The Washington Post had a front page story in the Sunday business section headlined, “The Great Unraveling of Globalization,” which told readers that the overseas profits of U.S. corporations are not growing in line with their expectations from two decades ago. Among the main complaints is that consumer markets have not developed as expected.
“Those vast new consumer markets in globalized nations have not emerged either. For example, Chinese household consumption accounts for about 34 percent of GDP — down four points in the past decade — compared to a healthier 70 percent in the United States. And Chinese consumer diffidence is not an outlier.”
Okay, we will need Mr. Arithmetic to help with this one. Mr. Arithmetic points out that a relatively small share of the pie in China goes to consumption, but because of its rapid growth, this is now a very large pie. Since 1994 China’s economy has grown by more than 520 percent. By comparison Mexico’s economy, which was the beneficiary of NAFTA and the basis for many Post articles on a rising middle class, has grown by just 66 percent over this same period. Mr. Arithmetic tells us that if China’s economy had grown at the same rate as Mexico’s, but its consumers spent 70 percent of GDP instead of the current 34 percent cited in the article, its consumer market would be just over half the current size.
This means that even if consumption is a relatively small share of GDP in China, because of the economy’s extraordinary growth, the consumer market has probably increased by at least as much as anyone could have reasonably expected. It is also worth noting that the small share of consumption in GDP is directly related to growth. In general, countries that invest more grow more rapidly. (In addition, some of the companies discussed in this piece, like Caterpillar and IBM, largely sell investment goods. They would be helped by the large share of investment in China’s GDP.
If U.S. companies are not faring well in international markets it likely means that they are losing ground to foreign competitors. This could reflect the quality of the highly paid CEOs at U.S. companies. Perhaps some of the much lower paid CEOs at companies in Europe and Asia are better at their jobs.
The Washington Post had a front page story in the Sunday business section headlined, “The Great Unraveling of Globalization,” which told readers that the overseas profits of U.S. corporations are not growing in line with their expectations from two decades ago. Among the main complaints is that consumer markets have not developed as expected.
“Those vast new consumer markets in globalized nations have not emerged either. For example, Chinese household consumption accounts for about 34 percent of GDP — down four points in the past decade — compared to a healthier 70 percent in the United States. And Chinese consumer diffidence is not an outlier.”
Okay, we will need Mr. Arithmetic to help with this one. Mr. Arithmetic points out that a relatively small share of the pie in China goes to consumption, but because of its rapid growth, this is now a very large pie. Since 1994 China’s economy has grown by more than 520 percent. By comparison Mexico’s economy, which was the beneficiary of NAFTA and the basis for many Post articles on a rising middle class, has grown by just 66 percent over this same period. Mr. Arithmetic tells us that if China’s economy had grown at the same rate as Mexico’s, but its consumers spent 70 percent of GDP instead of the current 34 percent cited in the article, its consumer market would be just over half the current size.
This means that even if consumption is a relatively small share of GDP in China, because of the economy’s extraordinary growth, the consumer market has probably increased by at least as much as anyone could have reasonably expected. It is also worth noting that the small share of consumption in GDP is directly related to growth. In general, countries that invest more grow more rapidly. (In addition, some of the companies discussed in this piece, like Caterpillar and IBM, largely sell investment goods. They would be helped by the large share of investment in China’s GDP.
If U.S. companies are not faring well in international markets it likely means that they are losing ground to foreign competitors. This could reflect the quality of the highly paid CEOs at U.S. companies. Perhaps some of the much lower paid CEOs at companies in Europe and Asia are better at their jobs.
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Lydia DePillis had a short piece in the Post on the workers who currently make the federal minimum wage. This is interesting, but it should not be confused with an analysis of who would be affected by an increase in the minimum wage. Because the minimum wage has fallen so far behind inflation in the last four decades, there are relatively few workers who earn exactly the federal minimum wage.
