{"id":154241,"date":"2010-01-08T10:30:42","date_gmt":"2010-01-08T15:30:42","guid":{"rendered":"tag:business.theatlantic.com,2010:\/\/3.33182"},"modified":"2010-01-08T10:26:02","modified_gmt":"2010-01-08T15:26:02","slug":"prosperity-and-population","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/154241","title":{"rendered":"Prosperity and Population"},"content":{"rendered":"

There’s a bit of a blogospheric brouhaha over this<\/a> Jim Manzi essay in National Affairs<\/i>, which said that European-style social democracy slows economic growth. Manzi wrote that the United States’ share of world production hasn’t changed since 1980, while Europe’s has decreased, and blames the difference on Europe’s social democratic agenda. TNR’s Jon Chait wrote a persuasive rebuttal<\/a>, pointing out that GDP per capita growth is the better yardstick, and it grew almost as much in Europe as in the United States in the last 30 years. The difference was population growth. Europe’s population grew 7%, while America’s grew 25%.<\/p>\n

I was reminded of this debate when
\nreading James Fallows’ wonderful new Atlantic cover story<\/a> (subscribe!<\/a>).
\nFallows takes stock of the jeremaids about American decline. One worry
\nis that the United States won’t be the largest economy in the world in
\na few decades because China is growing so quickly. But as Fallows
\nelegantly explains, there’s a difference between falling behind China
\nin the GDP list and really, truly “falling behind.”<\/a><\/p>\n

Someday [China’s] economy will be larger than ours. Fine! A generation ago,
\nits people produced, on average, about one-sixteenth as much as
\nAmericans did; now they produce about one\u2011sixth. That change is a huge
\nachievement for China–and a plus rather than a minus for everyone
\nelse, because a business-minded China is more benign than a miserable
\nor rebellious one. When the Chinese produce one-quarter as much as
\nAmericans per capita, as will happen barring catastrophe, their economy
\nwill become the world’s largest. This will be good for them but will
\nnot mean “falling behind” for us.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And yet the difference between keeping up and falling behind really is
\na matter of people. Not just more people, but more of the right kind of
\npeople. Part of maintaining America’s edge is attracting foreigners to
\nstudy and work and build companies in the United States.<\/p>\n

\n

“We scream about our problems, but as long as we have the
\nimmigrants, and the universities, we’ll be fine,” James McGregor, an
\nAmerican businessman and author who has lived in China for years, told
\nme. “I just wish we could put LoJacks on the foreign students to be
\nsure they stay.” While, indeed, the United States benefits most when
\nthe best foreign students pursue their careers here, we come out ahead
\neven if they depart, since they take American contacts and styles of
\nthought with them. Shirley Tilghman, a research biologist who is now
\nthe president of Princeton, made a similar point more circumspectly.
\n“U.S. higher education has essentially been our innovation engine,” she
\ntold me. “I still do not see the overall model for higher education
\nanywhere else that is better than the model we have in the United
\nStates, even with all its challenges at the moment.” Laura Tyson, an
\neconomist who has been dean of the business schools at UC Berkeley and
\nthe University of London, said, “It can’t be a coincidence that so many
\ninnovative companies are located where they are”–in California,
\nBoston, and other university centers. “There is not another country’s
\nsystem that does as well–although others are trying aggressively to
\ncatch up.” <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Think about that first quote for a second: “As long as we have the
\nimmigrants … we’ll be fine.” Politically, that might be a strange
\nthing to say. Elections are won and lost on the ability of candidates
\nto convince the public that they have undying faith in the inherent
\ntalent of the American people. But national greatness is won and lost
\non the ability of America to attract the world’s talent. One of the
\nwell-documented tragedies of 9\/11 is that it scared the Bush
\nadministration into designing a Visa program that makes it absolute
\nhell for immigrants to stay and work in America. To bring this post
\nfull circle, there are a lot of important debates to have about
\ndesigning an economic system that stokes entrepreneurialism and builds
\nadequate safety nets, but let’s begin where both sides agree. Manzi
\nwrote of “reconceptualizing immigration as recruiting.” That’s an idea
\nI can get behind.


\n

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\n\"\"<\/a>
\n\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There’s a bit of a blogospheric brouhaha over this Jim Manzi essay in National Affairs, which said that European-style social democracy slows economic growth. Manzi wrote that the United States’ share of world production hasn’t changed since 1980, while Europe’s has decreased, and blames the difference on Europe’s social democratic agenda. TNR’s Jon Chait wrote […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1534,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-154241","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154241","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1534"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=154241"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154241\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=154241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=154241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=154241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}