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Danny Blanchflower
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- 2019-08-09
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- 2019-08-09
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“I'm not saying I buy into that, but that's the pushback. No, that's the pushback. Well, the first thing I think policymakers like me, central bankers like me, who sat in 2008 and saw what was going on, I mean, remember, we watched RBS fail, the largest bank in the world by assets. We watched Lloyd's bank fail. So the scale of this shock”
2019-08-09 · Masters in Business · Danny Blanchflower Discusses Labor Economics (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They spend less, but what it means is the full employment rate of unemployment has got lower and the Fed made, I mean, the Fed's been saying all along, oh, the NARU is four and a half, five percent. And because unemployment is at three and a half, we have to raise rates. Turns out they got it wrong, raising rates was an error, as I said, you probably know. I've said every month for the last 25 that that was a complete error. And it looks to be right.”
2019-08-09 · Masters in Business · Danny Blanchflower Discusses Labor Economics (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Around the world And in the UK, actually, this month we've seen a little bit of a pickup. And the reason was exactly that. You saw a big rise in the public sector pay, which hadn't happened for a long time. And one of the big deals around the world, I mean, the UK is a good example. In 2010, the government imposed a 1% pay freeze in the public sector, which feeds through the rest of the economy. So you push down on wages. Spend less money?”
2019-08-09 · Masters in Business · Danny Blanchflower Discusses Labor Economics (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Said that right. Yeah, a gas. And I've said it, and now what you think is okay, so now we see unemployment rates of 3.6. The big deal actually in the last six months or so, unemployment has continued to fall. And the wage growth, which looked like it was picking up, has reversed itself. It's actually slowed back down again.”
2019-08-09 · Masters in Business · Danny Blanchflower Discusses Labor Economics (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Danny, how low do you think the Nehru is in the UK? That means the full employment rate amount. And I said around two and a half.”
2019-08-09 · Masters in Business · Danny Blanchflower Discusses Labor Economics (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Couldn't have said it batch. I completely agree. But I think in a sense, that's a really big problem because I don't think policymakers got that. Clearly. They just didn't see it. And they sort of, and all the forecasts they made, and we think about the Fed says, we're going to be able to raise rates because everything's going to be back to normal and fine. The banking says, you know, within 18 months, we'll be back and everything. So they, absolutely what you said is true. It's the biggest error that policymakers have made. They didn't get it. And that's exactly where we are now, that there's a structural break. And what it means is actually 4% unemployment. I mean, the book spends a lot of time thinking about 4% unemployment is nowhere near full employment. Mark Carney asked me the other day. He said to him, I was at a meeting. He said,”
2019-08-09 · Masters in Business · Danny Blanchflower Discusses Labor Economics (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If you're looking for it, you find it. No, I don't think so. I don't think so. I mean, the great thing about being a data person, you do this all the time. You look at the data and there are puzzles that jump out of it. I mean, I think the obviously big puzzle in economics is actually why at the given levels of unemployment that we have, why is wage growth so weak? I mean, that's the big puzzle of for a labor economist today. That's the great puzzle. At unemployment rates are 4% and lower in the past around the world. Wage growth will be nearer to 5% than anything else. And in this cycle, that's something we haven't seen. And policymakers have not been able to grapple with it. And the book explains it, basically.”
2019-08-09 · Masters in Business · Danny Blanchflower Discusses Labor Economics (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh gosh, well, I've got another one. Here's another puzzling one in the happiness literature. Women are always happier than men.”
2019-08-09 · Masters in Business · Danny Blanchflower Discusses Labor Economics (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You're three deep. Right. Well, maybe. It's not till they're teenagers. But that's, so we've been working when it turns out that we have data on a million Europeans, and it turns out that once you control for the fact that having kids is really expensive. So we have this data on how much problems do you have paying your bills? Well, it turns out once you control for that, children make you happy. It's actually about, I mean, I use stories of my kids. I have two daughters with babies. And one of them says we buy 100 bucks a week in diapers and a bottle, a gallon of milk every day. And the cost of childcare is so high. And it's just the cost. And a book I talk about, well, we need to somehow or other help these fogs, help the kids, help parents deal with the high cost of children. But that's, so once you do that, it turns out the sign flips. It's a very nice result because I think it never made any sense, right? It didn't make sense.”
