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| Topic | Think America is on the decline? Think again! |
| The_Sock 06/04/23 4:23:21 PM #4: | The demographic problem hopelessly plaguing many other countries is much smaller in America, which has a younger population and a higher fertility rate than other rich countries. Americans still work more hours than most Europeans or Japanese, and the hours they put in are, on average, more valuable than those of labor forces elsewhere. Despite millions of (mostly) men making a beeline for the labor market exits, the United States has proportionately added more workers this century than its peers. Still, the number of prime-age American men out of work is rising and is higher than in most European countries. Some reasons men arent working include opioids, manufacturing decline, mental illness, and defective care for returning soldiers. They indicate that despite the nations economic success, not all is well. The United States has deeper financial markets, issues the worlds preferred money, has more funds available for venture capital, and fewer rigid labor laws, which allows its world-class managers to hire and fire at need. It is home to the best universities, which still attract the smartest minds from across the world, and dominates innovation; the Silicon Valley powerhouse unquestionably upped Americans productivity in the 2010s, its recent spout with banking failures and Californian exodus aside. How to account for this negativity bias? One gut-fueled answer is that the numbers are wrong. The stats showing the marvels of the U.S. economy just arent correctthink mismeasurement or corrupt statisticians. Another is that recent bias clouds our judgment: we forget the pains of the good old days and romanticize how glorious they really were. There is always something bad somewhere that we can hone in on and conclude that, therefore, things are going in the wrong direction. Bad things happening in front of ones eyes or slapped on newspaper headlines can overshadow the gradual improvement of most things going well or moving in the right direction. Monetary economists often talk about money illusion, where sticker shocks at the store give us the impression that we are poorer simply because the numbers are biggereven if our wages kept pace with inflation or even exceeded it, which they historically have done. If prices in aggregate increased by roughly 8 percent last year, but the Social Security cost-of-living adjustment raised benefits by 8.7 percent, it takes a lot of statistical wiggling to conclude that pensioners therefore are (much) worse off. The grand irony, concludes a story from The Economist, is that knee-jerk reactions from a political class obsessed with the decline that they think they see may create that very decline: Most of these potentially self-harming policies have their roots in a declinist view that, economically at least, simply does not reflect the facts. The diagnoses are that China is getting ahead, or that immigrants are a menace, that large corporations are bastions of woke power and free trade a form of treachery. Disaster and declinism, as appealing and captivating as they are on a personal level and as persuasive and all-encompassing they become in the political arena, remain poor guides to the modern world. --- Sit-up champion of the 27th century. #BlackLivesMatter #IStandWithUkraine ... Copied to Clipboard! |
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