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Workers

Larry Summers' Warnings and the Robots Taking Our Jobs

In a Washington Post column this morning, Larry Summers rightly points out that there is little reason to believe that President Trump has much to do with the US economy's relatively good performance over the last year. As he notes, most other major economies have seen even larger upturns relative to their predicted growth path.

In addition, it is worth noting that some of the uptick in the US may simply be due to the continuation of the Obama–Yellen recovery. As Jared Bernstein and I pointed out last month, there is reason to believe that the tightening of the labor market may lead to an uptick in productivity growth. There is some preliminary evidence that we are now on a trend of faster growth.

The place where I would differ with Summers is his dire warnings about the next recession, which surely will come at some point.

"If and when recession comes, the world will have much less room than usual to maneuver. From a narrow economic perspective, there will be much less room than the usual 500 basis points of space to bring down interest rates. There will also be much less space for fiscal expansions than there was when countries were less indebted."

Summers is right that the Fed will again have to rely on unorthodox monetary policy, such as quantitative easing, to provide a boost in the next recession. (This is why many of us have argued for an inflation target higher than 2.0 percent.) However, it is not clear that there actually will be less space for fiscal expansion.

The limit for countries like the United States, which have their own currency, is the point at which spending overheats the economy and leads to inflation. Since the point of stimulus is to boost the economy out of a recession, there is no reason we would want to get to this point in any case.

CEPR / January 22, 2018

Article Artículo

Lessons in Economics for Bret Stephens: Apple and Donald Trump's Big Tax Cut

We all know about the skills shortage. Many employers can't find workers with the necessary skills. For example, the NYT can't find columnists who understand economics, so they had to hire Bret Stephens instead.

Mr. Stephens is angry that many people won't join him in celebrating the decision by Apple and other big companies to repatriate foreign earnings back to the United States. He tells readers in his column, "Clueless Versus Trump":

"Apple’s announcement on Wednesday that it will repatriate most of the estimated $274 billion that it holds in offshore earnings is great news for the United States. Uncle Sam will get a one-time $38 billion tax payment. The company promises to add 20,000 jobs to its U.S. work force, a 24 percent increase, and build a new campus. Another $5 billion will go toward a fund for advanced manufacturing in America.

"C’mon. What’s with the long face?"

There is some real world confusion here, most of it on the tax side. The basic point here is that Stephens doesn't seem to have a clue why the government taxes in the first place. He wants us to celebrate the fact that Apple is paying $38 billion to the Treasury. Wow, are we all rich now?

How would the world be different if Apple still held its money overseas and we had the Fed credit the government with another $38 billion to count against its debt? If Mr. Stephens can see the difference, perhaps he can use another column to tell us, but the reality is the world would be little different in that scenario.

CEPR / January 20, 2018