an economists perspective, page-2

Definitely puts the debt problems of today into perspective.

extract:

"KERRY O'BRIEN: Wages, when you talk about comparisons with time past and today, interest rates may have gone up but of course wages have risen as well, haven't they.

STEVE KEEN: Not as much. You see, again, when you take a look at the comparisons of the real increase in wages, yes there has been a substantial rise in real wages in the last 17 years since the depths of the 1990s recession, so if you go back to the 1990s recession and compare real wages now to real wages, then you see they've rise by a bout 25 per cent, which is quite substantial, but across the same time period the real interest burden has gone up by over 250 per cent, more than 10 times as much. Even if you look at the last election, since the last election, real wages have risen by about five per cent, which is a significant achievement, but across that same time period the real interest rate that households are facing has gone up by almost 50 per cent, so interest rates are cutting more and more into the costs of living, which is why people are not feeling that they're better off than they've ever been before."