[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > It's an empirical question, but I don't think one can rule out a > role for "globalization" in the 1970s productivity slowdown > completely: while some people blame the high international price of > oil for the slowdown during that decade, it's also quite possible > that given the way productivity is measured (with output measured > as an index number weighted with prices) that declining US > manufacturing terms of trade had an effect on productivity measures. > (Opening up markets in general could have meant similar slow-downs > in other countries.) It's easy to acknowledge the likelihood that globalization was 'a' factor, but my understanding is that research rules it out as 'the' factor, as it does oil shocks. > Also, here in California, home of the tax revolt and many other > idiocies, some of the basis of the "revolt" (at least in the working > class) was a response to stagnant after-tax real wages. Simultaneously, That was part of my point. Resistance to taxes was stiffened by wage stagnation, itself abetted by slower productivity growth (though productivity growth such as it still outstripped wages). I would say the real tax revolt was the election of Reagan. Aggregate state and local taxes have not been reduced, though there have obviously been episodes of anti-tax politics in assorted states. > But I wouldn't see globalization as the source of all problems or > anything like that (and high oil prices cannot be reduced to simply > "globalization"). It's a long-term trend which reasserted itself in > the 1970s. Many other things were and are going on, so that the > actual result is "overdetermined" (to coin a word). . . . Right. ==================================================== Max B. Sawicky 202-775-8810 (voice) Economic Policy Institute 202-775-0819 (fax) 1660 L Street, NW [EMAIL PROTECTED] Suite 1200 Washington, DC 20036
