Here is my take on it. The Fed and the central banks are like sticks trying to prop up a world-sized jellyfish. They make a move and billions of small operators flow around it to a position of their maximum advantage. The Fed and central banks are trying to manage the unmanageable. In so doing they have created a situation where an increase in interest rates to a paltry 4% would bankrupt most nations. This is because low interest rates have led politicians to print and then borrow billions for their pet projects. None of these projects pay for themselves, like a hydroelectric dam would. They are green energy debacles or social payoffs, which do nothing but create more debt and add to the burden the future must eventually pay for.
I agree that labor participation, or rather lack thereof is probably 16 million in the US alone. Much of this is caused not by the economy, but instead is an effect of countless regulations from federal and state agencies. I would like to hire an employee. But to pay the state required wages of $10 costs me about $20 per hour plus I have to spend hours and hours each year doing paperwork. If I miss one of the several required filings and payments required for the state and feds I will be fined hundreds or thousands of dollars. I simply can’t hire anybody.
Now, multiply that issue by all the people not employed.
This is the elephant in the room, the fact that the inflation-adjusted total that employers are paying is soaring even while everyone complains about mean old employers not wanting to raise their workers pay:
Paperwork and fines for one or a few days late on a ZERO dollars due report. Tell me about it.
Im closng the doors on my business soon.