The sun came up that late summer morning in the beautiful little Italian resort town as it always had and always would. People ate their breakfasts and went about their normal daily activities. As the morning turned into afternoon some people sunned themselves, others took cold baths to escape the heat of the day.
On August 24, 79 C.E. Vesuvius erupted and the sun never rose over the towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum ever again. Everything had changed.
While the persistence theory or the notion that whatever happened today will probably happen tomorrow, is an adequate rule of thumb it’s violated every day. Yesterday was sunny. Today it rained. Things change. Sometimes you catch the bear. Sometimes the bear catches you.
Quite a few people who know a lot more than I do–Daniel Drezner, Virginia Postrel, and Bruce Bartlett among others–have been writing about the virtues of offshore outsourcing and why we shouldn’t be concerned about the four or five quarters of zero net private sector job growth in the U. S. Now, I agree with them that we shouldn’t panic or adopt protectionist measures to fight offshore outsourcing: the cure would be worse than the disease.
But it seems to me the stock bubble of the ’90s, the enormous increases in productivity in this country, and the rise of the World Wide Web are volcanoes enough for anyone. Here’s my question. Is there any possibility that the combination of increasing productivity in this country and insufficient business investment in this country could lead to a chronic shortfall in private sector job creation? And, if so, what should we do about it?
Just because something has always happened that way before is not proof positive that it always will. Sometimes the sun doesn’t come up again.
