Guy Berger

What is J&R's backorder policy? Guy

Over here social security is linked to inflation, which usually lags wages. So that, when people retire, their standard of living represents some formulation relating to what they've managed to achieve in their years at work. And that does leave some room for productivity improvements to meet the demands of extra people living longer. How much and whether sufficient are harder questions. Yup. If, as in the UK, you peg social security growth to the growth rate of prices (inflation), then productivity improvements could definitely fill the gap. To my mind there is no ethical question at all. All pensions, no matter how provided, are inter-generational transfers. Even if a person saves all his life and lives solely on the interest after retirement, that is still an inter-generational transfer. Because the savings and interest had been, and could still have been, used as investments for something in the "younger" economy. Well, I think the issue comes from the fact that there are government dictated transfers.

Paul Collier is one of the top economist experts on Sub-Saharan Africa. The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About It By Paul Collier Oxford University Press; 224 pages; $28 and £16.99 Here's a link to Oxford University Press's site for the book. I can never remember how to put Organissimo-supporting amazon links, so maybe somebody else can add one...

Really, what Baumol is saying - and it makes sense to me - is that some sectors of services - those that emphasise or rely on personal performance, such as nurses, lap dancers and prostitutes etc - can't get much more productive per se without sacrificing quality. So if you include figures for those occupations in an average for all services, they drag the averages down. I was somewhat cryptic in my earlier comment, so let me clarify. (And also put the disclaimer that Baumol is a very prestigious economist and I'm just a peon, hence all I write could be complete crap.) There are two "meanings" of productivity. One is "how many units can you produce an hour." The other is "how much value can you produce in an hour." (There's also a third meaning -- labor productivity. The amount of units or value produced by a unit of worker effort.) In the 1st sense, it's certainly possible that manufacturing productivity is growing faster than services productivity. But it's not clear to me why this description of productivity is that important for this comparison. Let's say we have a hypothetical economy with two activities -- producing food and producing soap sculptures. People choose to spend 99.9999% of their income on food and 0.0001% on soap sculptures. Let's also say that soap sculpture productivity is growing at 2 times the rate of manufacturing productivity. Does this productivity boom in soap sculptures provide much benefit for the citizens of this economy? As I said, I'm a complete dilettante on the economics of productivity. But I think it makes more sense when talking about productivity growth, particularly when comparing across sectors or industries, to look at changes in value rather than changes in output. You're a 100% right, MG. 1) What should actually matter (all things being equal) is (if my economics brain is working properly on a Saturday morning) the level of productivity, not the rate of productivity growth. Of course, given enough time, if activity A is growing faster than B, it will catch up and then leap ahead. But if manufacturing productivity is currently at a lower level than services productivity, then the heavy tilt of resources toward services could be consistent with a higher rate of productivity growth in manufacturing. 2) Marginal, not average, productivity matters. It could be that for existing manufacturing activities, the average level (or growth rate) of productivity is higher than that in existing service activities. This is completely consistent with the marginal productivity of the two sectors being equal. 3) As you say, rate of return on investment is not the same thing as productivity. It could be that the services sector is more monopolistic (for at least some factors of production) than the manufacturing sector. For example, in some industries capital and/or labor may be able to capture productivity gains whereas in others those gains are almost immediately passed onto consumers. However, this wouldn't explain a very long-term deviation, because eventually (in the very long run) only the differential productivity growth rate would matter. And in general, I don't find this story to be very plausible. 4) For whatever reason, manufacturing activity generates positive externalities whereas services activity does not. This would result in a market failure. However, my comments on (3) pretty much apply to this. 5) A market failure due to lack of information. Again, I think my comments on (3) apply to this one. And I find it to be extremely implausible that workers or investors are unaware of large unexploited gaps in returns between sectors of the economy.

Leaving aside the ethical question of whether younger people should be forced to fork over chunks of their income to fund an ever-lengthening retirement period (not saying that this is cut-and-dried, but I think it is an open question), there's also a practical problem with betting on productivity increases (at least in the US).* Here in the US, social security is indexed to wages. Since in the long run wages pretty much grow at the same rate as productivity, there aren't any productivity increases left to support a shrinking workers-to-retirees ratio. Guy *Personally, I think that (excepting certain types of intense manual labor), if you're going to live longer, you should also work longer. And yes, when I hit 60 my opinion on this may do a 180.

