After a major loss of dynamism in the 1960s, productivity growth rates began dropping in most countries, falling by half in the U.S. in the 1970s and more or less ceasing altogether in France, Germany and Britain in the late 1990s.
From Edmund Phelps
'Egalitarians' who complain about inequality view the wealth of the wealthiest as bad in itself: it disfigures society. They would enact a wealth tax to extirpate the offending wealth.
Developing new products is labour- intensive. So is producing the capital goods needed to make them. These jobs disappear when innovation stalls.
With less competition to fear, companies are emboldened to raise their mark-ups and profits. That lifts share prices and thus the wealth of already wealthy shareholders.
The Keynesian belief that 'demand' is always at the root of underemployment and slow growth is a fallacy.
No amount of debt restructuring, even debt forgiveness, will help the Greeks achieve real prosperity. What they need is not short-term relief but, rather, a long-term cure.
Capitalist systems function less well without state protection of investors, lenders, and companies against monopoly, deception, and fraud.
I'm old enough to remember in the 1930s and the 1940s when thrift, frugality, was considered an important virtue.
The best part of the high school in Hastings must have been the Music Department. Its orchestra and concert band did well in county competitions, and the dance band formed by its students was the best in the region. I played lead trumpet in all of them.
Unemployment determination in a modern economy was the main subject area of my research from the mid-1960s to the end of the 1970s and again from the mid-1980s to the early 1990s.
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