2019-08-09 · Masters in Business · Danny Blanchflower Discusses Labor Economics (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I have an explanation in a new paper. I've worked really hard on this. And the story was with me was well, if children made you unhappy, I mean, I had three kids, wouldn't you think after the first one you'd go, I've had enough of this? Well, by the time...”
2019-08-09 · Masters in Business · Danny Blanchflower Discusses Labor Economics (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Lots of things. I've just got a more recent one, which I've actually been working on. So, the one thing in the happiness results that I was always puzzled by was that it appears in the data that children make you unhappy.”
2019-08-09 · Masters in Business · Danny Blanchflower Discusses Labor Economics (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“College-educated middle aged white men, it's not going to rise that much if we go into a slump. Others groups will. So it's the cyclicality that's a big deal, but we have seen some improvements over time.”
2019-08-09 · Masters in Business · Danny Blanchflower Discusses Labor Economics (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, in general, that's true, but that sort of explains the question you just asked me about blacks. I mean, I always thought the good example always was the young African Americans, the unemployment rate of young African Americans used to be horrific. Used to be horrific. 35%. That's fallen more than any other. I mean, it's not great now. But it's half of what it was. It's a third of what it was actually. Really? Yeah, yeah. So those numbers tend to fall. So we've seen some improvement of the least, of the ones who do worst. I mean, in essence, what you're likely to see in the downturn is that turn comes quickest for those groups. I suspect as we get into this downturn, the story we've just been talking about will change quickly, right? So the unemployment rate.”
2019-08-09 · Masters in Business · Danny Blanchflower Discusses Labor Economics (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Or a little bit of both, yeah. A bit of both. I mean, one of the things which is interesting, as I say, the phenomenon you and I have just been talking about was not actually a phenomena for any racial group other than whites. So the deaths of despair have not really been happening for Asians, Hispanics, or African Americans. So that's an obvious thing in a way you get happiness to rise because they haven't had the big burst of unhappiness by construction means that that's happened. So yes, we've seen some evidence of that. In some ways, the labor economist in me learns this, and I remember my old teacher told me this many moons ago. The people who do worst in the slump are the people who do best in the boom.”
2019-08-09 · Masters in Business · Danny Blanchflower Discusses Labor Economics (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Chris Christie said all sorts of really sensible things. I read the plan. Christie came out with a sensible, very, it's worth reading. No, a great plan about what to do about it. Done nothing. So this is a terrible American phenomenon that we need to fix and it's within our powers and ability to fix to help these people who are dying from despair”
2019-08-09 · Masters in Business · Danny Blanchflower Discusses Labor Economics (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It'll wear a group of salesmen pitching these things on a regular basis. Right, and they have a national health service, which just by the records we've talked about, prevents people going around doctor shopping. Can't happen, can't do it, doesn't happen. So this is an American phenomenon which we have not dealt with. And people have talked about it and the president's talked about, oh, we have to worry about Didn't he”
2019-08-09 · Masters in Business · Danny Blanchflower Discusses Labor Economics (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We don't have that here. So, what's interesting is that presumably the doctors around the world, I mean, Barry, think of this. The doctors in Germany and France and Australia and Canada read the same academic journals as the doctors here do, and they don't prescribe opioids. They don't have an opioid crisis.”
2019-08-09 · Masters in Business · Danny Blanchflower Discusses Labor Economics (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They'll find some other doctor. This is not a phenomenon that's true in any other country. Really? Not true. And my friend says, what happens is they come to him as a psychiatrist and he writes down in their national health record, Barry's record says. And I said this guy in the no way I'm going to give it to him. So the next doctor goes, he sees that. He sees this, Dr. White says, no, I'm not giving it. Oh, so there's actually...”
