The way to understand economic decisions is on the margins, Danny. Also, keep in mind that you can have flat or negative wage growth if it is outpaced by productivity growth. Much of that productivity growth is largely controlled by bureaucrats and they say, “No” more often than “yes” when it comes to innovations.
Just think about costs. If wages fell say 10% across-the-board and so did costs then, net, net, net you’re the same. Yet, in steps government to prop up sugar or RE or banks or workers, etc. Direct government action and indirect government action are to blame, not the free market.
Slight differences over time act just like compounding - either improving or undoing the healthy state of the economy. Zoning, permitting, and licensing all are anti-entrepreneurial actions at the local, state and county level.
In Illinois you cannot build a hospital without government permission. Licensing keeps out medical professionals. If you come here with a degree in medicine from a first world country you cannot practice without going through a long, arduous and expensive licensing process, but the same thing applies to a doctor from Indiana.
http://www.idfpr.com/Renewals/apply/Physician.asp
That’s crazy. The Commerce Clause guarantees free interstate and intrastate trade in the US. We don’t have it.
You’re a reasonable guy and are partly correct, but your view is too myopic. It isn’t just one thing, it is hundreds of things compounding to make the US less competitive.
In healthcare alone you could simply and Constitutionally:
1. Allow every licensed physician in America practice freely in any state under their original licensure.
2. Allow Americans to buy health insurance from any state they choose.
3. Allow individuals the same corporate tax breaks on health insurance.
Those three alone would solve the vast majority of health care problems - the fundamental issue in health is access to care, not insurance.
The above applies to all kinds of industries within America.
Certainly. But when the stores are full of foreign merchandise, it doesn't indicate that we have an automation problem. It indicates an import problem.
If most of the products in the stores said "Made in America", then yeah, I'd certainly be thinking automation was the problem and my solution wouldn't be import tariffs, it would be increased safety nets, increased funding for basic research to help spur innovation, and low interest loans for innovative developments.
I hope that robotics reaches the level where inexpensive general purpose robots are produced in mass and are easily trained to do manual tasks. But that is going to cause sudden massive labor dislocations. We will need some serious safety nets as well as programs to assist the market to identify and redirect the labor force into productive uses.