House of Eratosthenes

The U.S. economy has not grown at an annual rate of 3 percent since 2005, and not above 4 percent since 2000.

It won’t get out of that losing streak in 2015.

Meaning, it has been a lost decade — amid flattening wages, bottoming interest rates, lower inflation expectations, less borrowing, slowing job creation, aging populations, relatively lower fertility, resulting lower demand, and a financial crisis to boot.

And, whatever tepid growth has been seen since the Great Recession, this may be as good as it gets. At some point, we may have to concede that this is not merely a policy problem. That there may be something more to the slow growth than whether there is a D or an R next to the economy.

It’s us! Oh, I don’t know that to be true. But that last point is a pretty good one since this languishing has persisted throughout cycles of partisan dominance over both the White House and Congress. We should look at ourselves, it’s the responsible thing to do. What’s different between now, and previous generations? When — this year, we couldn’t do something, and a year later, we could. We’re not seeing that now, when we have a problem of a bottomed-out economy and we know we’re going to continue to have it next year and the year after.

Why is our sailboat so becalmed?

Well, let’s see. How serious were we about going to the Moon? Got ‘er done, and a few times, right? How serious are we about the next frontier? A few thought exercises about not coming back from Mars again, dying up there, something for us to contemplate as we listen to our car radios…maybe…those few of us who listen to AM. Nothing comes of it if a rocket doesn’t get put on a pad somewhere.

Our boat is becalmed because nobody is rowing, is the simple and short answer. Is there something more elaborate, unseen, that turns this around somehow? Sometimes, the simple answer turns out to be the right one. A stranger visiting our world, entirely unacquainted with our culture but nominally skilled in language and logic, would have to end up wondering why we are wondering; the question is its own question, for the answer is obvious.

Two or three hundred highly skilled and highly educated engineers to a floor, five floors to a building, forty buildings to a campus and ten or twenty campi in the corporation — which, after slaving away for a year or two, offers up a new phone on which you can slide the icons around rather than poking them. As opposed to: One guy makes an offering. It was usually, and perhaps always, a guy “standing on the shoulders of giants” and building on top of layers that were there before, sure. But still. Now you can take this expensive device, which up until now has only been good for playing Pong, and balance your checkbook with it…and you can afford it. And oh look, now we have a math co-processor. And expanded memory. And then an integrated database. And, and, and. Now, go back and look at the timeline.

Compare it to what we see today, when we wait a bunch of years and — meet the new phone, same as the old phone but with another letter tacked on to the model number. We deserve to be languishing, because we’re demanding way too much out of some things, and next to nothing out of other things. We’re already talking about the election next year, but what sort of President do we want? “A woman.” The problem is us. More precisely, with our expectations.

White men, who are the creative and productive element in American (and European) society are demonized and demoralized and that is why the economy is stagnating. The stagnation is aggravated by the refusal of white women, thoroughly brainwashed and oppressed by feminsim, to have children. The resulting decline in the white population will lead to an actual, long lasting contraction of the economy.

It might be noted that many informed technologists believe that there has been no techonological breakthrough since the 60’s or 70’s and that we are merely making adjustments to previous breakthroughs.
- Bob Sykes | 06/04/2015 @ 04:20
It might be noted that many informed technologists believe that there has been no techonological breakthrough since the 60’s or 70’s and that we are merely making adjustments to previous breakthroughs.

That’s a discussion I would love to have. You’ve just echoed my own opinion about it of course, and I’m thoroughly outnumbered on this — at least, among those who have opinions. I would modify the statement to say mid-80’s to early-90’s, which leaves me open to charges that I’m speaking of my own perspective on the industry, as opposed to on the industry as a whole.

What I have in mind is: The basics of how to shrink circuits and transistors, not the events of shrinkage themselves, which seems fair to me when I think on it a bit; the basics of the relational database, and other efforts to fit business requirements into the computing technology, mostly by IBM and similar firms; OS standards (mostly Unix) and networking standards; the fitting of the mainframe environment onto the desktop, with the PC-to-host communications that came with LANs; expanded and extended memory models to enable PCs to access more than the 1MB; and the flat memory model that kicked the 20-bit segmented architecture to the curb for good, finally. That brings the golden age to a stop somewhere around ’93 or ’94, which is being generous, and heavily Microsoft/IBM-biased.

