Brad DeLong, Megan McArdle, and Tyler Cowen are all confessing policy issues on which they’ve been wrong. Fair is fair so I’ll confess a public affairs issue on which I’ve been wrong.
I didn’t recognize just how callow Barack Obama is or, possibly, how stubborn he is. Oh, I believed him when he said he’d devote more resources to Afghanistan. I just thought he’d catch on sooner to what a losing proposition trying to create a 16th century state there is let alone a 21st century one. I’d’ve voted for him anyway. I didn’t have the choice between him and the Perfect Presidential Candidate I had the choice between him and John McCain. Sen. McCain has nearly all of the problems that President Obama has and then some.
However, unlike Megan I was right on invading Iraq, unlike Dr. DeLong I’ve never believed you can fine-tune the economy or that the members of the Federal Reserve Board or federal regulators were capable of doing it, and unlike Dr. Cowen I’ve always recognized that median income was growing too slowly. I’d seen too much going on around me, with my family, and with myself to believe otherwise.
I still think I’m right about what’s wrong with the economy: too many bad policy decisions over too long a period and too great an ability of people in sectors in which we’re enormously over-invested to dragoon the federal government to their aid to prevent the necessary and inevitable realignment.
I honestly don’t know whether I’m right about the role that demographics is playing in the current economic troubles. It would certainly be nice if I were wrong. If I’m right we’re in terrible, terrible trouble.
I honestly don’t know whether I’m right about the role that demographics is playing in the current economic troubles. It would certainly be nice if I were wrong. If I’m right we’re in terrible, terrible trouble.
Demographic particulars most certainly have an effect. People are the foundation of a nation. Institutions and politics are simply a veneer that goes over top of “the people.”
As Steven Taylor is fond of saying “If you don’t understand the problem you can’t develop a solution.” So much social science analysis is flawed, in that it has low validity and reliability, because it presumes too large an effect from the veneer layer and mostly ignores the foundation of a nation’s human capital.
Here’s one way I think you may be wrong. The Baby Boomers are on the whole not as computer literate as successive generations (I think, anyway; to my knowledge there’s no verifiable data on this either way, but does anyone really disagree?)
So it seems to me that as Boomers retire & are replaced by the next cohort, the productivity gains that began to be realized in the 1990’s may receive a late boost, particularly in manufacturing and health care. Even if the next cohort is less educated in other regards.
That said, I still think you’re probably right, or right enough.