April 06, 2010
Okay, it’s not quite that bad, but when someone who pretends to be serious wants his readers to celebrate the fact that: “the average American worker is nearly 10 times more productive than the average Chinese worker,” it’s getting pretty silly. (Actually it’s probably closer than 7-8 times, but this is David Brooks we’re talking about.)
People in the United States are used to comparing their living standards to countries like Canada and Germany, not China. While China is a rapidly developing country, it is still a relatively poor country in a process of catching up. It’s more than a bit silly to tell people in the United States that our productivity is many times higher than that of a poor peasant agricultural worker in central China.
Brooks seems fascinated by the fact that our income is on average projected to rise. This is true and always has been true and it is true for almost every other country in the world. Incomes rise, incomes rise, incomes rise. Let’s say that a few thousand more times so that no columnist will ever again write it up as though it is news.
This is the normal state for economies. Incomes rise through time because people become more educated, we get more and better capital, and our technology improves. The real issue is the rate at which incomes rise. For most people in the United States the rate of increase in income or living standards (this can also be the result of more leisure) has been extremely slow in the last three decades. Projections show that rising health care costs will eat up much of the projected gains in income over the next three decades. This is the sort of issue that serious people would look at.
Instead, Brooks touts our growing population — hey we should be like Congo or Ethiopia, they even faster population growth. It’s hard to know what planet Brooks lives on, but on this one, population growth is not a measure of prosperity. In fact, in a world where there is a desperate need to limit greenhouse gas emissions, population is decidedly unhealthy.
Well, Brooks did warn serious people to not read his column. They would be well advised to take this advice.
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