May 25
Interesting links and some thoughts
1. Looking at Japan since 1990 when adjusting for worker decline gives us a very different picture. (Hat tip: MR)
2. Tyler Cowen on Greece. Key Quote: "If the old illusion was that Greece was a wealthy country, the new illusion is that Greece will, in short order, become wealthy enough to pay back ever-growing sums of debt." More here.3. Scott Sumner on America's relative economic success since 1980 (unadjusted for working population changes) followed up by his take on why GDP growth around the world slowed after 1973. He focuses on a lack of technical innovation rather than mentioning resource constraints. He also misses the obvious point that a larger amount of the wealth being created today isn't being measured in GDP - one obvious example is that the internet has created a vast consumer surplus. The internet is not generating much revenue relative to the services that it supplies because in most of its uses scarcity on the internet is very low. If scarcity approached zero anywhere in society, GDP from that sector would also approach zero as there would be no transactions to measure. In that case, GDP growth would be a very misleading indicator about the progress of society. 4. There was some sort of finale recently. Marginal Revolution misinterprets the credits, Megan McArdle sums up how they chose the human drama over the sci fi/fantasy aspect and points out that Lost's viewers numbers highlight how mass culture doesn't really exist anymore, Will Wilkinson is hopefully joking and io9 gets it. Well, maybe these guys have a more accurate view. 5. Massachusetts doesn't seem to have health care reform under control. Whether or not the US follows suit depends on the constitutionality of the individual mandate.
