One of the more recent articles: https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/uk-annual-wage-growth-72-ex... Or here: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/jun/20/would-a-wag...

I didn't see any mention of calls for workers to accept lower wages in the first article. In the second article, such calls were mentioned but not explicitly referenced or quoted. (Maybe they would be familiar to a British audience.)

But I would say that is different than asking for private sector workers to accept lower wages as an inflation fighting strategy. And note that the actual fiscal policy that the UK has pursued is wage subsidies, as much as 650£ - 1000£ annually it seems. (As described in the second article, not something I'm familiar with beyond that.)

Ironically, they are most vehement when claiming wage rises in the public sector cause inflation, despite ethe evidence there being much weaker (or non existent according to many economists).

Telling workers to accept lower pay makes about as much sense as asking companies to accept lower profits. Yes you can ask but they will not obey.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-11-15/uk-s-suna...

A central bank saying inflation is caused by high wages is exactly the same as the government telling people they should get a lower wage. There is no practical difference.

It is in fact worse, because the central bank tends to act on that phrase. So the government not only tells people they should earn less, but forces their hands into that.

You may think that is better or worse, but it is not appealing directly to workers to throw away their pay check.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/28/business/wage-inflation-m...

Note that the main transmission mechanism of monetary policy in fighting inflation is basically putting people out of work, to the extent of provoking a recession if need be. So yes the fed is looking for some pain in the labor market to see that things are working, though they would love for inflation to come down without a recession too.

But high inflation is also bad for workers, because wages in general don't keep up in real terms (re-negotiated infrequently, leverage imbalance between company and worker, status quo bias, etc.). The higher inflation is the larger you can expect companies profit shares to be (case in point, the original article). Also really high inflation seems bad in general for the economy, both workers and companies.

that is, more of less, ahat bank of england has announced.

ok so you agree with the general thesis but not the exact mechanism? why quibble then?

https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/8054911/rba-wants-wor...

In before someone argues that RBA isn’t part of the Australian capital-G Government, the organisation certainly is part of the governing institutions of Australia.

Austrian government for one because they're the pawns of the big industry. But I'm sure other governments too.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixon_shock#:~:text=Nixon%20is....

It also enacted price freezes and rations.

Now, of course, he's not saying to any particular workers "Hey, stop asking for much higher wages," but he says plainly in the final paragraph of the article:

> “The labor market … shows only tentative signs of rebalancing, and wage growth remains well above levels that would be consistent with 2 percent inflation over time,” he said. “Despite some promising developments, we have a long way to go in restoring price stability.”

How would you suppose workers are supposed to have wage growth "consistent with 2 percent inflation" if said wage growth were to greatly exceed that magical 2% number? This is the Fed literally saying "Please turn down your pay increase so we can fight inflation," except that there's also the implicit thread of "... or else we're gonna have to make sure a bunch of you lose your jobs so it all balances out. It'd be a shame if that happened, wouldn't it?"