In fact, my understanding is that obesity in the US is very much associated with poverty. (Poverty supposedly has similar associations with other unhealthy habits -- cigarette smoking, etc.) Guy

It seems weird to me that someone would object to Yes on the basis of their lyrics. I mean, yeah, if you try to take them literally/at-face-value then they come off as goofy, but this criticism seems to be off the mark. Would we take seriously similar criticism directed at scat singing? Guy

Yup. An enterprising public health statistician/economist would do us all a service by attempting to harmonize the international data. Guy

While you are correct to a degree, I don't think it's as big of a degree as you think. The British thought "services" could replace manufacturing, as did other major economic powers of the past. When they reached that stage, they were already fading. As are we. To dredge up this topic, there was an interesting article in the WSJ yesterday. (Quoted below.) I'm not an expert on productivity but IMHO the idea that in the United States services have low productivity growth and manufacturing have high productivity growth is either BS, or irrelevant. If there really is a big gap in productivity growth between the two sectors, why aren't resources flowing from services to manufacturing?

I agree, but this is better than nothing. Guy

I like the guy's playing on the BNs where he appears; he would add a little bit of spice. But I'm not convinced that he could carry a date. Guy

I'm not having problems, the article is definitely there. Guy

I spent half an hour this morning looking for this clip: link Does anybody have clips of the following scenes: * the policeman chasing the brothers around the apt after breakfast (here) * Harpo and Chico playing with the orchestra

Tonight I saw "Invasion of the Body Snatchers". Great movie. Guy

Spaulding is on several Sun Ra recordings from 1958, including the classic Jazz in Silhouette. I do not know if he has earlier recorded appearances, or whether he recorded anything between his Sun Ra tenure and the 1961 date you mention. Guy

Nobody's mentioned this yet, but I got an email from Amazon about this new album: Hopefully someone can post the relevant CDuniverse link. Guy

So Duke University is having a 6 week, 18 program festival celebrating Thelonious Monk. I'm posting the list for selfish reasons -- I can't decide which of the concerts to go to. It's about 2.5 hrs each way for me from Charlotte, so I will probably catch only one or (maybe) two of these performances. I can't do weeknights. Which performances would you recommend as most essential to attend? My number one choice is the Jerry Gonzalez concert, but it's on a Thursday so I probably can't do it. Out of the remaining concerts I'm probably most leaning toward the Weston/Barron double bill or the Barry Harris solo. I'm not a huge fan of solo piano but Harris doing Monk sounds promising.

One thing I prefer about the British version is the boss character. I like the fact that they made David Brent a perversely sympathetic character; I'm a big Steve Carell fan, but Michael Scott is Brent without the sympathetic qualities. FWIW, I was forewarned after watching the Brit version that the American version was "watered down" -- that's definitely not true, at least through the first season. Hopefully I won't be disappointed once Netflix delivers the next set of DVDs. Guy

No, I haven't dealt with serious weight loss. But AFAIK nuts (and fat) are still good for you in moderation. Guy

One of their very best. Guy

I agree -- the stationary bike is perfect for reading the Economist. Unfortunately, my new apt complex doesn't have one, so I (attempt to) read it while on the Treadmill. Guy

So do we - olive oil based marg, too. MG Isn't margarine worse than butter? Or only certain types? Guy

I assume you mean sugar? Coke has very little sodium, and I'll speculate that this is true for most other sodas. Somebody mentioned drinking orange juice -- the stuff you buy at the store has a ton of sugar in it. I am guessing home-squeezed stuff is less problematic. Guy No, he means sodium. Yeah, it's 'low sodium' if you compare it to food, but how many other saltwater beverages do you consume? I got a 12 pack of Diet Coke a while back that they'd missed putting sweetener in, and let me tell you, it was an eye opener! Whaddaya know -- a serving of Coke does have about 2 1/3 times the sodium of a serving of Minute Maid orange juice. That said, unless you are drinking ridiculous amounts of coke (I drank two bottles today) it's probably not going to make a big impact on your sodium consumption. And honestly, if you're agitated about the sodium in coke but unperturbed by the sugar... LOL on the saltwater beverages, Moose. Guy