Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Productivety

This is an interesting article The Greater Recession: America Suffers from a Crisis of Productivity with interesting graphs


His energy costs are off because he measures the cost of energy inputs but we do not buy energy we buy mobility, cool, warmth, TV viewing time etc. and those cheap new manufactured goods deliver more of those output per energy input BTU.
Also housing is on the mend recently. prices are falling. That leaves medical care and schooling/credentials which is what we really buy (education apart from schooling/credentials has gotten much, much cheaper since the internet). Medical care is a strange good but if you just look at output that is health life expectancy we are doing much better than in 1970. I think that schooling/credentials on the verge of big positive change. I think that we need a separation between education and grading/testing.
So I am very optimistic.

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