“The tendency for prices to fall during recessions has declined over time. An increasing proportion of the effect of any reduction in aggregate demand shows up as a reduction in real output. We shut down our factories rather than running them with lower wages and lower prices for finished goods; in the event of deflation reducing collectible property taxes, a city will fire half of its schoolteachers rather than cut any teacher's wage.

The longer a society remains stable, the more freighted down with special interest groups it becomes. Unions or cartels of businesses slow an economy’s response to change because they require the assent of many members in order to effect a change. This makes wages and prices much stickier than in a classical free-market economy."
—Mancur Olson as paraphrased by Philip Greenspun. original