One Economy to Rule Them All

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Biden’s ‘border crisis’ is actually an economic success story (Zeeshan Aleem, 4/08/24, MSNBC)

Economist Ernie Tedeschi, now a research scholar at Yale University, writes in a new report that the rise in the immigrant population since 2020 accounts for at least a fifth of U.S. growth since then. That goes a long way toward explaining why the U.S. has grown almost twice as fast as the next best performer among G7 economies since the pandemic. Furthermore, he notes, “absent immigration, the US labor supply would have shrunk by 1.2 million since 2019. Instead, it expanded by 2 million.”

And we still have massive employee shortages.

ABOVE AVERAGE IS OVER:

Generative AI for Economic Research: Use Cases and Implications for Economists (Anton Korinek„, September 2023)

Generative AI, in particular large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT,
has the potential to revolutionize research. I describe dozens of use cases along six
domains in which LLMs are starting to become useful as both research assistants
and tutors: ideation and feedback, writing, background research, data analysis,
coding, and mathematical derivations. I provide general instructions and demonstrate specic examples of how to take advantage of each of these, classifying the
LLM capabilities from experimental to highly useful. I argue that economists
can reap signicant productivity gains by taking advantage of generative AI to
automate micro tasks. Moreover, these gains will grow as the performance of AI
systems across all of these domains will continue to improve. I also speculate on
the longer-term implications of AI-powered cognitive automation for economic
research.

NO SUCH BEAST:

REVIEW: of Who Cooked Adam Smith’s Dinner by Katrine Marçal (Anna Johnston, Womens Budget Group)

Economic man is a strange creature- he needs no-one, acts only according to self-interest, and is always rational and anonymous in his choices. Crucially, he was also not born. He does not have family and is unobscured by relationships or emotions.

Clearly, this is going to present some problems when we try to apply this alien invention to actual economic activity.

NEOLIBERALISM JUST KEEPS FAILING UPWARDS:

Too Much: Three First World Problems (Art Carden, Mar. 21st, 2024, AIER)

Magnificently, free markets that have given us these “problems” also give us solutions. Capitalism comes to the rescue. Do you have a weight problem? Gyms cater to people of all budgets and with all sorts of fitness goals. There are cheap gyms like Planet Fitness (I’ve been a member for about seven years and honestly don’t use my membership that well) and more expensive gyms that are almost country clubs. Do you have too much stuff? There is a burgeoning market for professional organizers who will help you keep it all organized (this episode of EconTalk with Adam Minter, author of Secondhand, is fascinating). Too busy? We can’t all hire a personal assistant, but there is a similar market for companies that help people manage their projects and calendars (I’m a member of Asian Efficiency and was on their podcast in 2022).

Where our ancestors lived lives that were solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short, the twenty-first century has us overwhelmed with connections, opportunities, and experiences.

ALL OF WHICH GOES DOUBLE FOR UBI:

The Conservative Case for Remote Work (Frank DeVito, 3/18/24, Public Discourse)

[T]he economy has been steadily moving out of homes and into centralized locations for the last two centuries or so. Yes, this has meant mass production of cheaper goods, including those essential to keeping people alive. But there has been a massive downside: it has become the norm for people to spend more of their waking hours at a workplace than at home. Critics of feminism (properly) lament that the cultural norm for new mothers is to leave their children in another’s care in order to work outside the home (and they face increasing pressure to do so in light of a poor economy). Conservatives also speak (correctly) about the disastrous effects of fatherlessness on children and family life. Might it not be worth asking, then, if there ought to be a conservative case against normalizing traffic-jammed commutes and long hours in an office when it isn’t strictly necessary?

Remote Work: A Return to Family-Centered Life

The massive move to remote work has opened many eyes. All of a sudden, fathers spent their lunch breaks with their wives and children rather than alone in a cubicle or with colleagues. Work breaks meant stepping outdoors with children or holding babies, rather than idly gossiping with co-workers. Working professionals realized that it was possible to fulfill their professional responsibilities, get their work done . . . and still live in the midst of their own families. For many workers, remote work is not primarily about cutting out commuting time or luxuriously working in sweatpants, but about a return to a family-centered economic life. This is about much more than an equation to properly achieve “work–life balance”; it is about an opportunity to rediscover a properly ordered life.

Of course, there are jobs where remote work is not possible. Policemen must be on the streets, pilots must be in the cockpits, and laborers must be in the factories where things are actually made. But for white-collar workers, the “laptop class,” there is no universal reason why they must leave their homes and families to do their laptop work in a central office rather than at home—at least not every day.

NO ONE MISSES OFFICES:

‘Office culture’ as we know it is dead. Workers have other ideas (Lillian Stone, 3/03/24, BBC)

The world of work looks and feels entirely different than just a few years ago – yet many companies are still intent on recreating the office cultures workers left behind as they abandoned their desks in 2020. While these companies are making some gestures to adapt – for instance, redesigning spaces to accommodate new preferences and hybrid-work habits – many are still set on bringing back what lured in workers before the pandemic.

Yet swaths of employees simply aren’t interested in going backward. Instead of trust-falls and cold brew on tap, employees are demanding flexible work, equitable pay and a focus on humanity in the workplace that transcends the perks they sought years earlier.
Workers’ shifting priorities are a natural consequence of the Covid-19 pandemic, says Georgina Fraser, head of human capital for global commercial real-estate firm CBRE. “The pandemic gave us autonomy in a way that we haven’t had previously,” she says. “It gave us the opportunity to choose how we structured our working days.”