If we take a more corporate-brand-neutral, Morgan’s-experiences-neutral approach to it and confine our questions more strictly to the “Yeah, but what can you DO this year that you couldn’t do last year” aspect of it, then the current lag begins considerably earlier, 10 to 15 years earlier. Yes we’re still discovering cures for diseases, thank goodness, and astronomers are still seeing things year by year. But the look-what-I-got-this-gizmo-to-do part of it has gone comatose.

The AGILE thing…I really do try to shy away from it, I recognize I don’t know the details. But it is a fact that there are obstacles to being the guy with a new idea & carrying it forward, that weren’t there before. Some of them, to be fair, were there before, people did complain about them. But AGILE brings some, in fact a lot of them, most of what we have now, along with a culture in which we aren’t encouraged to discuss the pros and cons; it just wants to win. Maybe I’m wrong and that’s not where the problem is, but everyone who claims to be concerned about the economy should stop to acknowledge the lull, I think, and everyone who claims to be concerned about the lull should be on the lookout for all possible causes.
- mkfreeberg | 06/04/2015 @ 06:12
But AGILE brings some, in fact a lot of them, most of what we have now, along with a culture in which we aren’t encouraged to discuss the pros and cons; it just wants to win

Architects and Medicators, amirite?

My all-time favorite irony is that it’s the conservatives who are the innovators, the gray-area-explorers, who are forever tinkering with existing arrangements. The fundamental conservative attitude is that, given a few fundamental constraints — the speed of light; the difference between men and angels — anything is possible.

Medicators, on the other hand, only want uniformity. They see that this wildcatter approach produces some great things, along with a lot of wasted time, effort, and money. They think they can streamline and direct the process, so that you keep getting the great things without the wasted time, effort, and money. They don’t see — they can’t see– the relationship between the hits and the misses; that you only get fantastic sci-fi gizmo X because you were able to waste everyone’s time, effort, and money on harebrained ideas A thru W.

Medicators — liberals — believe in everything but change. They have no concept of a dynamic world where people respond to incentives. They think inventors will just keep inventing, no matter how much bureaucratic and regulatory bullshit you pile onto them, because, well, they’re Inventors. That’s what they do. And since these Inventors have a nice cushy desk job now — the liberal’s idea of Heaven — it’s inconceivable that they’d give it up for the so-called “freedom” to “risk” going somewhere else.

In that world — in Liberal-land, Medicator-topia — why can’t you dictate the pace of invention?
- Severian | 06/04/2015 @ 06:46
Exactly right. In Atlas Shrugged, before Henry Rearden is persuaded to sign that “gift certificate” bequeathing his prized Rearden Metal formula to the state so his name can be stripped from it and it becomes “Miracle Metal,” a “Dr. Potter” stops in his office to see him about these ambiguous, never quite defined evils attendant upon the release of the invention for everyday use. The world isn’t ready for it, he says. There’s going to be some sort of conflagration unleashed. Steel manufacturers put out of business, one would assume he means.

Later on (I think??), the state passes this quota on the purchase of Rearden Metal, something like one ton per year per wholesale buyer. And they ironically create exactly the sort of disaster Dr. Potter predicted. A Rearden Metal railroad track is completely out of the question, because what can you do with 1 ton? So there are Rearden Metal golf clubs, and Rearden Metal teapots. But it is no longer possible to put the amazing new alloy where it could do the most people, the most good. Famine is the result.

Here in California, that really hits a chord.
- mkfreeberg | 06/04/2015 @ 11:42
So…if we changed our expectations the economy would be better?

Or are you saying the economy is good but our expectations incorrect?

Or more “rowing”?

I’m not willing to give Barry the Shithead a pass on any of this malaise. He owns it. Every stinking crappy quarterly report.

