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The Big Trend: The World is Getting Wealthier

A macroeconomist says that despite the risks, long-term growth patterns should make you optimistic about the future

Published: Jun 26, 2013 06:41:50 AM IST
Updated: Jun 11, 2013 04:55:26 PM IST

In your rush to understand today’s stock market numbers or tomorrow’s tax and debt debates, you might be blinding yourself to two important long-term economic trends: the tripling of income over three generations in the United States and the way poor countries are finally also raising their standards of living.

American adults are, on average, three times richer than their grandparents, and their grandchildren will likely be three times richer than they are. That’s in real dollars with inflation removed, says macroeconomist Charles Jones of the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Charles Jones is the STANCO 25 Professor of Economics at the Stanford Graduate School of Business
Charles Jones is the STANCO 25 Professor of Economics at the Stanford Graduate School of Business
Furthermore, people in most developing countries are now also increasing their standards of living.

“Historically, poor and rich countries grew at roughly the same rate, but in the last decade we’ve seen a bunch of poor countries growing rapidly — not just China and India, but also Africa and other places. This is an incredibly wonderful accomplishment that the rest of the world is catching up with the advanced countries,” Jones says.

These optimistic messages are part of an hour-long lecture that Jones has condensed from his quarter-long MBA course Growth and Stabilization in the Global Economy. It’s a course designed to give students a longer-range view to supplement the immediate perspective of daily news.

In the spring 2013 version, Jones conceded not all economic trends are coming up roses. Potential growth-stunting pests include the Euro crisis and the political fighting over budget, tax, and debt limits between Democrats and Republicans in Washington, D.C. Anecdotal reports of a housing bubble in China, however, don’t show up in hard data as a threat to China’s growth or to the global economy, he said, when asked about a 60 Minutes news feature on that topic. According to data provided by the Economist magazine, Chinese housing purchase prices compared to rents do not indicate a bubble. “You hear anecdotes about China’s overbuilding with housing, empty roads, and office buildings, but you wait two or three years and those roads are really crowded, those office buildings are full, and the newest ones are empty.”

Some Americans worry needlessly that China’s gain will be America’s loss, Jones said. He cited work by economist Paul Romer that concludes new ideas have been the key ingredient fueling greater standards of living in rich countries over the last 100-plus years, and new ideas will continue to be the engine of growth for the world.

“You might think electricity, cars, and jet airplanes were great inventions and now all we are inventing are Angry Birds on an iPhone, but the growth is still 2%” per year, he said. Compounded over 50 years, even with periodic recessions, an average of 2% has tripled Americans’ income.

“People produce ideas, and ideas lead to economic growth no matter where they occur,” Jones said. Therefore, as China expands its production of PhDs in science and engineering, it will also be contributing more ideas. Competition among businesses might increase because of more new ideas, he said, but consumers will be better off because “ideas are not scarce in the same way that tractors or other economic goods are scarce.”

One potential shock could be inflation in the United States due to the liquidity that the U.S. Federal Reserve has pumped into the economy since 2008. Jones praised Fed chairman Ben Bernanke as “the right guy at the right time” for dealing with the financial crisis and the resulting long-lasting recession. Having earned his doctorate studying monetary policy and the Great Depression, Bernanke was most likely quicker than any other economist would have been to drop interest rates in order to head off a bank run by banks on banks and to keep business projects running, Jones said. Bernanke has more than tripled the Fed’s balance sheet, which Jones compared to tripling the water in a mountain lake above a valley. “The worry you have is that water could spill over the dam, and flood the valley,” he said, meaning runaway inflation. Forecasters, however, indicate they believe the Fed can keep inflation under control.

Macroeconomists “were caught by enormous surprise,” by the 2008 financial crisis and the depth of the recession that followed, Jones said, because during the 20th century, they had seen economic downturns getting shorter and further apart. Only one published study before 2009, by Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff, hinted at the fact that there might be two very different types of recessions. It now seems that those caused by excessive lending and borrowing may linger longer than those caused by standard business cycles or natural disasters or political shocks such as the one leading to high energy prices in the 1970s. Business and banks are perhaps not as quick to spend their way out of a recession if its cause was overspending and overborrowing, Jones said. This is why banks have been reluctant to relend the money the Fed has made available to them at low rates.

Another worry is the Euro crisis. The financial bubble in countries like Spain, Italy, and Greece led to wages rising in those countries ahead of productivity, he said, and now it’s difficult to bring those wage rates down to address the fiscal problem. Normally, when country leaders control their currencies, they can print more money to cause inflation, which can reduce the value of wages compared to prices. The European Union’s unified currency makes that strategy infeasible. “So the adjustment is occurring by having high unemployment rates and waiting for that to drive wages down or hope that productivity rises,” Jones said. “That’s a 10- or 15-year proposition.” In the meantime, unemployment rates around 25% make elected leaders subject to voter wrath and therefore less likely to implement better long-term reforms.

Overall though, Jones said, he is optimistic. “The overwhelming fact of economic history for the last 150 years is, on average, incomes were growing at 2% a year, and that growth is inexorable. As bad as the Great Depression was, it was temporary.”

This piece originally appeared in Stanford Business Insights from Stanford Graduate School of Business. To receive business ideas and insights from Stanford GSB click here: (To sign up : https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/about/emails ) ]

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  • Girish

    This article is very optimistic and may be very realistic also. There are close to 7 billion people on planet. Most of them below the age of 35. This alone will ensure continuing grpwth for next 50 years no matter what happens. The demographic trends are long term and usually reliable. Once set in motion the ball keeps rolling. All these teeming billians will ensure their needs and aspiratiosn are met today or tomorrow. All those who will meet those needs will thrive. There will be losers in this new world...mostly uneducated and unqualified in developed world. Any jobs that arerepetitive in nature will go away in next 15 years as they are replaced by intelligent machines and systems. Knowledge workers, entrepreneurs and investors will thrive in this new brave world cutting across artificial national boundaries. They will think, act and behave alike regardless of where they were born and where they are living. Some countries like India will experience unprecedented prosperity and growth in 21st century. While some slow down to 2%. SOme like Pakistan, Afghanistan, Sudan may take another 25 years to start their growth journey. But they will start nonetheless.

    on Jul 9, 2013
  • Ramesh Lahoti

    Prof. Charles Jones is definitely a very intelligent like most economists are. But has not one very important factor been missing in any equation or economic model when wealth increase is calculated and that is the price the society pays for the loss of inter-human relations. The equation result is: Increase in personal wealth = loss of Human values loss of inter human relations. Is it worth beyond a reasonable amount of having wealth?

    on Jun 27, 2013