Now that the triumphalist rhetoric has died down a bit, it’s interesting to look at what is still special about the US economy. The answer is not, as might be imagined, productivity. In terms of both output per hour and total factor productivity, this comparative study of US and European productivity shows that the US is near the top of the world league table, but is outperformed by several European countries – in fact, it’s almost even with Italy on both counts.
The US is above average in terms of participation rates – the proportion of the adult population that’s in the labour force – and a little bit better-than-average in terms of unemployment. Again though, there are lots of European countries that do better on these scores.
The really outstanding feature of the US economy is the incredibly long average working hours. Annual working hours in the US are above 2000 per person, whereas the European average is around 1600. It is this fact that accounts for the big gap in income per person between the US and the rest of the world.
From an economic viewpoint, there’s nothing much to be said about the optimal choice between income and leisure.. If Americans just like working more than Europeans, then both economies are doing a good job. On the other hand, if labor market institutions force Americans to work more than they want to, or Europeans to work less, there’s a welfare loss.
One point in favour of the Europeans is that working hours have generally declined with rising incomes. So the converse trend in the US in the last twenty years suggests either unusual preferences or malfunctioning institutions.

Jason Soon responds to my post on Theodore Dalrymple, but gets his logic confused. As he observes, Dalrymple and some libertarians have argued for an intellectually consistent libertarian policy, namely allowing free immigration while cutting off all welfare services to immigrants. I made the point that most Australian free-marketeers take an intellectually inconsistent line, attacking government intervention the welfare state and barriers to cross-border flows in general, while supporting extreme ‘border protection’ measures in relation to asylum-seekers.
Jason writes ” If Quiggin is prepared to endorse this most radical experiment [the Dalrymple line] he should speak up. Otherwise he should stop accusing people of hypocrisy. ”
It should be obvious to Jason that my support or lack of it for the Dalrymple line can make no difference to the question of whether the IPA, CIS and so on are intellectually inconsistent. Jason suggests I am accusing them of “hypocrisy”, which implies conscious dishonesty rather than inconsistency. I don’t have the evidence to make a judgement on this.
For the record, my view, which I expressed in the Fin before the election is that neither ‘border protection’ on the Howard model nor open slather is a good policy. I favor an increase in the total refugee intake, and attempts to make more orderly arrangements with source countries. (Among other things, this would bring into reality the fictional ‘queue’, that asylum-seekers are regularly accused of jumping). This should be combined with an approach to ‘boat people’ which is based on humanity and good sense rather than scaremongering. This would include detention of those at high risk of absconding, but would not use detention without trial in desert camps as a method of deterrence. We manage a reasonable balance in relation to bail for those accused of crimes considerably worse than breaches of immigration laws. If it weren’t for the racial/religious panic that has been deliberately whipped up, we could do the same in relation to this issue.

Don Arthur joins the fray on Theo Dalrymple (real name = Anthony Daniels?, real nationality = ?, real occupation = ?). As Don points out, although the Australian right loves Dalrymple’s claim that most (British) asylum seekers are bogus, they are in something of a bind. Unlike the genuine refugees, who are merely fleeing persecution, Dalrymple observes that the “illegals” are entrepreneurs willing to risk life, limb and liberty in the search for economic opportunity for themselves and their families – just the sort of people the CIS, IPA and the rest of the alphabet soup of right wing think tanks ought to love. But as far as I can tell, every notable organisational manifestation of the free-market right, with the exception of Gerard Henderson’s Sydney Institute has line up behind Pauline Hanson (and her more successful imitator, John Howard) on this issue.

Alan Anderson writes
“there is little better evidence of the ivory tower disposition of academics than their unwillingness to accept that they do not have a God-given right to enormous public subsidies, and their reluctance to open the education market to competitive forces which might reveal the actual levels of consumer satisfaction with their services.”

As I pointed out a week or so ago, opening the education market to competitive forces has been a recipe for duplication and inefficiency – 39 different MBA programs being a case in point.] Alan rightly deplored this and called for more central planning.

Alan should get out of his own ivory tower occasionally and take a look at the facts. If he did, he’s be less prone to slogans like those quoted above.

Look to your left! New links to Alan Anderson, Rob Schaap, Tex’s Pre-whacked snakes and Tom Vogelgesang.

For me, the old days means:
(1) The days when I first got to use a terminal instead of punch cards
(2) The first two years of Macintosh
(3) The Web circa 1995

Anyway, having reverse-engineered Tim Dunlop’s site, I’ve figured out how to add comments to my blog (so much more satisfying than just asking!). Please send comments, remembering that this is a PG site.

While I’m talking about Tim, I have one (hyphenated) word for him — Control-Click. (If Tim can get his archive working under Windoze, I’ll link to the relevant post)

The Australian: IG Index betting stoush spreads [August 12, 2002]
These guys are offering stock market bets as an untaxed substitute for pokies and ponies. It will be interesting to see how all this pans out.

Mainly, a lot of issues of Scientific American and Prospect that all arrived at once. SciAm discusses the great SETI problem “If there’s life elsewhere in the galaxy, why aren’t they talking to us”. More on this soon.
I also picked up the latest Peter Corris, #25 in the adventures of Cliff Hardy, but I was a bit disappointed – maybe it’s time for Cliff to retire. Not that there’s anything wrong with this one, but there’s not much new to be said after 25 novels.

Jason Soon proves he’s definitely not a warblogger with a very sensible analysis of the problems that would follow a successful US invasion of Iraq.
As I said a month or so ago,

“The NY Times says that America ought to be discussing Battle Plans for Iraq. The bigger question, I would have thought, is, what do they do once they’ve got rid of Saddam? Bush senior had no answer to this one, and therefore decided to leave him in place.”

Ray Cassin at The Age has an interesting piece, pointing out the discrepancies between Tony Abbott’s social conservatism and his economic radicalism. I made much the same point in the Financial Review a couple of years ago.
Along the way, Ray gets stuck into “Theodore Dalrymple” the pseudonymous social commentator for the UK Spectator who is currently much-beloved of the Australian right.