2019-08-09 · Masters in Business · Danny Blanchflower Discusses Labor Economics (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Opioid overdoses. I have a friend of mine who's a psychiatrist in the UK, and he says, what happens in America is that patients can doctor shop. They can go to Barry and say, give me opios. And you say no, and they'll find”
2019-08-09 · Masters in Business · Danny Blanchflower Discusses Labor Economics (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Like West Virginia, you kind of understand. You get West Virginia, right? Ohio, but New Hampshire. So I think the provision of healthcare is a really big deal. The other big deal, actually, if you go back to...”
2019-08-09 · Masters in Business · Danny Blanchflower Discusses Labor Economics (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Live free from the safety net. I mean, why is New Hampshire a place where we're having all, I mean, low unemployment rates, I mean, a hugely low unemployment. Beautiful.”
2019-08-09 · Masters in Business · Danny Blanchflower Discusses Labor Economics (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Live for your time. There is no basically no provisions there for drug rehabilitation. Live free from taxes for a safety net.”
2019-08-09 · Masters in Business · Danny Blanchflower Discusses Labor Economics (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Exactly. I think a good example is the state that I live in, which is New Hampshire. New Hampshire is, I think, ranks second third in Opioid deaths. Really? Absolutely. So New Hampshire is a very strange. Well, why?”
2019-08-09 · Masters in Business · Danny Blanchflower Discusses Labor Economics (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Central to what's going on. These are entirely consistent with these deaths of despair. These same folks are disproportionately the ones that are committing suicide. So this is a new phenomenon in America. And what are we doing about it? I mean, people talk about deaths of despair. I talk about cries of helplessness, cries for help. So in a sense, the story is these are cries for help that are remaining unanswered.”
2019-08-09 · Masters in Business · Danny Blanchflower Discusses Labor Economics (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Where you're very happy when you're young's middle aged. I've written lots of stuff on what I call the U shaping happiness, but just flip it over. Exactly. And what it turns out is that on all these measures that I can use words like anxious, depressed, lonely, not optimistic, all the isolated. So all of these things appear to be...”
2019-08-09 · Masters in Business · Danny Blanchflower Discusses Labor Economics (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Just the popular, I'm taking a mental health day. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just straight asking them, they don't really define it. So it's sort of done in a consistent way for everybody. And the number of bad mental health days for this group is, I mean, we're talking 10, 12 a month. Really? 10, 12 a month. And I can just draw you a picture by age, which is just a huge hill shape. So these folks have a high level anyway, and it rises maximizing out at around 43, 44. So this is so it's...”
2019-08-09 · Masters in Business · Danny Blanchflower Discusses Labor Economics (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I Hard to know which came first on almost every measure you see the least educated, particularly prime age least educated. I can say it in a number of ways. Least optimistic, most anxious, most unhappy. I have a pretty interesting measure, which is in one of the big surveys, they ask people about how many bad mental health days did you have in the last 30.”
2019-08-09 · Masters in Business · Danny Blanchflower Discusses Labor Economics (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, exactly. So, in a sense, what you can do is to say, well, maybe what we should do is lower to firms the relative price of labor.”
2019-08-09 · Masters in Business · Danny Blanchflower Discusses Labor Economics (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think those issues are clearly to blame, so the globalization phenomenon was going on prior to 2008. But I think we should think of 2008 as a structural break. And a structural break in the sense that employers were aware that their bargaining position is stronger, but workers were scared. Workers were scared that the phrase safe as houses, well, that's no longer true. Their houses, their assets went. And that's a really big deal. I would just go back and I've tried to get people to think about the how capital displaces labor. In some sense, the reason it's doing it so strongly now is the relative prices. You can change the capital labor mix by changing relative prices. Price of capital. Yeah, I mean, you could capitalize.”