John Schmitt and Janelle Jones did an analysis a few years ago of the workers who earned less than what the minimum wage would have been if it had kept pace with inflation since its peak in 1968. This much larger group workers is far more educated, older, and more likely to be supporting children than the group who earn exactly the minimum wage. Of this larger group, 33.3 percent have at least some college, and an additional 9.9 percent are college grads. If the federal minimum wage were raised back enough so that it had the same purchasing power as it did in 1968, all of these workers would see pay increases, as would many others who currently earn just above the new minimum.
Lydia DePillis had a short piece in the Post on the workers who currently make the federal minimum wage. This is interesting, but it should not be confused with an analysis of who would be affected by an increase in the minimum wage. Because the minimum wage has fallen so far behind inflation in the last four decades, there are relatively few workers who earn exactly the federal minimum wage.
John Schmitt and Janelle Jones did an analysis a few years ago of the workers who earned less than what the minimum wage would have been if it had kept pace with inflation since its peak in 1968. This much larger group workers is far more educated, older, and more likely to be supporting children than the group who earn exactly the minimum wage. Of this larger group, 33.3 percent have at least some college, and an additional 9.9 percent are college grads. If the federal minimum wage were raised back enough so that it had the same purchasing power as it did in 1968, all of these workers would see pay increases, as would many others who currently earn just above the new minimum.
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I apologize to those disgruntled over Beat the Press’s new format. I adhere strongly to the view that website makeovers are everywhere and always for the worse. But CEPR had to change its website because the old one was becoming increasingly dysfunctional at the back end. One of the great things about software innovation is that it forces people to upgrade their software simply to preserve compatibility. That was the main motivation for the change.
Being forced to get a new website, we did try to make it as user friendly as possible. There are many kinks that our crew here is still working on and hopefully will get resolved soon. And then those reporters will really have to worry about a beating.
I apologize to those disgruntled over Beat the Press’s new format. I adhere strongly to the view that website makeovers are everywhere and always for the worse. But CEPR had to change its website because the old one was becoming increasingly dysfunctional at the back end. One of the great things about software innovation is that it forces people to upgrade their software simply to preserve compatibility. That was the main motivation for the change.
Being forced to get a new website, we did try to make it as user friendly as possible. There are many kinks that our crew here is still working on and hopefully will get resolved soon. And then those reporters will really have to worry about a beating.
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Those of us who work for progressive think tanks are always happy when one of the better funded centrist outfits replicates our work, since the findings are then more likely to get attention in major news outlets. For this reason, it was great to see that the Robert Rubin funded Hamilton Project had done a short paper analyzing trends in earnings by education level over the last two decades. This piece got written up in the NYT’s Upshot section by Neil Irwin.
While the Hamilton Project folks got some things right — workers without college degrees have been big losers over the last two decades — they also missed much of the story. Since they only looked at endpoints, they failed to recognize that even workers with college degrees have seen their wages stagnate since the turn of the century.
This makes the technology driving down wages story harder to sell. That story is supposed to mean that there is a shift in demand from less-educated workers to more educated workers. But if even the wages of college grads are falling or stagnant, then it is hard to make a case that there has been a shift in demand towards more educated workers.
They also are somewhat sloppy in discussing globalization as though it is an event that occurred as opposed to a policy of the U.S. government. We have designed our trade agreements to put U.S. manufacturing workers in direct competition with low paid workers in the developing world. The predicted and actual effect of this competition is to drive down the wages of U.S. manufacturing workers and less–educated workers more generally.
However, we have largely left in place the barriers that protect doctors, lawyers, dentists and other highly paid professionals from competition with their lower paid counterparts in the developing world. This was a policy choice, not an inevitable process of globalization.
The focus on endpoints also caused the Hamilton Project folks to miss the sharp upturn in wages for less-educated workers during the low unemployment years of the late 1990s. Our research has found that low rates of unemployment disproportionately benefit those at the bottom end of the wage distribution. We have not returned to the low unemployment of the the late 1990s because of a decision not to have a larger stimulus or to address the problem of an over-valued dollar that is giving us large trade deficits. (Yes, this is directly relevant to the lack of currency rules in the Trans-Pacific Partnership.) As a result, the economy does not have the demand needed to get back to full employment. (If the Federal Reserve Board raises interest rates to slow growth, it also will not help in the effort to get back to full employment.)
