Unemployment and the Maturity of Capitalism

Arbeitspapier

In my last post, I discussed the underwhelming relation between interest rates and unemployment. In this post, I’ll look at a better way to connect unemployment to interest income. It turns out that if you take US net interest and divide it by corporate profit, you get a ratio that closely tracks unemployment. It’s a measure that Jonathan Nitzan and Shimshon Bichler call the ‘maturity of capitalism’. If this language sounds odd, that’s because Nitzan and Bichler see capitalism differently than your average economists. So before we get to the data, let’s review some of their thinking.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Economic Systems: General ; Employment; Unemployment; Wages; Intergenerational Income Distribution; Aggregate Human Capital; Aggregate Labor Productivity
• Subject: income distribution ; interest rate ; maturity of capitalism ; profit ; sabotage ; unemployment

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Fix, Blair
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Economics from the Top Down
• (where): Toronto
• (when): 2023

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/270869
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:42 AM CET