Productivity Growth Has Been Declining For a Long Time

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Speaking of cherry-picked statistics, Brad DeLong is unhappy with John Cogan, Glenn Hubbard, John Taylor, and Kevin Warsh, who insist that Donald Trump might very well produce sustained economic growth of 3 percent. They back up their view with this chart of labor productivity:

Aside from looking like something a first-grader would put together, real economists don’t just draw miscellaneous arrows through data. DeLong shows how it’s done correctly, drawing a nonparametric smoothed lowess trend through a scatterplot. However, he admits that us amateurs could show the same thing using a standard-issue curve fitted by Excel. Here it is:

Hmmm. When it’s plotted with no particular bias to produce a specific result, it looks like productivity has been on a steady downward trend for the past 65 years, with a brief and modest uptick during the 90s.

Is it possible that tax cuts for the rich will produce a sudden, gigantic surge in productivity and therefore a sudden, gigantic surge in economic growth? Sure. Tax cuts for the rich have never produced this before, but anything is possible. Should you bet on it based on a crude chart drawn by folks who have an axe to grind? Well, it’s your money.

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“Lying.” “Disgusting.” “Scum.” “Slime.” “Corrupt.” “Enemy of the people.” Donald Trump has always made clear what he thinks of journalists. And it’s plain now that his administration intends to do everything it can to stop journalists from reporting things they don’t like—which is most things that are true.

No one gets to tell Mother Jones what to publish or not publish, because no one owns our fiercely independent newsroom. But that also means we need to directly raise the resources it takes to keep our journalism alive. There’s only one way for that to happen, and it’s readers like you stepping up. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

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