A Worldwide Consumption Norm (Based on Debt) and the Financial Crisis

Abstract

The steady advancement of real wages formed the structural background for mass consumption, which itself paralleled the rise in profits, and thus constituted a fundamental pillar of the Fordist growth model. Like gross domestic product (GDP) growth (Table 8.2) and the wage share (Table 8.4), the growth of real wages diminished greatly throughout the entire Atlantic space beginning with the 1980s (Table 10.1). This development culminated in the 2000s, when real wage growth almost stagnated. It was well below 1 per cent in EU 27, the US and Japan. It was only in the Republic of Ireland, Hungary and the Czech Republic that growth rates of real wages of over 2 per cent were recorded during this decade.