"Paul Krugman has published three posts in the last week arguing that Europe's economic stagnation isn't so bad. In this week's post, we explain why he's wrong. We answer:
What’s going on with the growth numbers?
Is it all the tech industry?
What about inequality?
What about hours worked?
Is America not a bad place to live?"
Posted by MeDueleLaRodilla
1 Comment
This argument again.. I agree with Krugman and disagree with the analysis in this article.
Remember when an article was posted here about Alabama being “richer” than Japan, so why are Americans so unhappy?
Well I’ve been to Japan plenty of times. I haven’t been to Alabama but I’ve been to California a lot which by these metrics should be richer than Alabama.
Japan, especially around Tokyo, feels modern, has great infrastructure, has affordable housing, and so forth. Seattle and Los Angeles? Meh. Crumbling infrastructure, expensive housing, expensive everything really, and poverty everywhere.
So where’s this so called wealth coming from in the US? If the US is so rich and the economy is so great, why is consumer sentiment through the floor? Why is home ownership rates going down? Why are standard of living metrics slipping? Why are savings rates so poor?
There’s something fundamentally broken in how we’re measuring economies – especially in USD. Yeah, Japan appears dirt poor when you look at in USD, but actually being there where everything is in Yen is a very different story.
Krugman is right and we should actually start trusting our own eyes instead of these macro stats, because something isn’t adding up, and it’s not all vibes.