Sunday, May 21, 2006

Work Smarter, not Harder

If you think about it, the vast, VAST majority of economic growth and wealth production has come in the form of innovation and creation. Jamal may work 80 hours a week in a field in Nigeria, and Sim Yon may work 70 hours in a factory in North Korea, but in that same amount of time a combine can harvest 1,000 times the amount of wheat than Jamal can and a robot will produce 1,000 more widgets than Sim Yon can, thereby freeing up labor to pursue more advanced, higher end trades.

Of course if you listened to those ignorant leftists and their labor union stooges, any change in the status quo is horrible for today workers and will put millions out of jobs. Again, if today's modern leftists were around in 1898 we'd still all be riding horses, because they'd be more concerned about how many people would be put out of work in the horse industry, instead of how much of a benefit the automobile would bring to society.

This might also explain why leftists abhor the real sciences of engineering, physics, accounting, biology and gravitate towards el-crapo studies of sociology, women's studies, feelings, public policy, health management and basket weaving.

Regardless, for those of you that appreciate reality and would like to see standards of living increase and have no problem with creative destruction, the following chart should explain in part why the US and Korea have had higher than average economic growth rates and why people from Mexico insist on moving here.

3 comments:

Mulk said...

that and the delicious cookies.

JTapp said...

Captain, have you seen Adam Levitt's blog from Sunday, seconded by Greg Mankiw's about economists' renowned abilities to pick up chicks?

Captain Capitalism said...

No, I haven't. But it's just a well known fact, we're hot.