Kind of related to this, I've been reading lately about one of the effects that is causing health care and education expenses to shoot up faster than inflation: Baumol's Cost Disease. It's basically the problem that, when technological improvements cause most jobs to become dramatically more productive, labor-intensive (but necessary) services get disproportionately more expensive. This happens because if you want people to keep doing those jobs, the salaries need to increase to keep up with those of the people doing technologically-boosted jobs. But the productivity of, say, a doctor or a teacher can't increase because they still can't deal with any more patients/students than they could before. As a result, these labor-intensive service jobs end up taking a bigger and bigger share of people's incomes.
This maybe can be addressed, but I think it will ultimately take coming up with some way to build robotic doctors and teachers.
Kind of related to this, I've been reading lately about one of the effects that is causing health care and education expenses to shoot up faster than inflation: Baumol's Cost Disease. It's basically the problem that, when technological improvements cause most jobs to become dramatically more productive, labor-intensive (but necessary) services get disproportionately more expensive. This happens because if you want people to keep doing those jobs, the salaries need to increase to keep up with those of the people doing technologically-boosted jobs. But the productivity of, say, a doctor or a teacher can't increase because they still can't deal with any more patients/students than they could before. As a result, these labor-intensive service jobs end up taking a bigger and bigger share of people's incomes.
ReplyDeleteThis maybe can be addressed, but I think it will ultimately take coming up with some way to build robotic doctors and teachers.
What really boils my pasta is the Senate refusing to pass a budget. The dems have done this so they can deny, deny, deny.
ReplyDeleteI at least understood Reagan and Bush spending for the Cold War and War on Terror. President Oprah is just breaking the bank.
GRRRRRR