Monday, November 26, 2012

Derek Thompson — Demographics Explain Practically Everything


The charts say it all. "It's the demographics, stupid."

The Atlantic
Demographics Explain Practically Everything
Derek Thompson | Senior Editor at The Atlantic, where he oversees business coverage

3 comments:

David said...

First, look at demographics: Since women maxed out their own labor-force participation rate, our overall worker-participation ratio has gone flat and started to fall, which hurt our ability to recover quickly from downturns.

Not sure I'm buying this one. How about the growing financialization of the economy? In the '90's they said "we're a service economy now." Under Bush we went from service economy to "jobless recovery." Same deal now, except now they talk more about "structural unemployment." Isn't it more likely that the economy is simply producing fewer jobs than there are people who want to work?

paul meli said...

"How about the growing financialization of the economy?"

Financialization…the extraction of funds from the economy without actually producing anything.

Pure extraction. One has to admit is elegant in it's simplicity.

Of course, once people en masse understand this they will hopefully call for it's elimination…it's contrary to the public good.

Tom Hickey said...

Not sure I'm buying this one. How about the growing financialization of the economy? In the '90's they said "we're a service economy now." Under Bush we went from service economy to "jobless recovery." Same deal now, except now they talk more about "structural unemployment." Isn't it more likely that the economy is simply producing fewer jobs than there are people who want to work?

Yes, I think he has this wrong. That's a minor blip on the screen.