Blogeconomist's comments

Mar 9th 2011 6:48 GMT

Hal Varian is a great economist but his answer is falling a bit into the 'Whizz, bang, Apple!' category that I see Cowan trying to counter.

30 years ago he could have received a phone call from the Economist, picked up the print edition, and faxed or telegraphed or even posted a reply and waited to see it published in the next edition. This would have taken four or five days longer, but the end result would have been much the same, and I'm not sure I'd want to pay anymore for the speed.

Of course I couldn't have sent this reply for another week, and you might not have published it, but it's making me late for work and it's perhaps not of good enough quality anyway.

I'd guess the horizontal scale is "% change in unit labour costs above 2000 average"...

The second chart is hard to interpret - what is the 'unit labour cost' a measure of? Usually its output/cost, but there's no way Greece is 7-89 times Germany, and it'd be strange to have the same series on both axis.

There was a report out recently which persuasively argued that lower US life expectancy is to do with the earlier adoption of widespread smoking by US men and (especially) women in the 30s-50s, who are now dying out.

Mar 1st 2011 10:51 GMT

Your comments mostly apply to final salary DB pensions, not the DB bit.

Feb 23rd 2011 3:31 GMT

Why is US GDP on the same basis no different from a single years GDP?

Jan 28th 2011 1:05 GMT

"The US is shielded from this problem because so many commodities are priced in dollars"

This is a myth. The US is shielded to some extent because it is such a large consumer it has some pricing power. In most commodities this is not as strong as it once was (oil quite a bit, copper hardly any). That commodities are priced in dollars has nothing to do with it.

Jan 20th 2011 4:23 GMT

I don't think the analogy stretches. The affordability of pensions within a country depends on the desired % of average incomes pensions get, the no. of workers per retiree and the productivity of those workers. Nothing in this has anything to do with Japan or China.

Dec 13th 2010 8:18 GMT

I thought the size and integration of the US domestic market was exactly the reason most economists believe it took and kept an income/head lead over everywhere else? Certainly it's the idea behind the single European market.

Yglesias is forgetting commission, as well as obviously exchange rate moves. Devaluation, people in Zimbabwe will tell you, is not some magic way of increasing prosperity. It also presumably in the US context would have seen a huge exodus of labour.

Dec 3rd 2010 9:25 GMT

Surprised no-one's mentioned geography (or I've missed it). London is a city of suburbs, where people come into to work and largely leave to go home by public transport. This has changed a bit in recent years especially East and North of the City, but the drinking culture there seems more New Yorkish so I think it helps the point. It means weekday nights are extremely busy, and people of all types (because they work there not live there) drink quite a bit. Saturday night is extremely quiet and very different. New York, like Paris, has more people who live in the centre.

Dec 3rd 2010 2:50 GMT

Actually the Irish have already made huge steps in reducing their cost base - unit labor costs have fallen relative to germany by almost 20% since Q4 08.

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