Has the U.S. Economy Been Permanently Damaged? : The New Yorker - 0 views
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Although the study uses some sophisticated statistical methods, its basic point is straightforward: in the long term, economic output (G.D.P.) is constrained by the quantity and the quality of economic inputs (labor, capital, and technology). If the growth rate and quality of these inputs decline, the potential growth rate of G.D.P. will fall, too—it’s just a matter of arithmetic.
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With hiring rates down, many workers have given up searching for jobs and have dropped out of the labor force.
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With budgets tight, corporations and government departments have cut back on investments in new plants and machinery, computer hardware and software, and research and development.
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The authors come up with a variety of numbers, including one that has received a lot of attention: potential G.D.P.—broadly speaking, the level of G.D.P. consistent with stable inflation—“is currently about 7 percent below the trajectory it appeared to be on prior to 2007.” According to the latest figures from the Commerce Department, the G.D.P. is now close to seventeen trillion dollars, and seven per cent of that figure is $1.2 trillion. This is a lot of money to have gone missing, especially if it will never be recovered. Hence Krugman’s dire conclusion: “By tolerating high unemployment we have inflicted huge damage on our long-run prospects …. What passes these days for sound policy is in fact a form of economic self-mutilation, which will cripple America for many years to come.”
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As well as figuring out the current level of potential G.D.P., the authors estimate its growth rate. This is the more important figure, because it’s what determines living standards over the long term
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In the period from 2000 to 2007, the paper says the average potential growth rate of G.D.P. was 2.6 per cent.
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In the nineteen-eighties, Larry Summers and Olivier Blanchard, who is now the chief economist of the I.M.F., resurrected the idea and gave it a new name, which they borrowed from engineering: hysteresis. Blanchard and Summers examined hysteresis in Europe, where high rates of unemployment have long been a problem.
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The good news is that things aren’t quite as bad as the figures in the Fed paper might suggest. If we can get policy right and sharply increase the level of over-all demand in the economy, most of the damage done in the past five years is reversible.
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At the moment, sadly, there is no prospect of any more fiscal stimulus, let alone a war-sized one, and the onus is falling on the Fed to gee up the economy.