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Lessons from America’s astonishing economic record

economist.com

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Re: Lessons from America’s astonishing economic record

#111

Post by kwhitefoot »

hotpotamus wrote: post #55
wyager wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The average French person has a life expectancy of 82. In Mississippi it’s 74.9 Like 90% of these "gotchas" for southern states (including lifespan comparisons) end up decreasing or disappearing entirely when you condition on racial demographics. Not to say that invalidates the problem; just that comparing Mississippi to France doesn't make sense at all from a demographic standpoint.

Why does race need to be brought into it?

Sometimes because if you add 'race' to the data then clusters appear that align with that extra data. Of course it doesn't mean that 'race' is a causal factor, it can be that it correlates with some other data that is not included such as poverty.

Re: Lessons from America’s astonishing economic record

#112

Post by jutrewag »

crop_rotation wrote: post #36
jutrewag wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let in a lot more immigrants, and not the refugee kind. Vetted, high skilled immigrants. Let those immigrants have something at stake i.e. provide a path to citizenship. Provide automatic citizenship to children of those immigrants born in Europe.

That is common sense, but saying that for some reasons gets lots of pushback from several people (both in Europe and America). People seem to forget that countries are only able to take modern moral stances due to their prosperity, and once the prosperity is not there, the voters forget morality in an instant.

America wouldn’t be nearly as entrepreneurial without immigrants. Something like 50% of all unicorns currently have atleast one Indian immigrant co-founder. Four out of ten unicorns have first gen immigrant founders.

https://m.economictimes.com/nri/invest/indians-top-the-list-...

Re: Lessons from America’s astonishing economic record

#113

Post by pcrh »

cozos wrote: post #89
jandrewrogers wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US manufacturing continues to grow almost monotonically, it is wildly successful. The only thing that has declined is manufacturing jobs due to the high levels of automation used in American manufacturing.

what are some successful stories of American manufacturing?

SpaceX?

Re: Lessons from America’s astonishing economic record

#114

Post by polishdude20 »

pseudo0 wrote: post #87
ttul wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

America operates on the principal that it is better to fail quickly and rebuild than it is to defend what’s not working to preserve the status quo for as long as possible. In a century marked by rapid technological change, it is probably better to hybridize the American and European approaches, allowing faster bankruptcies and more flexible job termination in Europe while also providing a more generous safety net in…

> And many countries are well positioned to make such a move. For example, Canada already has free healthcare and generous family credits that rebalance wealth automatically to the bottom, promoting labour mobility. Yet it also has a flexible labour policy, efficient courts, excellent corporation law, and fast bankruptcy resolution. Feel free to move to Canada if you want half the wages, twice as expensive housing, a…

Yep. I live in Canada and it just feels like our economic successes are due to natural resources and being close in location and culture to America. Couple that with the fact that like 80% of Canada is uninhabited. We may look big but we're a small population concentrated in only a few locations along the border.

Re: Lessons from America’s astonishing economic record

#115

Post by wyager »

hotpotamus wrote: post #55
wyager wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The average French person has a life expectancy of 82. In Mississippi it’s 74.9 Like 90% of these "gotchas" for southern states (including lifespan comparisons) end up decreasing or disappearing entirely when you condition on racial demographics. Not to say that invalidates the problem; just that comparing Mississippi to France doesn't make sense at all from a demographic standpoint.

Why does race need to be brought into it?

Because evidently it's a significant factor in the problem under consideration. It doesn't "need" to be brought into it unless you actually want to solve the problem.

Re: Lessons from America’s astonishing economic record

#116

Post by bjornsing »

dauertewigkeit wrote: post #109
safety1st wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Labor laws in various countries tend to push companies toward one end or the other of a spectrum. One end of the spectrum is hire fast/fire fast, the other is hire slow/fire slow. The US is very much toward the hire fast/fire fast end of the spectrum, relatively speaking. For tech companies in particular hire fast/fire fast seems to have worked well. It creates a more competitive labor market. That makes sense becaus…

Your comment really highlights the absurdity of having a one-size-fits-all policy across the whole labour market. But ultimately I don't think it is labour laws that made it so that OpenAI is American and ChatGPT was developed in the US. That is just one aspect of a much bigger picture.

It’s a bit of a chicken and egg problem I would say: labour laws set (or reflect) the broader workplace culture. In a culture where it doesn’t pay (or is even frowned upon) to be a top performer it’s very hard to build the OpenAI kind of org.

Re: Lessons from America’s astonishing economic record

#117

Post by wyager »

WBrentWilliams wrote: post #82
hotpotamus wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does race need to be brought into it?

In the US, race is shorthand for class. In the US, class is not supposed to be noticed. Race is difficult (and insulting) to ignore. See also: https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520261303/being-black-livin...

Many of these conditioning effects persist even when controlling for wealth. Evidently there are other factors at play. Perhaps dietary differences, differences in medical requirements, etc.

Re: Lessons from America’s astonishing economic record

#118

Post by smnrchrds »

crop_rotation wrote: post #71
35208654 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, being the only country left with any manufacturing after a catastrophic world war is one major reason. Also, navigable waterways. Transporting goods by water costs 1/100th what it costs to transport over land. After the US established a corp of engineers to dredge our waterways to make them passable, the ability to transport goods increased substantially, making internal trade extremely cheap.

> Well, being the only country left with any manufacturing after a catastrophic world war is one major reason. This is not the reason. Post WW II Europe was able to rebuild and for a long time they had some of the biggest companies and for a long time EU as a whole was a bigger economy than the US. It's only in the last 2 decades where the US is significantly outpacing the EU. And there are no signs of slow down. WW…

> for a long time EU as a whole was a bigger economy than the US. It's only in the last 2 decades where the US is significantly outpacing the EU.

Interesting. I couldn't find a good graph showing this. Do you by any chance have a graph or a source?

Re: Lessons from America’s astonishing economic record

#119

Post by wyager »

kwhitefoot wrote: post #111
hotpotamus wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does race need to be brought into it?

Sometimes because if you add 'race' to the data then clusters appear that align with that extra data. Of course it doesn't mean that 'race' is a causal factor, it can be that it correlates with some other data that is not included such as poverty.

For many outcomes (including medical outcomes) the differences do not go away when conditioning on wealth/income, so if there's a separate "root" causal factor, we have not yet found it.

Re: Lessons from America’s astonishing economic record

#120

Post by hotpotamus »

wyager wrote: post #115
hotpotamus wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does race need to be brought into it?

Because evidently it's a significant factor in the problem under consideration. It doesn't "need" to be brought into it unless you actually want to solve the problem.

What does it suggest that we should do about the problem then?
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