Cute, DJ, but you forgot a few non-trivial factors:
1. Structural inability to deal with non-performing debt.
2. Conformity-driven business culture with resulting low propensity to innovate.
3. Low birth rate with corresponding demographic skew towards retiree segment.
4. Xenophobia and zero immigration.
How many of those can you check for the US, DJ?
The current US economic recovery is exactly like the recovery from the last ('90-'91) recession, where we had ongoing economic uncertainty, continuing white-collar job losses and relatively constant unemployment all the way through 1994. This is how it feels when high productivity is getting baked in the economic cake - economic growth without net job creation. Of course if you live in Europe or South America you have never experienced this, so it's understandable that you may have difficulty interpreting the economic tea leaves.
For those who have not drunk too deeply from Cassandra's cup, the next five years may bring:
1. A new wave of growth in technology, driven by wireless networks (802.11), the solution of the "last mile" problem and the incredibly cheap bandwidth now available from various companies with "written-off" dot-com era long-haul fiber, providing the US with a true to-the-home broadband
network.
2. .....leading to a whole new set of video information services (true streaming video, video-on-demand, etc.),
3. .....leading to a new upgrade cycle for home and business computers with hugely increased mass storage.
4. .....supported by ongoing gains in real income (derived from productivity gains and falling goods prices) for US consumers and:
5. .....the biggest surprise of all - real interest rates that will remain at historically low levels due principally to high levels of US productivity and the China factor.
6. Which of course will mean that the robust housing market will stay that way.
7. And that legions of downsized white-collar workers will choose to use the opportunity provided by low interest rates and broadband connections to their home office to create an entirely new business paradigm, putting one more nail in the coffin of the oh so 20th Century "corporate" way of work. |
