Comments 7

特朗普、社团主义和创新之死

Jan 17, 2017 Edmund S. Phelps

芝加哥—许多人认为，美国正在经历一场从世界主义转向民族主义、从左倾城市“精英”转向右倾农村“民粹”的转变。主流经济思想也在转变，从再分配的、有管制的社团主义转向类似于旧的干预主义的社团主义的思想。

这两个转变的背后是不满的选民。几十年来，美国人相信，科学进步以及随后硅谷的崛起让他们坐上了经济增长的魔毯。事实上，全要素生产率增长自20世纪70年代以来便已经十分缓慢。1996—2004年互联网繁荣只是这一趋势的暂时偏离。

假以时日，随着企业因为回报递减而削减投资，劳动生产率和时薪增长逐渐放缓，许多家庭中的工人遭遇失业。

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Alex Gachanja Jan 26, 2017

Diminished returns as a result of increased financialization i.e. better ROI when money is put to work on Wall Street as compared to the bricks and mortar of Main Street
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Cal Bengoshi Jan 22, 2017

One key issue that is ignored in the discussion of innovation is the expansion by the US Supreme Court over the years of what can be protected by patents.

After initially rejecting software patents, the Court reversed its position and allowed them so long as the software is used in connection with some other device, an added requirement that had no meaning because the very nature of software requires that it be used with some other device.

Another key expansion of patent law that has limited innovation is the inclusion of "business methods" as patentable inventions. In the past, innovations in conducting business or performing medical operations quickly spread if they were successful. Now, because they can be patented, the innovation tends to have a much lesser impact on the economy.
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Alan Blair Jan 22, 2017

It is clear the "Free Trade," produces lower wages and less labor participation for US citizens. I agree the key is an "Innovative Spirit." Comparative advantage can be learned and transferred. Domestic Trade/Competition means that the successful organizations spread throughout the US. Free Trade means that US production processes are exported to foreign soil and that the next generation of innovations occurs on that soil. Innovation is down, mainly because the elite (read Mancur Olsen) organize production to protect their status quo. They dislike competition. Trade policy is one way to block competitors form rising on US soil. This policy turns the US Elite into Rent-Seekers. Supply side measures should make it more economic to produce in the US and construct new local competitors. Innovation can thus return to US soil. The Bullying of Corporation will be replaced by a rules-based approach to equalizing US imports and exports. This could be a 10% tarriff, but a better approach is a market for Import Certificates. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Import_certificates Ad hoc Interventionist corporation will fail, a rules-based approach is better. How to return to an individualist ideology is harder. Trump can bring production back to the US and reduce regular, help the evolution of modular education (school choice), the American people have to take that last step.
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Anoop Tiwari Jan 19, 2017

Since when populism became an anathema to democracy?Whenever conditions became ripe, insecurities of western white men clear, democracies turned into fascist social economic and political regression.What is in built institutional and procedural mechanism in democracy to save it from the same people who give it legitimacy? Democracy is in crisis and Tocqueville must feel lost for his trust in Americans for their capacity to sustain this system. This is the first time in democratic history that the greatest champion of democracy has become a victim to unresolved questions and aberrations which democracy most of the times allows. Preserving institutionalised inequality and co-opting at the time of crisis has been two great achievements of liberal democracies. I wonder how liberals of the democratic world go into hibernation when world needs them most.Isn't it a compromised and not so 'free' a world?
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Paul Daley Jan 18, 2017

Unfortunately, a prime tool for promoting "innovation" has been market restrictions introduced through IPR rules. So, has the tool we have used to promote innovation been part of the problem, or is Phelps asking for more market distortions so as to promote "innovation." He should clarify where he stands on IPR rules.
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Right2Refuse Right2Refuse Jan 18, 2017

This is an excellent article, but it forgets one critical aspect of how Obama took the final steps to thrust America into a corporate state, which could be abused by Trump or ANY leader for generations to come. With the Roberts' decision on the Obamacare mandate, the precedent is set that any industry that can receive a simple majority of votes in Congress can use the coercive power of government to FORCE the American people to buy their products and/or services. The Amendment protections baked into our Constitution are now dead.

This is a hugely dangerous precedent. There is a growing anticorporatism movement in the United States because we must stop this precedent now before it is simply accepted in the minds of generations to come.
- Vidvuds Beldavs Jan 23, 2017
  
  The low cost healthcare option, that could be designed to promote greater innovation in healthcare related medical technologies is a single-payer system that drives competition in the provision of services. The insurance lobby prevailed and instead we got Obamacare where a mandate is necessary to sufficiently increase the pool of the insured to cover healthcare costs of the participants which excluding provisions to negotiate lower costs with the providers of medicine. Medicare for all with provisions to drive innovations that improve healthcare and reduce the cost of healthcare is the opportunity presented to the Congress. If they vote at the call of the insurance industry we will wind up worse off with rising costs and lower quality healthcare.
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Walter Gingery Jan 17, 2017

What Phelps calls corporatism, others call financialization. Goldman Sachs now owns America.

Either way, investment in education, training, research and development, plant, infrastructure and human welfare will all be sacrificed to corporate payouts:

mergers and acquisitions, cozy deals in company shares for executives, banks trading in commodities in competition with their business clients, transfer pricing to avoid community responsibility, and avalanches of money flowing into unproductive assets like housing, gold and art.
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特朗普、社团主义和创新之死

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