Ahhh, “the system” was cutting workers rights in preparation of the cutting of workers rights – very interesting.

I note the sharpest decline in the % share happens before the Employment Contracts Act (that horrid act of violence upon the workers).

It looks like CPW’s numbers are the same as yours, the X axis just goes back further.

“the calssic theory is a bunch of crap becuase it doens’t recognise that the actors have different levels of bargaining power and that these levels cn be cahgned by legislation”

That is why he mentioned imperfect competition and bargaining. I agree that bargaining relationship are important things. However, CPW’s point was to show that bargaining power wasn’t the SOLE determinent of the wage/GDP relationship – which implies that their are complications to the story that you were painting in your blog post.

“It might be time to update your rhetoric for the 21st century.”

You obviously haven’t been reading Naomi Klein CPW, its all the vogue now 😉

The capital-labour share has no relevance for what you’re attempting to argue. Why not argue your point directly by claiming that the returns on capital in NZ are too high? Then tell me why New Zealanders’ have no interest in saving at these “unfairly high” rates of return, and we need to borrow from overseas to fund capital stock expansion?

I find that worker versus capitalist stuff pretty embarrassingly dated these days now that human capital is the primary driver of the income gap between rich and poor. It might be time to update your rhetoric for the 21st century.

… hence, the aim of a political party based around the capitalist class, a rightwing party, will always be to weaken the unions and workers’ bargaining power in general – thus lowering workers power and allowing capitalists to retain a larger share of production (as happened in NZ in the 1990s)… workers’ parties, parties of the Left, willalways seekt o strengthen the bargaining position of workers and their unions…

… both capitalists and workers are rationally motivated to seek a larger share of the cake at the other’s expense. Boh, of course, will want to create a larger cake too – both to placate the other side when demanding a bigger slice and so that larger slices are possible…

“The classical economic explanation for labour/capital shares is that they will be set by the marginal product of labour and capital and hence invariant to government policy”… the calssic theory is a bunch of crap becuase it doens’t recognise that the actors have different levels of bargaining power and that these levels cn be cahgned by legislation.