Economics Questions

Re: Lost Decade?

John James — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 11:35:09 GMT

A large part of the problem depends on how you measure "growth" and "better off". Most use GDP...but of course...

"GDP" is meaningless. [1] [2]

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Re: Lost Decade?

Wheylous — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 06:52:20 GMT

I didn't have fast internet a decade ago, and I certainly didn't have an iPod. Netflix didn't exist and the main search engines were much more rudimentary. Video games have improved in graphics quality in parallel to computers becoming a lot more powerful.

More people have access to the internet with its gigantic store of knowledge. The economy is moving in new and exciting ways.

As to statistics, I suppose you could look up the Falling Real Wages Myth thread here.

In general, my young and fragile market intuition is that you might not be able to say definitively whether the the decade was "lost", because though some may look at a decline in manufacturing and weep over it (idk, is the decline even real? I've heard it might not be), this could represent shifts in comparative advantage which are in fact good for the US.

In general, because voluntary exchange increases utility, we should look at how much government has involved itself in the market. This is not really possible to quantify, so I'll leave you with not much of an answer and go to sleep because I'm really tired. Blah.

Lost Decade?

Fephisto — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 06:28:40 GMT

Has the last decade _really_ been a 'lost decade' (in the U.S., in particular)?

Can someone give me some statistics about economic growth over the past decade? I've seen so many statistics on this, and I've seen this answered _both ways_. People claiming that the last decade in the U.S. was a wash, and others claiming this is a myth. And each group cherry picks their own statistics.

Tl;dr, is the U.S. better off or worse off than it was a decade ago?