Die Neue Zeit
20th October 2012, 07:58
Caught a reference to this FT article on Libcom, so I thought to repost it:
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/78e883fa-0bef-11e2-8032-00144feabdc0.html#axzz29osnKT8B
Prof Gordon notes further obstacles to rising standards of living for ordinary Americans. These include: the reversal of the demographic dividend that came from the baby boomers and movement of women into the labour force; the levelling-off of educational attainment; and obstacles to the living standards of the bottom 99 per cent. These hurdles include globalisation, rising resource costs and high fiscal deficits and private debts. In brief, he expects the rise in the real disposable incomes of those outside the elite to slow to a crawl. Indeed, it appears to have already done so. Similar developments are occurring in other high-income countries.
For almost two centuries, today’s high-income countries enjoyed waves of innovation that made them both far more prosperous than before and far more powerful than everybody else. This was the world of the American dream and American exceptionalism. Now innovation is slow and economic catch-up fast. The elites of the high-income countries quite like this new world. The rest of their population like it vastly less. Get used to this. It will not change.
Without overblowing things by going into crisis theory stuff, what can be said about this equality of poverty "under capitalism" itself (and so much for Churchill)?
[I'm placing this here and not in Economics because there might be a controversial political angle to raise later on about comparing this to "socialist stagnation."]
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/78e883fa-0bef-11e2-8032-00144feabdc0.html#axzz29osnKT8B
Prof Gordon notes further obstacles to rising standards of living for ordinary Americans. These include: the reversal of the demographic dividend that came from the baby boomers and movement of women into the labour force; the levelling-off of educational attainment; and obstacles to the living standards of the bottom 99 per cent. These hurdles include globalisation, rising resource costs and high fiscal deficits and private debts. In brief, he expects the rise in the real disposable incomes of those outside the elite to slow to a crawl. Indeed, it appears to have already done so. Similar developments are occurring in other high-income countries.
For almost two centuries, today’s high-income countries enjoyed waves of innovation that made them both far more prosperous than before and far more powerful than everybody else. This was the world of the American dream and American exceptionalism. Now innovation is slow and economic catch-up fast. The elites of the high-income countries quite like this new world. The rest of their population like it vastly less. Get used to this. It will not change.
Without overblowing things by going into crisis theory stuff, what can be said about this equality of poverty "under capitalism" itself (and so much for Churchill)?
[I'm placing this here and not in Economics because there might be a controversial political angle to raise later on about comparing this to "socialist stagnation."]