A seu tempo será outro testemunho, outra prova do tempo

Ainda recentemente em "A fazer sombra aos alemães!" escrevi:

"Ainda ontem à noite ao fazer zapping pelos canais apanhei a ex-ministra, julgo que ainda eurodeputada, Maria João Rodrigues, em plena lengalenga que eu já julgava obsoleta.
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Dizia a técnica que os alemães tinham de aumentar os seus salários para que os europeus do sul pudessem exportar mais para a Alemanha."

 Lembrem-se que para este anónimo da província a causa raiz dos problemas portugueses que levaram ao descalabro das contas públicas tiveram origem na entrada da China no comércio mundial e não no fim do escudo:

• It's not the euro, stupid! (parte I), (parte II), (parte III), (parte IV) e (parte V)
• Poucos recordam o impacte da adesão da China à OMC

Outra guerra deste blogue e deste consultor é a de aumentar preços, para baixar os custos unitários do trabalho enquanto se aumentam salários. Recordar:

• A redução dos CUT
• Aumentar preços (parte II)
• O erro de análise dos Custos Unitários de Trabalho (parte V)
• O FT a colar-se ao anónimo de província

Ontem, descobri este texto "Why the Neoclassical Story About German Wage “Moderation” Causing the Eurozone Crisis is Wrong". Um artigo longo e que merece uma leitura atenta. Sublinho estes trechos:

"German firms, producing high-tech, high value-added, high-priced and mostly very complex manufacturing goods, do not directly compete with Spanish, Portuguese, Greek or even most Italian firms, which are specializing in lower-tech, lower value-added, low-price and less complex goods (Simonazzi et al. 2013). German firms are price-setters and dominate their niche markets, while Greek and Portuguese firms instead compete with low-cost Asian producers - on costs (but not just labor costs) - and get pushed out from their markets by their Chinese competitors (Straca 2013). [Moi ici: Segue-se algo que só vi escrito por mim e ao arrepio dos gurus tugas... lembrem-se do meu marcador gato vs rato] The upshot is that real-life competition in oligopolistic markets cannot be reduced to just unit-labor-cost competition - whatever the textbooks want us to believe. And if one insists on focusing on unit labor costs, then there is no reason why one should not also look at unit capital costs (or profit margins), as is argued by Felipe and Kumar (2011); oligopolistic firms might as well compete on profit margins."

E ainda:

"Flassbeck and Lapavitsas argue in favor of higher German wages (and higher German inflation), just like Wren-Lewis (2016), in the mistaken belief that this will lower Germany’s cost competitiveness, reduce its trade surplus, and thereby rebalance the Eurozone as a whole. German exports and imports, as I argued above, are not very sensitive to changes in relative unit labor costs, however, and hence there will be only a limited amount of expenditure switching (away from German products and toward foreign goods), as has also been convincingly shown by Schröder (2015). Let me repeat for clarity’s sake that I am strongly in favor of higher nominal wage growth (in excess of labor productivity growth plus 2%) in Germany. It will definitely help Germany. But it will not help the crisis-countries of the Eurozone."