Are You Experienced?

David Brooks' column yesterday discusses "Tyler Cowen’s e-book, “The Great Stagnation,” has become the most debated nonfiction book so far this year. Cowen’s core point is that up until sometime around 1974, the American economy was able to experience awesome growth by harvesting low-hanging fruit. There was cheap land to be exploited. There was the tremendous increase in education levels during the postwar world. There were technological revolutions occasioned by the spread of electricity, plastics and the car.

But that low-hanging fruit is exhausted, Cowen continues, and since 1974, the United States has experienced slower growth, slower increases in median income, slower job creation, slower productivity gains, slower life-expectancy improvements and slower rates of technological change."

He contrasts the difference between a man born in the early 20th century, whose experience is more materialist and oriented toward wealth creation and his grandson's, born toward the end of that century whose "wealth" is more in experience.

It's a complex issue. Many of the wealthiest modern corporations (for example, Facebook, the paradigm of the early 21st century business, perhaps) employ a relatively modest workforce. However, even Facebook's most prominent founder, while he may be a genius, also is the product of a relatively affluent background which enabled him to spend a lot of leisure (at Harvard and elsewhere) where, apparently with more concern for the process than the bottom line, almost in spite of himself, he managed to create a remarkable invention and business model. So, just when one thinks Mr. Brooks, the proto-Conserviberal, is coming up with something constructive, he once again is blaming the individual, whether it is the worker or college student or young adult for not achieving more without acknowledging that those who are ostensibly the Grownups at the Wheel of the Political Economy (in Washington,DC and on Wall Street)  have made many long-term decisions that have helped to push the economy off of a cliff and given many young people -- as employment has continued to wane since 2008-- fewer choices other than to hang out in coffee bars with their laptops working for little or no pay.

"The kleptocracy" as one commenter, Ralf from Minneapolis, writes has vastly shifted wealth distribution to the super-rich. "Or maybe the great stagnation has to do with the kleptocracy that we've allowed to form under our noses. The richest 1% of Americans are financiers and banksters who no longer produce anything of value, they just skim the cream and serve the watery remainder to the 95% who have stood still as America's aggregate numbers looked good.

"Now, with Citizens United bolstering the ability of the Koch cabal, the Chamber of Commerce and a few other oligarchical overloads to buy up the coming generation of politicians more easily than the ones they already own, David, your cute stories of fictional guys like Sam are a sop and a diversion. Corporations have run amok in our country, and now hedge funds are the evil last act of unregulated and unregulatable capitalism.

"I do not long for socialism (or worse), but I fear that American-style capitalism has completely lost its moral anchor, and things will have to get a lot worse than stagnant before a critical mass of voters mobilize to shake things up but good."

Something about the American social contract has shifted and many folks, through no fault of their own are holding on by their fingertips,  the poor, the working people, old and young alike, while the super-rich play divide and conquer. Our focus is on Egypt, but we have more than sufficient cause for alarm right at home.


The Brooks column on the Experience Economy here  and be certain to read many of the fascinating comments in reply posted by readers here