2019-08-09 · Masters in Business · Danny Blanchflower Discusses Labor Economics (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“How do you organize your life around it? How do you do that? And that's a really big deal. And I think if you just look at those contracts, if you were at full employment, workers would be able to say, I'm not taking that. The definition of full employment, I always like from beverage. He says full employment, workers are standing by waiting for, and I mean good, the word good's in it, waiting for good offers of jobs to come in. We're a very long way from that. So if those contracts exist, how can the feds or the Bank of England say we're any close to full employee makes no sense?”
2019-08-09 · Masters in Business · Danny Blanchflower Discusses Labor Economics (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They can't feel other hours elsewhere. And it's not just the number of hours, it's the timing of the hours, right? So, how”
2019-08-09 · Masters in Business · Danny Blanchflower Discusses Labor Economics (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Explain what that is. So, this is much like the story of Walmart. So in the UK, there's a thing called a zero hours contract, and most people absolutely hate it, but they can't get anything better. It's the following. You can only have a contract with me on a Sunday night. I will tell you how many hours this week you're going to have. I'm going to tell you which days they're on and what time they are. So I tell you on Sunday night, you're going to work from 4 p.m. till midnight on Thursday. That's it. And so obviously these workers say, A, this stinks mostly. And B, I would like more hours than I can get. And essentially what we see, as we've moved towards full employment, a little bit, those numbers have fallen, but huge numbers of these workers, we're talking in the UK about a million workers in these.”
2019-08-09 · Masters in Business · Danny Blanchflower Discusses Labor Economics (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Find one of them. And of course, the big story in the United States, which we don't have for other countries, is there's lots of other people, it turns out, that want more hours. So give you an example. We'll call those folks involuntary part-timeers. What we know from around the world, we don't have a measure of this in the US. You say I'm part-time. I've got 12 hours a week, but I'd like 20. And that turns out to be a really big phenomenon around the world. Yep. Yep, that seems to drive wage growth around the world. So we have a whole series of papers on this.”
2019-08-09 · Masters in Business · Danny Blanchflower Discusses Labor Economics (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We don't exactly know that. We do have pretty bad measures of that in the United States, and I've worked on it a lot. We have U6 is not bad. Well, U7, I'll talk about how it's better. I mean, we're talking about, I'm just looking at the latest numbers. In terms of the unemployment numbers, it's about 6 million. But if you simply want to look at this group, which is a particularly important group, which is part-time for economic reasons, it's about four and a half million. So it's about three quarters of the size or two-thirds, three quarters of the size of the unemployed. But what's really matters with those...”
2019-08-09 · Masters in Business · Danny Blanchflower Discusses Labor Economics (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You have to be the arbiter. I won't tell anybody. Tell me, are you about to be able to go and get a huge wage increase? And he said, not for love nor money. He said, just exactly what you and I have just talked about. Workers and many of the workers represent the women. He said they care about security. They care about being flexibility, being able to keep the job. They can drop the kids off at school. And if they need to take two hours off to go to the doctor with the kids, they can. And he said, there is no chance under God's green earth that was in pre-2008 that this big wage increase is coming. And I think that's where the world is. The point of the story is that balance probably wouldn't be existing if we were at full employment. As you would move towards full employment, workers would be able to say, I'm not taking that kind of job. Thank you very much, Walmart. There's lots of better jobs out there, and I'll go there. So I think the fact that this continues to exist says we're a long way from full employment.”
2019-08-09 · Masters in Business · Danny Blanchflower Discusses Labor Economics (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Until they replace that. And workers don't have any connection to the firms. And I think what you've talked about is an inherent instability of work, an inherent insecurity of workers. And that's the sense that they have. In some sense, that explains the lack of wage growth. They're more concerned about keeping their jobs just before 2000. Let me tell you a story. Just before 2008, I had a big discussion argument with the governor of the Bank of England. He thought there was a huge wage rise coming. So I knew, I wait for this. I knew the chairman, the head of the British trade union movement. I went to TUC House, Penthouse Suite, TUC House, and I said, his name's Brendan Barber. And I said, Brendan.”