What exactly has changed in the last few…(*cough*)…years that makes people think things should be turning around. Businesses, who are run by people, have not experienced any positive indicators to unleash their capital which makes the economy stronger. On the contrary, they’ve seen the opposite arise, and uncertainty (huge free market muzzle) – healthcare costs being the biggest.

The only reason the stock market is strong is because of QE. And there will be a MAJOR correction soon. Which again, businesses know this.

Maybe we should expect a new normal, but I would love to see what would happen if a strong conservative, even though I doubt it will happen again ever, gets elected president. Even a Republican in the WH would give the economy a jolt. Someone like Perry maybe.
- tim | 06/04/2015 @ 12:40
So…if we changed our expectations the economy would be better? Or are you saying the economy is good but our expectations incorrect?…I’m not willing to give Barry the Shithead a pass on any of this malaise. He owns it.

What is Barry the Shithead exactly, if not a derogatory comment against our weird, unproductive expectations?

The point has even been made, persuasively I think, that Shithead Barry isn’t even presiding in any delusive way, in any direction different from the way He campaigned. His Energy Secretary publicly expressed a desire for more expensive gas. He Himself campaigned that His “policies would necessarily bankrupt” the coal industry. He was caught on video telling Joe the Plumber “I just think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.”

He campaigned to destroy, to dock the tall-poppies, to knock down whatever stood up too high. And as He Himself said: “I won.” This is a cultural problem.
- mkfreeberg | 06/05/2015 @ 03:07
OK,

I admit, I’m guilty of merely skimming your post and not fully reading/comprehending as I should have. However, this morning I did reread your post and read the linked article in full.

Your point about “our” expectations is made, no debate.

On the article; it states statistics without giving reasons and makes some contradictory points.

“Consider, according to data compiled by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, since the beginning of 2007, the population of those aged 16 to 64 has increased by almost 10 million to 204 million. Yet the amount of people that age with jobs has only increased by 1 million.
As a result, the employment population ratio of working age Americans has dropped from 71.4 percent to 68.7 percent.
If that ratio had remained where it was in 2007, an additional 5.6 million people aged 16 to 64 would have jobs. Note that that excludes retirees. Even after correcting for the Baby Boomers, the situation still looks dismal.
So it is not merely a matter of fewer Americans entering the work force, resulting in slower job and economic growth. We’re seeing that slower growth is undeniably resulting in fewer opportunities per capita than was seen just 8 years ago.”

Nowhere does it state WHY this is so, just lobs data out there as if it exists in some vacuum, all by itself with nothing to indicate how/why it happening. NO jobs because…your left to figure it out for yourself.

“That there may be something more to the slow growth than whether there is a D or an R next to the economy.”

It continues –

“Overall, we are almost 8 years away from the start of the financial crisis in the summer of 2007. By most accounts, the economy should have recovered by now, but it has not. And what the American people are lacking is a narrative explaining why.
For now, it might be convenient for the political parties to trade partisans barbs about the economy, pretending mightily that things will be different with a mere changing of the guard.
But as the Obama administration has learned in its two terms, at some point, the in-party bears responsibility for the state of affairs.”

Well which is it? The “Obama administration bears responsibility” or it doesn’t matter if “there is a D or an R next to the economy’?

Also, again, as far as “something more to the slow growth” while the article gives numbers of slow economic indicators it doesn’t state why. Kind’a important if to the premise of what is stalling the economy and wether or not the economy will turn around if a R gets elected.

tim
- tim | 06/05/2015 @ 08:12
I wonder … when the Roman Empire was dying, before the barbarians actually invaded and looted the capital, but when it was in serious decline, what did the average Roman think was happening? Did people look around and say, “The empire is dying! We have to do something!” But if so, most of them didn’t do anything. Or did they say, “What do you mean the empire is dying? It’s better and stronger than ever! Oh, sure, we’ve lost a few of the more remote provinces. But what good did they ever do for us? Look at the new levels of tolerance that we’ve reached: Nobody even makes a big deal anymore when the emperor rapes little boys. Sure, the army is mostly made up of foreigners now, but that frees up native-born Romans for more cultured tasks.” Etc.
- saneperson | 06/05/2015 @ 09:01

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Wednesday, June 3rd, 2015