support your hypothesis ?
What does the productivity graph look like if taken back to, say, 1800 ?
TFP is a relatively new and relatively obscure measure. I am not a statistician, and I wish that there was a wider range of TFP data for me to select from. I hope that by publishing this blog post, it may inspire someone who is more statistically-inclined to produce a fuller range of TFP data at very least to try and prove me wrong.
The whole Western world was on the gold standard ’til 71 through dollar convertibility under the Bretton Woods system. And obviously different countries since then have grown their productivity at different rates:
Obviously some countries have improved since 1971. But the variance between the USA before ’71 and after ’71 is clearly statistically significant.
That it’s a statistically significant change is not evidence on its own. Correlation is not causation.
You really need some more examples of other countries – ideally ones with substantially different cultural and political systems to the US like France, Norway or Switzerland (ie: outside of the Anglosphere) – that also went off the gold standard and saw the same result at the same time, to support your hypothesis.
While these are not specifically what I was looking for (I was looking for charts along the lines of what I have here for the USA) the TFP contribution to GDP growth in the G7 (no Switzerland, but some quite disparate economies spread across the globe) I found from a 2007 paper out of the Portuguese Central Bank appears to STRONGLY supports my analysis!
Here is the key graph (of the G7 average — which actually turns out to be significantly stronger even than the US data):
And here is an album I uploaded of all the individual national charts
Here is the original research paper (lots of math):
Click to access WP200709.pdf
The case is getting stronger. The obvious points I will have to contend with are
1/ The Keynesians will say the fall in TFP is a result of technology slowdown, not a change in the nature of the monetary medium (of course my hypothesis suggests that technology slowdown is a result of pure fiat money, too)
2/ The fall to 65-75 as compared to 60-70 shows that there was a technology slowdown before the demonetisation of gold (although the 70-80 data does show that most of the TFP growth in the 65-75 data were in the Bretton Woods era)
3/ Germany is a real outlier. TFP contribution from 70-80 GREW there.
These points do suggest there are other factors at play here. They do not discredit the point that a change in the monetary medium and resulting financialisation seems to have played a large role.
Good morning. Nicely written essay, but I’d like to offer the following advice so that you sound less like a gold nut shriller.
1) avoid “proved” in favour of “demonstrated” or “supported”. As you know its very difficult to prove anything beyond doubt. Your use of language leaves your writing open to questions and even dismissal by those who are not already in the same view as you.
2) while I applaud your use of logarithms to show change over time (its a valid statistical method which is often overlooked by many {I assume because they don’t grasp maths}) why did you choose Ln rather than base 10 log?
3) in your plot of the great stagnation you do not seem to mention why the actual data deviates from your projection some time around 1995 and why it remains deviant? Because it be that you chose an arbitary fit which was in support of your hypothesis this weakens your argument in the eyes of detractors.
I say all of the above because I happen to agree with your hypothesis and have had simmilar thoughts myself.
Eg
http://cjeastwd.blogspot.com.au/2012/05/gold-and-cash-two-graphs.html
and
http://cjeastwd.blogspot.com.au/2012/06/watching-things-grow-reading-numbers.html
My purpose in commenting is to offer sincere advices not to detract. I realise not everyone has training in *writing *stats *science *economics so I hope you take them in a constructive manner
Keep up the good work 🙂
1/ Yes I suppose supported, demonstrated and illustrated are more apt than proved. I know the term “proof” has a very tightly-defined meaning for mathematicians. Luckily, I am not a mathematician, and so can use the legal definition of reasonable doubt — and I think this correlation makes the point beyond reasonable doubt. I don’t particularly care about being labelled a shrill gold bug; I care about ideas and empirical evidence, and you seem to agree that the evidence is on our side.
2/ I didn’t invent TFP, it is a standardised measurement. TFP is (in every example I have seen) measured in base e not base 10, presumably for purposes of graphical clarity (so long as we are comparing apples to apples it makes no difference)
3/ They’re just trend lines. Data deviates from trend lines. You could correct from the 95 line to a different trajectory for 73-2007, it would still make the same point.
4/ I am totally self-trained. I think this is largely beneficial.
It is easy to tell you’re self-trained. Although, trained is too generous, since your “training” is completely wrong. Go take some stats classes.
Well said John, but I think this article contradicts your arguments against austerity. Implementing austerity means reducing spending. The need for the government to spend beyond its means is what brought us off the gold standard. Austerity – said less government spending – is the move towards a government living within their means.
