Workers really are getting less of the economy

Workers in Britain and the United States are getting a smaller share of national income than they did decades ago. That is not simply a feeling. The long-run data shows it.

In the UK, labour’s share of national income peaked at around 71% in the mid-1970s and has fallen to around 59%. The United States has experienced a similar long-term decline. The consequence is an enormous shift in income away from wages and towards profits, rents and the owners of capital.

In this video, I look at what happened, why the decline in labour’s share is structural rather than a temporary economic fluctuation, and how changes in trade union power, deregulation, privatisation, globalisation and financialisation contributed to it.

I also argue that this helps explain something much bigger: the political anger now evident on both sides of the Atlantic. Millions of people have good reason to believe that the economy is no longer delivering for them. But that anger can be directed towards people who did not cause the economic changes from which workers have lost.

The decline in labour’s share was not inevitable. Economic policy helped create it, and different economic policies could change it.

If we want to understand today’s political discontent, we need to understand who has gained from economic growth, who has lost, and why.

Take a look at the poll below: https://www.youtube.com/post/UgkxFRqyIRMud97lkmXqXS8ihfQsEJWltnGS

00:00 Why Do Workers Feel Left Behind?
00:57 What Is the Labour Share of GDP?
01:55 75 Years of UK and US Labour Share
03:01 How Much Income Have Workers Lost?
04:08 What Changed in the 1970s?
05:15 Thatcher, Reagan and the Shift Towards Capital
06:24 How Financialisation Changed the Economy
07:29 Why COVID Distorted the Data
08:27 The Political Consequences of Economic Anger
09:31 Why the Decline Was Not Inevitable
10:34 How Workers Could Regain Economic Power
11:28 Rebalancing Labour and Capital

TRANSCRIPT
A transcript for this video is available at: https://www.taxresearch.org.uk

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ABOUT RICHARD MURPHY
Richard Murphy is Emeritus Professor of Accounting Practice at Sheffield University Management School. He is director of Tax Research LLP and the author of the Funding the Future blog. His best-known book is ‘The Joy of Tax’.

This video was edited by Thomas Murphy.

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ON MY BLOG: http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/

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INTRODUCTION: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HdHsRPy3060

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