This is my commentary on the analysis of monetary inflation and income development by Dr. Harald Wozniewski, as presented on kiwifo.de, especially on page “60 Jahre Währungsreform – 60 Jahre Geldmengenwachstum“.
Our task is first to determine the real inflation rate (not by means of a shopping basket, which is hedonically corrected etc.). This is simple: If the inflation rate grows only as much as the GDP, its speed of circulation stays the same, so also the “difficulty of aquiring money”, so also the prices. Because, circulation speed is the ratio of GDP to money: Circulation speed of money = GDP / (M1 + cash). If this speed decreases, there is more money, and this means price inflation. This price inflation can however be hidden by the fact
However, all this money is created by monetization: banks have securities in their books, and emit their own securities based on that, some of which (plus public bonds) are accepted by the central bank. So other banks can borrow them, place them at the central bank, and get cash money delivered in return. So higher monetization is only an indicator of credit expansion (potentially made possible by wealth accumulation as goods, like real estate that banks can use as securities). But still, by allowing this increase of monetization, teh central bank allows the same amount of inflation. Which, minus the GDP growth, means the same devaluation of wages, which are paid in this money.
We see: Economic exclusion because of money scarcity does not happen because there’s too little money in the system (the opposite is the case). Instead, because this money is not paid as wages.
Measuring the GDP increase year by year, after deducting shopping-basket based inflation, measures efficiency gains, and in one sense this is indeed the growth of the economy: more wealth because of more efficient tech. These efficiency gains normally have to be forwarded to the workers by wage increases that are the same as GDP growth (to keep mass purchasing power). But what GDP change does not account for is, what proportion of this total wealth is available for purchase from a worker’s income. This proportion steadily decreases because the monetary amount is more inflated than the GDP. In total, the “right of one EUR to a proportion of total GDP” has decreased by 74.3% from 1970 to 2012 [source, “Tabelle 2”.U53]. Of course, the “right of 1% of total money amount to a proportion of total GDP” has not decreased, but to keep their income at the same proportion of the money amount, the income of workers would have to increase by the same amount as monetary inflation. Which it did not.
This does not mean that workers are now, in absolute terms, worse off than in the 70’s: theres (1) profiting wealth accumulation because a house etc. can be used for decades, and (2) profiting from the increase of total wealth through advancement of technology. That’s why German workers don’t complain as much as they should. But in relative terms, they are much worse off: the entitlement from their monetary income to a proportion of the yearly produced total wealth (“GDP”) in 2012 was only 25.7% of what it was in 1970.
This does however not necessarily mean that prices are four times higher than they should be if worker’s would fare as well as in 1970 (or that workers would have to earn 4 times as much). It just means that, as they have less right to total wealth with their income, someone else has more right. But, as can be seen from the decrease of monetary circulation speed by 74.3% as well, they do not use that right, they just have it stored as money. Prices do not increase by monetary inflation automatically, but only if the circulation speed of the money decreases less than it is inflated. If those who have the additional money would (could) use it as often as in the 1970’s, that would of course lead to a fourfold price increase. But this is not even possible except as a one-time effect: their right to this money does not replenish as continually earned wages do (it only replenishes by interest), so the two cannot be compared easily.
So it is not justified from these findings of monetary inflation to say that workers don’t earn their fair share (that may be found nonetheless from other arguments!). Instead, if anything, then the monetary inflation amount that is beyond real wage increase rate (which means 10%, as since the mid 90’s there were no real wage increases) is a sum of money that is year by year distributed to “others” (banks, companies, privateers) while it should be distributed to the workers. This is for example 200 billion EUR from 20011 to 2012 [source, “Tabelle 2”.M52-M53]. Distributed to 68.4 million adults in Germany (data form 2011-01), this would mean an added income of 2923 EUR yearly. Instead, it accumulates “somewhere else”.
So what we have here is a phenomenon of wealth accumulation in money that was not there in earlier years. But since money is only a small part of a nation’s accumulated wealth, it is by no means sufficient to look at monetary wealth accumulation alone to determine a problem with wealth accumulation in Germany. Instead, one has to look at total assets.
So, in my conclusions, the arguments by Dr. Harald Wozniewski are internally misguided. Still, lots of interesting figures to find there from which you may draw your own conclusions.
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