I continue to be beyond confused why you stand against less government spending. The hard times are not wrapping up. We should not wait to start living within our means. Obviously this will hurt GDP and cause hard time. We live beyond our means. In my oppinion, it is not moral to wait to change this until some point in the future, which most likely never actually comes.
I don’t stand against less government spending. I am against reducing net inflows/outflows, under the present conditions of the present system.
We can’t really go back to the gold exchange standard tomorrow. There is no political support for the gold exchange standard. And a contractionary crunch right now will just further tarnish the notion of smaller government in the eyes of the wider population. My biggest problem with EU-style austerity is that it makes Paul Krugman look good. What I am writing about is targeted toward a world post dollar-crisis, when new systems are formed. The current system is, I think, too broken to be fixed.
Additionally, I’d direct you to my arguments on liquidation. Austerity is a kind of state-directed (i.e. centrally planned) liquidationism, the kind we saw fail under Hoover and the Fed of the 30s, and which is categorically failing in Europe today. What we actually needed in 2008 was a market-directed liquidation, like that of 1907.
Furthermore, I am not even against expanding the money supply and government outlays during contractions to offset deleveraging, etc. It is possible, by the way, to have a gold exchange standard, but during a depression banks can expand the money supply either by devaluing the gold, or by printing silver-backed notes. Doing it this way is more honest, because the devaluation is explicit.
Overall, the people who advocate austerity have the right intentions, but their solutions are neither market-directed, nor proven to lead to recovery. You cannot fix a broken monetary system just by cutting government spending.
You say “I am against reducing net inflows/outflows”, doesn’t this mean net taxes/spending?
Maybe I am confused what austerity is. How I see it, austerity means getting the government out of the market. As in let the market direct, not the people who create the money from nothing.
My problem with expanding the money supply is it requires paper to be created as money. When paper money is created, there will always be winners and losers (the first to receive the money get the most benefit, while those who never receive or receive it last lose) and therefore it is not moral.
I agree that reducing government spending will cause hardship, and it will make many people in society mad, but it seems we need to take our medicine now or deal with worse consequences later. We live beyond our means by creating paper money.
What austerity actually means in the current world e.g. in Greece is the government sucking more net money out of the economy.
While government spending redistributes money, it is at least money that is put back into the economy. Under austerity, the government usually raises taxes (to pay down debt) sucking more money out, while cutting spending (putting more money in). This is even more problematic when (as in Greece) the creditors are all offshore.
Getting the government out of the market is a good idea, but like with any drug addiction, we have to come off slowly and carefully.
“And a contractionary crunch right now will just further tarnish the notion of smaller government in the eyes of the wider population.”
Not if they take the wages from the bureacrats and the overheads supporting their empires and give the money to the lower classes via electronic debit cards. And because said departments are abolished there is no government inspector to stop the multitude of businesses that spring up. For example street vendors selling healthy home made food cheaper than McDonalds.
Or powdered milk vendors filling out their products with melamine…
Excellent!
Excuse me, Mr. Aziz, but what you seem to be complaining about, in reference to your so-called period of “great stagnation” beginning in 1973, is that TFP “only” continued to grow at a steady pace, from a level higher than at any time during the 1950s and 60s. The rate of growth slowed, obviously from your data, but only bubbleheads believe that anything can or should keep on going up forever. Which is not to say that you are necessarily wrong about fiat money and its effects. Just that your data do not seem to support your argument. Cheers.
No, no, no.
Productivity growth is by definition not a bubble. A bubble is by definition credit/price/financial growth without the underlying productivity/fundamentals to back it. The lower rate of TFP is exactly the kind of condition that is ripe for bubbles, because with less productivity, money printing is more likely to create a bubble.
No, no, no.
I didn´t say that productivity growth is a bubble. Only that thinking that high rates of growth from a low starting level can be sustained (straightlined) forever is exactly the kind of thinking that also leads to bubbles. Also, that TFP growth rates were not low — or even lower than in the earlier period — during the time you call “the great stagnation”. Whatever else was going on, the 80s, 90s and 2000s up to 2007-08 were anything but a “great stagnation”.
Well, relative to levels of productivity growth, they were a great stagnation. In terms of credit growth, they were a huge party. And in the end it is productivity and underlying output that matters more than people being able to eat their home equity and buy a Chinese speedboat.
