Every time I hear the “we’re doomed!” stuff from economists, I remember how excited Brazil once got when economists predicted they’d be a world market.
They even built a brand spanking new capital city.
Also, how many times did we get told that we’d be buried by the marvelous “5 Year Plans” of our, once upon a time, primary competitor?
‘Squares of the City’ by Brunner nearly induced me into getting a master’s degree in city planning. What happened to Brazil besides a lack of a national system for recording private property ownership?
But.....aren’t you impressed? He threw around some large numbers, jumped on the bandwagon with some popular ideas, and used a little technical jargon.....
We are in an economy that is threatened by inflation because we are near “full employment.” Some of the off-shoring today is done out of necessity because of a lack in manpower for certain highly specialized skills in IT for example. Our economy is one that is fueled by internal consumption and is not an export driven one like Germany. In fact near all developed economies over time will eventually develop that way, see Korea today with its explosion in internal consumption over the last decade. There are so many problems with what he wrote I would have to write another Thesis paper to explain what all is wrong and why. I’ll keep it simple- This article is trash that appeals to the masses by touching on many various popular topics like outsourcing and the development of jobs in the service sector, or the debt, trade deficit and other topics. I was waiting for him to mention Flint Michigan and have a picture of some run-down old car plant imbedded in that article to better illustrate his “feeling.” He vaguely strings these topics together to paint some collage of doom and gloom; meanwhile we have unemployment under 5%, real net growth in per capita incomes, productivity, jobs……..
You can take anything and turn it on its head, that’s what this author does.