Yogi,
I am usually a Thurow fan, but he's throwing out government statistics like there're woven with gold. Here are a couple of responses to the yahoo article:
First, when he says, <<``There's a recession built into the American economy,' he told a conference organised by International Data Corp.,
citing the negative savings rate of consumers, and adding that a country cannot continue spending more than it saves.>>
It's hard to disagree with,except that the negative savings rate has been commented on many times as an aberration--the government counts taxes on capital gains as "spending" but doesn't count the capital gain itself as savings. Which means that the more capital gains we have, the lower our savings rate will be, and we all know that there have been, happily, many capital gains taken over the past few years.
Second, he says, <<Thurow said there was a ``dark side' to America's technologically driven economic force -productivity growth was slow and the mean wages of the American male had fallen.>> Well, I'm not sure why he says that productivity growth is slow, if that is so, why is inflation so low? Productivity has at least something to do with it, in addition to things like the strong dollar and increased off-shore manufacturing. But the government can't capture the productivity, because it can't deal with the apples and coconuts nature of the gains, they are more like Kam's disintermediation than they are like speeding up the line. They are more JIT manufacturing, eliminating warehousing and inventory risk, better delivery, more automation, blah blah blah. It is also, I think (though I sometimes hate this word), empowered workers, who figure out little shortcuts and can actually implement them and get rewards for doing so.
As for males getting less money--well, perhaps, on a relative basis, as females had so much catching up to do. Males and females could keep getting more if females were to catch up. Executives exempted, of course, as we all know how indispensible they are. |