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I’m just a regular guy trying to understand money, and really appreciated Eric’s post and the whole Azizonomics thread. I’m self taught, and ‘get’ what is being said here.
Eric says ‘My problem with expanding the money supply is it requires paper to be created as money. When paper money is created, there will always be winners and losers (the first to receive the money get the most benefit, while those who never receive or receive it last lose) and therefore it is not moral’.
I agree, and yet find hardly anyone appreciates how significant this is. The penalty for clipping coins of the realm in most monarchies was death It was so for the Founding Fathers of the USA so this was appreciated but is now forgotten. How things have changed! Quantative easing has become clever and fashionable. A tiny minority grow fat on the new money created while it it destroys the purchasing power of the fiat money in the pockets of the majority.
If creating money is good, harmless, OK for the economy, clever, fashionable etc, why can’t I turn on my HP printer, print off some notes and go spend them like the masters of the Universe at the Fed and the B of E?
An elite cabal of Banksters seem to be acting like Al Capone protecting his turf. I can, but you’d better not.
I think we all know we are all being shafted, but it’s hard to see what to do about it.
Well said Martin. We are all common guys here. It is called common sense!
You could, but I wouldn’t expect anyone to accept your printed dollars in exchange for anything of actual value.
This is what’s called a non-sequitur.
Well, above all it’s unfair.
If the Fed can print money and give it whoever it likes, why not the common man? Why do we have to work for our capital when they can just hit CTRL+P?
That is the starting point for lost faith in the fiat system. It is fundamentally unequal. No wonder inequality (as measured by income, GINI, etc) is soaring.
The logic here is pretty poor. It’s “unfair” in the same way not being able to create and follow your own personal legal code is “unfair”.
“Exploding” inequality is a much more significant problem in the USA than in most of the rest of the developed world, in no small part due to its relatively weak social support systems and publicly-funded services, and the steady, ongoing deregulation.
Further, countries seeing increasing levels of inequality are those going down the American path of weak social support systems, hollowed-out public services and deregulation.
As you’ve noted, the entire developed world uses fiat money. Few, if any, countries in that group have the problems with inequality that the US does (and the ones with the lowest levels of inequality are generally the ones with the highest levels of publicly-funded services and industry regulation).
Trying to justify the status quo as legitimate under the social contract seems quite weak. Under a common legal code everyone has to play by the same rules. Under fiat money, the banks are not subject to the same set of rules at all. It would be like if legislators were not affected by their own legislation. They can create money and credit out of thin air. We can’t. It’s a rigged game.
And income inequality has gradually risen for the OECD as a whole since the 70s:
I’m not (and I have no idea how you got there). I’m highlighting the qualitative difference between one entity being able to print money and everyone being able to print money.
You are drawing a very long bow indeed trying to create causality between fiat money and growing inequality. There does not appear to even be a correlation between them (eg: Sweden’s inequality was improving until the early ’80s, Germany’s was essentially flat until the early 2000s). To say nothing of the phenomenal levels of inequality that existed long before 1971 (eg: during the late 19th century).
Here is a presentation I found with a quick search that looks at inequality growth over the last half century or so: http://www.gini-research.org/system/uploads/19/original/Atkinson_GINI_Mar2010_.pdf?1269619027
There also seems to be a clear change in the trend around the mid-late ’90s (bit hard to tell because of the resolution). What happened ?
Shouldn’t it be getting worse as the money printing rate has increased ?
I am speculating, but I tend to see the uptrend from the late 90s as gains from technology. But the clear downtrend from 71 is what I am interested in. It was a whole new trajectory. The uptrend from the late 90s is far less statistically significant.
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Wow, I am truly impressed. You managed to establish causality from data, something the most accomplished statisticians and econometricians couldn’t do. Why aren’t you at Harvard or Princeton? Oh, right, I forgot — you can’t do that. Crackpots will complement you, but you desperately need some remedial statistics classes.
Did leaving Bretton Woods lead to lower TFP growth? Yes. Does that imply that leaving Bretton Woods caused the latter? To some extent, especially when taken with the other data I have found that shows that the end of the Bretton Woods era presaged a profound change in the global economic system. Does it prove that that was the main causal link? No. Generally I would tend to believe that globalisation is the real key here, but of course it was the end of Bretton Woods that allowed for those developments.
All I said was that I had some empirical evidence that supports my hunch. I never said that I had proved my hunch.
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So, why does the graph include a natural log?
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