In any case, the decision to not have a full employment economy is also a policy choice. In short, it’s touching to read the Hamilton Project people’s plea that we should see inequality as both an issue of policy and technology, but if they had done more careful research, they would realize they don’t have much evidence for the technology portion of their argument.
Those of us who work for progressive think tanks are always happy when one of the better funded centrist outfits replicates our work, since the findings are then more likely to get attention in major news outlets. For this reason, it was great to see that the Robert Rubin funded Hamilton Project had done a short paper analyzing trends in earnings by education level over the last two decades. This piece got written up in the NYT’s Upshot section by Neil Irwin.
While the Hamilton Project folks got some things right — workers without college degrees have been big losers over the last two decades — they also missed much of the story. Since they only looked at endpoints, they failed to recognize that even workers with college degrees have seen their wages stagnate since the turn of the century.
This makes the technology driving down wages story harder to sell. That story is supposed to mean that there is a shift in demand from less-educated workers to more educated workers. But if even the wages of college grads are falling or stagnant, then it is hard to make a case that there has been a shift in demand towards more educated workers.
They also are somewhat sloppy in discussing globalization as though it is an event that occurred as opposed to a policy of the U.S. government. We have designed our trade agreements to put U.S. manufacturing workers in direct competition with low paid workers in the developing world. The predicted and actual effect of this competition is to drive down the wages of U.S. manufacturing workers and less–educated workers more generally.
However, we have largely left in place the barriers that protect doctors, lawyers, dentists and other highly paid professionals from competition with their lower paid counterparts in the developing world. This was a policy choice, not an inevitable process of globalization.
The focus on endpoints also caused the Hamilton Project folks to miss the sharp upturn in wages for less-educated workers during the low unemployment years of the late 1990s. Our research has found that low rates of unemployment disproportionately benefit those at the bottom end of the wage distribution. We have not returned to the low unemployment of the the late 1990s because of a decision not to have a larger stimulus or to address the problem of an over-valued dollar that is giving us large trade deficits. (Yes, this is directly relevant to the lack of currency rules in the Trans-Pacific Partnership.) As a result, the economy does not have the demand needed to get back to full employment. (If the Federal Reserve Board raises interest rates to slow growth, it also will not help in the effort to get back to full employment.)
In any case, the decision to not have a full employment economy is also a policy choice. In short, it’s touching to read the Hamilton Project people’s plea that we should see inequality as both an issue of policy and technology, but if they had done more careful research, they would realize they don’t have much evidence for the technology portion of their argument.
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Did someone in Japan call the Washington Post’s news reporting “crappy?” Usually newspapers refrain from name-calling, especially in the news section, but this is the Washington Post, there we find the paper telling us:
“With a rapidly aging society and miserable birth rate, Japan hasn’t been able to replace the people leaving outlying towns and cities as quickly as they’ve departed.”
“Miserable” in this context means “low.” Given that Japan is a densely populated country, it is not clear why anyone should see it as a bad thing that the country may be less densely populated in the future and contribute less to global warming, but obviously this prospect has the Post upset.
This story, about a school that has lost most of its pupils, could be written about thousands of towns across the United States over the last five decades and certainly many more in the decades ahead. These can be sad stories, but hardly amount to a national crisis. More generally, the demographic horror story that the Post and others like to tell about Japan cannot stand up to simple arithmetic. Even very modest rates of productivity growth will raise living standards by far more than demographic changes could possibly lower them.
Did someone in Japan call the Washington Post’s news reporting “crappy?” Usually newspapers refrain from name-calling, especially in the news section, but this is the Washington Post, there we find the paper telling us:
“With a rapidly aging society and miserable birth rate, Japan hasn’t been able to replace the people leaving outlying towns and cities as quickly as they’ve departed.”
