LONG-TERM IMPACTS OF THE FEDERAL DEFICIT

Public Economics,

THE U.S. ECONOMIC SYSTEM -- WHAT IS IT BECOMING?

Public Economics,

Education and Falling Wages

Start with a statistic that should be burned into the brain of every American. If one looks at young males eighteen to twenty-five years of age who work full-time for a full year — eight hours a day, five days a week, fifty-two weeks a year — 18 percent of them could not earn a poverty-line income ($12,183 in 1990 dollars) in 1980. Ten years later, in 1990, that number had risen to 40 percent. Among young female workers eighteen to twenty-four years of age, the percentage unable to earn a poverty-line income despite full-time, full-year work rises from 29 to 48 percent over the decade. If the unemployed and part-time workers are added into the statistics, 73 percent of the young people who worked in America in 1990 could not earn a poverty-line income. Between 1988 and 1992, two-thirds of the American workforce has had to take a cut in their real, inflation-corrected wages. Unless something is done to reverse the current one percent per year decline in real wages, the numbers are going to be much worse a decade from now

1992--the end of the line for the current world economy

Series from publisher's information"Fall 1988.

Economic Paradigms and Slow American Productivity Growth

Conventional explanations of America's slow productivity growth end up by giving up. Much of the slow down remains unexplained by changes in the quality or quantity of conventional inputs. If one looks at changes in occupational employment, it is clear that the productivity problem is an office and not a factory problem. White collar employment has simply grown much faster than it should have grown. To explain this growth, it is necessary to probe into theories of management and why they have led American firms into inefficiency. The answer is found in a misguided belief in "management by the numbers."