2019-08-09 · Masters in Business · Danny Blanchflower Discusses Labor Economics (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right. So I think, in a sense, the gig economy, this self employed stuff, this is about fragile work. Many of these people can't get enough hours. That's the big story in my book. So”
2019-08-09 · Masters in Business · Danny Blanchflower Discusses Labor Economics (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's substantial you look at it. But it depends how you define it. But I mean, there's an issue say in the UK gets go to there. There's been a huge rise in the UK in the self-employment rate. This is fantastic. Turns out that the earnings of the self-employed over the last five years have fallen in real terms by 20%”
2019-08-09 · Masters in Business · Danny Blanchflower Discusses Labor Economics (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But the problem, of course, is that if you're not, I mean, the days where people went to a factory, they logged on at eight o'clock and they went home at four, you got eight hours. So not only is there a problem measuring the output, there's a problem of measuring the labor input. That's a really big deal. I mean, I think, however, it is clear that there is a problem and the problem is that wages haven't been rising. I mean, the sort of connection everybody makes is if productivity was rising, wages ought to be rising. So they infer back that lack of wage force, therefore there must be a productivity puzzle. Some of it, of course, has to do with distribution. I mean, workers understand that if they get gains from productivity, they get higher wages, but perhaps not these days. Perhaps they think, okay, there's a big rise in productivity. And the bosses are going to take all the gains. And there's an issue of that with the rising inequality issue. Do the workers actually think that if productivity was to rise?”
2019-08-09 · Masters in Business · Danny Blanchflower Discusses Labor Economics (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But they're not looking at a service business. Let's go with two bits to it. So productivity is just output divided by people or ours or something. So you kind of argued about output measure on the top, but I probably should argue about what you divide through by. I mean, what's your hours? What's my hours?”
2019-08-09 · Masters in Business · Danny Blanchflower Discusses Labor Economics (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, a bit of both. Clearly, the forecasts for productivity have been wrong. I mean, especially the greatest error was made back to what we were talking about. In 2010, austerity was imposed and the government was forecast whether this would have no effect on productivity. And they've continued to forecast that productivity would rise. And we have the thing called a productivity puzzle, which is that we don't actually seem to have had much productivity at all. And in fact, in the UK for the last three quarters, it's been falling, which”
2019-08-09 · Masters in Business · Danny Blanchflower Discusses Labor Economics (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, absolutely. I mean, obviously, part of it is you say, oh, it's because of the hours of daylight. But why would you have so many people happy? You can explain the suicide that way. So I think what we're seeing is people compare themselves to others, perhaps with social media. It's easier to compare yourself to others. So that really matters. And as the income inequality has risen, wealth inequality has risen. The contrast becomes greater. So I think that's what's going on. And we've also, I mean, think of why is happiness not risen in the United States? Perhaps it's that people compare themselves to others. So Barry Pyser, a new BMW, and is it going to make you happy? Well, it's going to make you happy as long as Danny doesn't buy one. That's what the evidence looks like. So it's a surprise that happiness is flat. People clearly compare themselves to others.”
2019-08-09 · Masters in Business · Danny Blanchflower Discusses Labor Economics (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We don't exactly know. I mean, it's all of those, but I think I've been working on happiness, behavioral economics for a really long time. And I think if I would choose one thing we've learned from it, it's that relative things matter. People compare themselves to others. I mean, a funny, a sad statistic. The three countries in the world that are the happiest up in Denmark, Norway, Sweden, they're the happiest countries in the world. They're also the countries in the world that have the highest suicide rates. Really? Yeah. So exactly what you say is true. But I think what's happening.”
2019-08-09 · Masters in Business · Danny Blanchflower Discusses Labor Economics (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Other groups, but essentially amongst white less educated, there's a disaster, and it relates to as well to opioid deaths, deaths from cirrhosis of the liver and suicide. So this is all going on at the same time we've seen recovery, but lots of folks around the world, especially in the United States, are hurting.”
