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Back to the future

By Owen Paine on Tuesday October 5, 2010 10:29 PM

Old warhorse Bob Gordon, sachem of the all-too-numerous Gordon clan of academical economists(*), has reached forecasting conclusions tinctured with a protracted gloom even beyond the fondest fantasy of our claque of poison-pond pwogs.

According the Bloomsberry Bugle, ole Sawmill Bob predicts that

"Between 2007 and 2027, gross domestic product per capita will grow at the slowest pace of any 20-year period in U.S. history, going back to George Washington's presidency....

His prediction is based on several strands of existing research on workforce demographics, educational attainment, and technological change. His contribution has been to pull the strands together and draw the logical conclusion...

Based on research he published earlier this year, GDP per capita in the U.S. grew at a robust 2.44 percent annual rate from 1928 to 1972. That slowed to 1.93 percent from 1972 to 2007 and is likely to slow further, to 1.5 percent from 2007 to 2027. At that rate, GDP per capita would increase by a total of 35 percent by 2027. That's far short of the 62 percent that it would grow if the 1928-1972 pace of growth had continued, or the 47 percent increase if the 1972-2007 pace had continued."

Twenty years of pooped-out capitalism. Wowsah.

What must lesser-evil social dembots like Henwood Doug make of this? A new depth to dismal-science eschatology -- not a roaring cataclysmic convulsion, not a final conflict, just a slow dimming of the fires of enterprise, a bathetic anti-Byronic time-lapse swoon, a heat death.

----------------

(*)The robustly self-promoting Gordons are the Newman family of econ-cons, not in any even remotely plausible sense the Bernoulli family.

Comments (3)

westerby:

Brilliant final paragraph, OP! I guess we're all too shy to make a real comment on the subject. Can it be? Shy . . on SMBIVA?

mjosef:

Hendoug is a "social dembot"?

So he is not a Marxist?

He works for the Democratic Party now?

He is a "lesser-evilist"?

And you are not? Fine. If no one says anything, then I guess you are right on target, OP.


op:

the vast spectrum
of social democrats
seems a loose but fair fit
for doug

a marxist ??

social democrats can consider themselves marxists ....no ??
and if they so choose
i'll not waste anyone's time
dis-abusing em

the lesser evilism here is
not the fraud we call o'bummerism

this is "real " lesser evilism
of the following sort :

much as we might wish otherwise
corporate capitalism in some form
is the road to the future


gosplan failed proving
corporate capitalism
is the paramount engine of material progress
but comrades
we can meliorate that path
by making human faces
both at it
and out of it

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