“Miserable” in this context means “low.” Given that Japan is a densely populated country, it is not clear why anyone should see it as a bad thing that the country may be less densely populated in the future and contribute less to global warming, but obviously this prospect has the Post upset.
This story, about a school that has lost most of its pupils, could be written about thousands of towns across the United States over the last five decades and certainly many more in the decades ahead. These can be sad stories, but hardly amount to a national crisis. More generally, the demographic horror story that the Post and others like to tell about Japan cannot stand up to simple arithmetic. Even very modest rates of productivity growth will raise living standards by far more than demographic changes could possibly lower them.
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The NYT gave us yet another account of how the machines are taking our jobs. This one carries the warning that they are taking the jobs of highly educated workers as well, not just less-educated workers. This story apparently carries lot of appeal among elite types (i.e. people who write for the NYT) even if it has little basis in reality.
We have a very good way to measure the extent to which machines are taking our jobs. It’s called “productivity growth.” It means the extent to which we can produce more output with the same amount of human labor. If the machines are taking our jobs, productivity growth should be very fast.
It isn’t. Productivity growth was very fast in the years from 1947-73. It grew at a pace of roughly 3.0 percent annually. This was a period of strong wage growth and low unemployment. It then fell to around 1.5 percent annually from 1973-1995. There was then a pick-up to close to 3.0 percent annually in the years from 1995 to 2005. (For some technical reasons, like a faster pace of depreciation in the more recent period, the 1947-73 productivity growth was much stronger.) Since 2005 productivity growth has fallen to an average rate of about 1.5 percent. In the last two years it has been under 1.0 percent.
While it is likely that the weak productivity growth is at least partly due to the weak growth of the economy, it is clear that rapid productivity growth is not the cause of weak labor demand. In other words, the machines are only taking our jobs in the NYT, this is not a problem in the economy.
This point matters because if machines our taking our jobs then the problem of high unemployment and stagnant wage growth is a technology story. If the story is not machines then it implies the problem is bad economic policy. For example, bad macroeconomic policy has limited demand, trade policy has been designed to put downward pressure on the wages of middle income workers while protecting highly educated professionals, and the government subsidizes the Wall Street boys and girls with bailouts and tax favors. The evidence supports the policy view but the NYT and other major news outlets continue to promote the technology story anyhow.
The NYT gave us yet another account of how the machines are taking our jobs. This one carries the warning that they are taking the jobs of highly educated workers as well, not just less-educated workers. This story apparently carries lot of appeal among elite types (i.e. people who write for the NYT) even if it has little basis in reality.
We have a very good way to measure the extent to which machines are taking our jobs. It’s called “productivity growth.” It means the extent to which we can produce more output with the same amount of human labor. If the machines are taking our jobs, productivity growth should be very fast.
It isn’t. Productivity growth was very fast in the years from 1947-73. It grew at a pace of roughly 3.0 percent annually. This was a period of strong wage growth and low unemployment. It then fell to around 1.5 percent annually from 1973-1995. There was then a pick-up to close to 3.0 percent annually in the years from 1995 to 2005. (For some technical reasons, like a faster pace of depreciation in the more recent period, the 1947-73 productivity growth was much stronger.) Since 2005 productivity growth has fallen to an average rate of about 1.5 percent. In the last two years it has been under 1.0 percent.
While it is likely that the weak productivity growth is at least partly due to the weak growth of the economy, it is clear that rapid productivity growth is not the cause of weak labor demand. In other words, the machines are only taking our jobs in the NYT, this is not a problem in the economy.
This point matters because if machines our taking our jobs then the problem of high unemployment and stagnant wage growth is a technology story. If the story is not machines then it implies the problem is bad economic policy. For example, bad macroeconomic policy has limited demand, trade policy has been designed to put downward pressure on the wages of middle income workers while protecting highly educated professionals, and the government subsidizes the Wall Street boys and girls with bailouts and tax favors. The evidence supports the policy view but the NYT and other major news outlets continue to promote the technology story anyhow.
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