5 ms·

Is this because of the transition to a service economy?

by queuebert 4y ago

ahi 4y ago
Financialization. Damn near everything is actually a bank these days.
- ren_engineer 4y ago
  and even more so the fact that 2008 resulted in no real punishment of this system like a real free market should have caused. The response to 2008 will be seen as a historic gaffe
  - JasserInicide 4y ago
    The response to 2008 was Trump.
imachine1980_ 4y ago
I thinks most becouse real growth only happens in Asian countries last decades, and usa and europe companies fake growth by overlabredge debt becouse of the lower inters rate, not productivity
- treis 4y ago
  Oh come on. Asia didn't invent the iPhone. They're not leading the self driving car race. The internet runs on AWS/Azure/GCloud not any Asian provider. Asia is making incremental improvements on products invented in the West. They're not the ones inventing classes of devices or breaking new ground.
  - ren_engineer 4y ago
    >Asia didn't invent the iPhone They didn't invent it, but they make probably 90% of the hardware components
    - kthejoker2 4y ago
      "make", but who owns the patents
nlittlepoole 4y ago
I see it as a combination of demographics (less millennials than boomers to drive consumption) and a lack of investment 20 to 30 years ago into next generation infrastructure and institutions (energy, transport, healthcare, education, etc) that would have given us more productivity growth outside of software and the internet.
lumost 4y ago
There is a counter view that the US economy experienced a variation of dutch disease by being the world's reserve currency. In this view, being the world's reserve currency forced the US to "export" dollars and "import" goods. Making goods manufactured from USD jurisdictions irrationally non-competitive. The reason "dutch disease" is a problem for resource producing countries is that manufacturing productivity growth is much stronger compared to commodity production. It's better to be a manufacturing powerhouse than it is to be a commodity powerhouse. It's entirely plausible that services are the same way, it's better to make things for other people than to do things for other people.
- R0b0t1 4y ago
  All progress so far has been related to scientific instruments in some way, shape, or form. We required the industrial revolution to get to where we are because our bodies can't do it. So, yeah, anything but an industrial, or post-industrial computer driven line, is setting your country up for long term failure. There is lots of societal enrichment that comes not just from the direct production of these things and their sale but also from how they facilitate the ad-hoc understanding of reality.
treis 4y ago
I think it's harder to distill qualitative improvement into a GDP number. Take TV for example. Today you can watch Squid Games on your 65" 4k TV. 30 years ago you got to watch whatever was on cable on your 27" CRT. But where does that improvement get captured? We don't manufacture more TVs. In fact, we make fewer. We don't spend more money on Netflix than Cable. We actually spend less. There's a lot of things like that where the quality has improved but that's hard to put an actual GDP number on.
danaris 4y ago
I strongly suspect it is related to (if not entirely caused by) the very wealthy taking nearly all the gains due to productivity over the last ~40 years. We've stopped reinvesting our profits, essentially.

Is this because of the transition to a service economy?

ahi 4y ago

Financialization. Damn near everything is actually a bank these days.

ren_engineer 4y ago
and even more so the fact that 2008 resulted in no real punishment of this system like a real free market should have caused. The response to 2008 will be seen as a historic gaffe
- JasserInicide 4y ago
  The response to 2008 was Trump.

imachine1980_ 4y ago

I thinks most becouse real growth only happens in Asian countries last decades, and usa and europe companies fake growth by overlabredge debt becouse of the lower inters rate, not productivity

treis 4y ago
Oh come on. Asia didn't invent the iPhone. They're not leading the self driving car race. The internet runs on AWS/Azure/GCloud not any Asian provider. Asia is making incremental improvements on products invented in the West. They're not the ones inventing classes of devices or breaking new ground.
- ren_engineer 4y ago
  >Asia didn't invent the iPhone They didn't invent it, but they make probably 90% of the hardware components
  - kthejoker2 4y ago
    "make", but who owns the patents

nlittlepoole 4y ago

I see it as a combination of demographics (less millennials than boomers to drive consumption) and a lack of investment 20 to 30 years ago into next generation infrastructure and institutions (energy, transport, healthcare, education, etc) that would have given us more productivity growth outside of software and the internet.

lumost 4y ago

There is a counter view that the US economy experienced a variation of dutch disease by being the world's reserve currency. In this view, being the world's reserve currency forced the US to "export" dollars and "import" goods. Making goods manufactured from USD jurisdictions irrationally non-competitive. The reason "dutch disease" is a problem for resource producing countries is that manufacturing productivity growth is much stronger compared to commodity production. It's better to be a manufacturing powerhouse than it is to be a commodity powerhouse. It's entirely plausible that services are the same way, it's better to make things for other people than to do things for other people.

R0b0t1 4y ago
All progress so far has been related to scientific instruments in some way, shape, or form. We required the industrial revolution to get to where we are because our bodies can't do it. So, yeah, anything but an industrial, or post-industrial computer driven line, is setting your country up for long term failure. There is lots of societal enrichment that comes not just from the direct production of these things and their sale but also from how they facilitate the ad-hoc understanding of reality.

treis 4y ago

I think it's harder to distill qualitative improvement into a GDP number. Take TV for example. Today you can watch Squid Games on your 65" 4k TV. 30 years ago you got to watch whatever was on cable on your 27" CRT. But where does that improvement get captured? We don't manufacture more TVs. In fact, we make fewer. We don't spend more money on Netflix than Cable. We actually spend less. There's a lot of things like that where the quality has improved but that's hard to put an actual GDP number on.

danaris 4y ago

I strongly suspect it is related to (if not entirely caused by) the very wealthy taking nearly all the gains due to productivity over the last ~40 years. We've stopped reinvesting our profits, essentially.