I heard a very good speech by Tyler Cowen at the Association for Private Enterprise Education conference in Las Vegas today.
It was titled “Why Is It Such a Deep and Long Recession?” In it, he not only explained what he sees as the causes of the recession, but also prognosticated about next 50 years. I won’t try to be comprehensive but here are some highlights, along with occasional commentary by me:
1. We haven’t, since the Great Depression, seen such a large percentage of people unemployed for 27 weeks or more. While he did, at another point in the talk, mention the role of unemployment insurance, I think he should have mentioned it directly at this point, pointing out that in some states one can now get unemployment benefits for up to 99 weeks vs. the traditional 26 (plus 13 when we’re in a recession.)
2. He quoted Michael Mandell’s finding that if you strip out government (did he mean government spending or government workers’ pay?–I think the latter), there has been no growth in per capita person income for the last decade.
3. He made co-blogger Arnold Kling’s point about the recalculation, crediting Arnold.
4. He stated that stimulus spending has postponed the day of reckoning for higher “education” (the quotation marks are mine). Quote: “Higher education is on life support.”
5. Pointed out what Bastiat, Henry Hazlitt, Dwight Lee, and I (and I’m sure many others) have been saying: All other things equal, green jobs are bad, not good. Jobs are a cost.
6. Quoted “the wise Garett Jones”: “Labor hoarding is so 20th century.” Translation: because of the web, employers can go out and hire workers when they need them, so why keep them on the payroll.
7. Pointed out that the unemployment rate in Haiti is always about 0 percent. Whether people are formally counted as unemployed or not, they are out working to stay alive. Great line: “The only unemployment you find in Haiti is in the graveyard.”
8. During this recession, there is easier substitutability from durables into things that are fun and cheap, like gaming and reading blogs, which is why durable sales have fallen off the cliff.
9. There is a substantial probability (0.1 < p < 0.5) that in the next 30 to 50 years we will in the stationary state where the extra wealth thrown off by growth will go almost entirely to the elderly and health care costs of those same elderly. Think Japan, except that there are fewer rent-seeking fights among the Japanese special interests. (On this last, I'm reminded of something Bob Crandall of Brookings said at a conference I was at in 1985 when explaining where there are so many fewer lawyers in Japan than in the U.S. Said Crandall, "In Japan, the fix is in.")
10. There is also a substantial probability of a techno-utopia as Moore's Law races against the higher costs due to health care spending on the elderly.
11. The biggest technological revolution in our economic history was from 1890 to 1928.
12. The U.S. is in better shape than the EU. "The U.S. is still the world economy's best bet."
13. Income distribution will become more unequal. Utility distribution will become more equal. Also, envy is local. Most people aren't upset about Bill Gates's wealth: they're upset about their more-successful brother-in-law's wealth.
14. "The Internet has become the great equalizer." My comment: I think I remember that being said about the Colt 45.
15. Google has increased the value of reputation.
16. A disproportionate share of the gains from various economic changes will accrue to capital, but not necessarily to capital in publicly traded firms.
READER COMMENTS
kebko
Apr 12 2010 at 10:34pm
Could point number 2 be exacerbated by our blunt measurement of inflation? Mostly due to the internet & computing technology, there has been a massive deflation in many private goods & services in the last 15 years. Publicly provided goods & services keep getting more expensive. (I suppose this is probably typically the case, although it is probably now worse than usual.)
Could it be that the value of the private economy has increased much more than we imagine, because we are applying a single inflation adjustment to both sets of data?
I don’t know if this affects the point about incomes in the private sector, but the point made this thought come to me. As an amateur, I’m in over my head a little bit on this one, though.
CJ
Apr 13 2010 at 12:37am
Could you expand a bit about higher education?
I think that the cost of higher education is growing at an unsustainable rate, but I’m unsure if that’s what Prof. Cowen means.
I’m very curious what he thinks the possibilities of how this reckoning will be dealt with are.
David R. Henderson
Apr 13 2010 at 1:48am
@kebko,
You don’t sound amateurish. I think you may be making a valid point. I didn’t ask him his inflation measure because I had other fish to fry in Q&A, but I think you’re on to something.
@CJ,
What he meant (I’m 95% sure) is that with all the pressures of Medicaid, state employee pay and pensions, and the recession on state budgets, money spent by the state governments on higher ed will fall substantially in real terms with no anticipated recovery in the medium term. The federal stimulus plan had a huge component of propping up state budgets.
fundamentalist
Apr 13 2010 at 10:03am
“3. He made co-blogger Arnold Kling’s point about the recalculation, crediting Arnold.”
That’s funny! Cowen will accept Austrian econ if it’s called something else.
“extra wealth thrown off by growth will go almost entirely to the elderly and health care costs of those same elderly.”
It won’t be equilibrium. It will be slowly increasing poverty. Growth doesn’t just happen. It’s not an act of nature or of God. Growth requires investment in capital goods. That’s econ 101. Greater spending on the elderly will consume all investment. We will live for a while off capital consumption, then decent into poverty.
Jim
Apr 13 2010 at 10:23am
“The only unemployment you find in Haiti is in the graveyard.”
Maybe not even there. Zombies are from Haiti, right?
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