Economics — New words — Sue Butler

price-wage spiral

For some time now the Governor of the Reserve Bank, Philip Lowe, has in his public remarks stressed that a wage-price spiral (where wages go up and prices go up as employers pass the increases on) would keep inflation high. But now he has commented that what we need to look out for is a price-wage spiral (where prices go up and employees seek better wages to cover the increased cost in living).

ZG: 5

This is a subtlety of economics that has escaped most people who are busy trying to survive the consequences.

ZG: 4

This is possibly a Philip Lowe coinage that will not take off in the general community because it does not get at the heart of the problem.

Economics, PoliticsSue ButlerMarch 13, 2023Comment

polycrisis

First we had the permacrisis which Collins Dictionary listed as a Word of the Year for 2022 and defined as ‘an extended period of instability and insecurity’. Now we have the polycrisis, a term popularised by the Columbia University historian Adam Tooze who argues that the individual shocks involved in a polycrisis interact so that the whole is more than the sum of its parts.

Economics, PoliticsSue ButlerFebruary 27, 2023Comment

The Great Reset

This was the title of a plan launched by the World Economic Forum in 2020 in response to the COVID pandemic. It proposes that after of the great disruption to the world economy caused by the pandemic, we should not go back to capitalism and democracy as we knew it, but rethink what those systems mean and how we can reshape them to produce a greener, smarter, fairer society.

Economics, Politics, SocietySue ButlerFebruary 27, 2023Comment

economic hibernation

This was originally described by Josh Frydenberg as the cryogenic freezing of the economy but was changed, as discussions went on, to economic hibernation. Perhaps cryogenic freezing sounded a bit scary and was harder to imagine in terms of the economy.

ZG: 9

How economic hibernation plays out in Australia is going to be the subject for discussion for some time to come. Obviously we have done the employer/employee relationship up to a point, but the landlord/tenant one is still difficult.

Economics, SocietySue ButlerApril 7, 2020Comment

floodplain harvesting

This is the harvesting of water from floodplains after heavy rain. It can be done by channelling water into storage sites for later use.

ZG: 5

As we become increasingly aware that there is not enough water in our rivers to sustain all the use that people want to make of it, the debate becomes more heated about who gets what share of it.

Economics, Environment, PoliticsSue ButlerMarch 27, 2020Comment

inverted yield curve

We are in economic circumstances now where the ten-year bond offers less than the one-year bond. Thus the graph shows an inverted yield curve, high at one year and dropping to a low at ten.

ZG: 5

Probably more people now know this obscure piece of finance jargon because it is being trumpeted as an indicator of a recession to come.

EconomicsSue ButlerSeptember 22, 2019Comment

modern monetary theory

Modern monetary theory (also known as MMT) says that, with a monetary sovereign government, that is, one that has its own currency, the goal should be to balance the economy rather than the budget.

ZG: 7

I think that we will hear a lot more about MMT in the future as we search for economic strategies that work for people.

Business, EconomicsSue ButlerAugust 20, 2019Comment

digital trade

Trade is the buying and selling of goods and services. Digital trade is digitally-enabled, with the item of commerce being delivered digitally or physically. It is what happened to commerce when we got the internet.

ZG: 8

How we buy and sell things, after being such a fixed procedure for centuries, is now in a state of flux.

Economics, Internet, TechnologySue ButlerAugust 1, 2019Comment

New Words