2019-08-09 · Masters in Business · Danny Blanchflower Discusses Labor Economics (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When you're starting to see a big rise in the UK, so we have another paper where we actually track something which is pretty interesting, which is in the UK, and since 2013, happiness on various measures has been rising steadily. But worryingly, so has depression and anxiety. So you have the two things rising. Some people are doing just fine, others aren't doing just fine. And obviously the problem is that the ones who aren't doing just fine see the others who are. And so that's a big part of the story. But around the world we see a rise in sort of isolation, loneliness, anxiety, depression. In the US, which is a really big deal, happiness measures have been basically flat for college education. And for the least educated, they have been plummeting for the last 30 years. So this is a big worry. So measures of unhappiness, disconnection from society, all of those things are a worry, particularly for prime age, less educated folks, mostly whites, but there's some evidence of”
2019-08-09 · Masters in Business · Danny Blanchflower Discusses Labor Economics (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I know. And so there's evidence from doctors' visits. A quarter of all visits to a primary care physician. And the other thing to say about it, of course, is that at the same time as this, the huge rise in opioid prescription to deal with the pain. So what you see is, I mean, what you're seeing is a rise in the opioid prescriptions to deal with the pain, and the pain keeps on rising. But the reality is we're not exactly sure whether people really are in pain or they say they're in pain. I mean, they say they're in pain. Maybe they are in pain.”
2019-08-09 · Masters in Business · Danny Blanchflower Discusses Labor Economics (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's shocking. The evidence is actually that's exactly right. We've done a survey we looked at in a paper that accompanies the book out this month where we ask people around the world for their levels of pain and essentially Americans are twice as likely to say they're in pain than other places.”
2019-08-09 · Masters in Business · Danny Blanchflower Discusses Labor Economics (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“2003-4. So that says the economy hasn't recovered. It says the labor market hasn't recovered. And that's the result of not doing what you said. But I think you're completely right. The lack of public spending was actually the big effect. So in the book, I talk about now what's happened is central banks say, oh, we're at full employment. We clearly are not. And now you've put the brakes on. And basically what you've done is you've slowed the economy down at a time when there's essentially a global slowing. You've generated a trade war. And as I say, the Fed raised rates. And now we've got another era slowing coming. Looks much like what happened earlier, perhaps to a lesser degree, but it looks to me like the economist turned.”
2019-08-09 · Masters in Business · Danny Blanchflower Discusses Labor Economics (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, hindsight, perhaps. I said it then, so it's not hindsight. Well, that's fine. But I think the answer is that all the things you say about there was not enough fiscal stimulus. Think about, in a sense, the impact on growth of the $2 trillion tax cut. Not that great, perhaps would have been better earlier. The big thing that Keynes talked about, and we should have a 2017 tax cut. That should have happened in 2009. And the big deal would have been an infrastructure spend, which would have put boots on the ground. Construction workers. This was a housing market crash. All these construction workers, you'd have put those folks back to work. So what's happened? And I think the best indicator, forget the unemployment, right? We'll get to talking about the underemployment rate now in a sec, but the employment rate, that's just the proportion of people who are working. Today, that's two and a half percentage points below what it was in 2008, and about three below what it was in”
2019-08-09 · Masters in Business · Danny Blanchflower Discusses Labor Economics (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Not how it works at all. Me a lot. I call him slasher Osborne. Lord Skidelski and I wrote them who was Keynes' biographer. We wrote a series of articles together saying, this is an absolute disaster. So what you basically see is very weak recovery, no growth in real wages. And I think that austerity almost exactly leads to the vote for Brexit. Precisely in the places that hurt the most, the coal towns, the towns that have not seen much growth over the years. Brexit is directly attributable to the failures brought about by reckless failed austerity.”
2019-08-09 · Masters in Business · Danny Blanchflower Discusses Labor Economics (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source