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''The Great Stagnation: How America Ate All the Low-Hanging Fruit of Modern History, Got Sick, and Will (Eventually) Feel Better'' is a pamphlet by Tyler Cowen published in 2011. It argues that the American economy has reached a historical technological plateau and the factors which drove economic growth for most of America's history are mostly spent. These figurative "low-hanging fruit" from the title include the cultivation of much free, previously unused land; the application and spread of technological breakthroughs, particularly during the period 1880–1940, including transport, refrigeration, electricity, mass communications, and sanitation; and the education of large numbers of smart people who previously received none. Cowen, a professor of Economics at George Mason University, looks to these factors to explain the stagnation in the median, or middle, American wage since 1973. Analysis has set the "Great Stagnation" idea against the "Great Divergence", a set of explanations which blame rising income inequality and globalization for the stall. Related debates have examined whether the internet's effect has yet been fully realized in production, if its users enjoy a significant consumer surplus, and how it might be further integrated into the economy. The final set of questions concerns appropriate policy responses to the problem. The pamphlet is 15,000 words long and was first published in January 2011 as an electronic book, priced at USD$4. A hardback version, which Cowen dubbed "the retrogression", was published in June 2011.〔Cowen, Tyler ''The Great Stagnation: How America Ate All the Low-Hanging Fruit of Modern History, Got Sick, and Will(Eventually) Feel Better'' Dutton, 9 June 2011. ISBN 0525952713〕 While not all reviewers agreed with Cowen's thesis and arguments the book was largely welcomed as timely and skilled in framing the debate around the future of the American economy. ==Synopsis== The main thesis is that economic growth has slowed in the United States, and in advanced economies more generally, as a result of falling rates of innovation.〔Klein, Erza ("The Great Stagnation" ) Voices, www.washingtonpost.com. 31 January 2010. Retrieved 26 August 2012〕 In Chapter one, Cowen describes the three major forms of "low-hanging fruit": the ease of cultivating free and unused land, rapid invention from 1880 to 1940 which capitalized on the scientific breakthroughs of the 18th and 19th centuries, and the large returns from sending intelligent but uneducated children to school and university. There are potentially two further minor forms: cheap fossil fuels and the strength of the American constitution. Cowen concludes, "You could say, 'The modern United States was built at five forms of low-hanging fruit, and at most only two of those are still with us.' Fair enough."〔Cowen (2011:10)〕 While these produced extremely large returns, future advances will be much more incremental. He offers anecdotal and statistical illustrations for this slowdown. In the first, he compares the changes witnessed by his Grandmother with those of his own generation. In the second he cites median income statistics: the rate of growth drastically slowed from 1973 onwards.〔Cowen (2011:11)〕 He further argues that the failure to diagnose this trend has led to a degradation in political discourse since left and right leaning actors blame the policies of "the other side" and "what I like to call the ‘honest middle’ cannot be heard above the din".〔 Chapter two examines productivity in the contemporary economy. Cowen describes spurts in productivity growth—2.8% between 1996–2000 and 3.8% from 2000–2004—and asks if they disprove the stagnation thesis. Though he concedes that there have been gains in certain areas, such as information technology, Cowen argues that in other important areas, such as finance, which constitutes 8% of GDP, there has been less value created. Secondly, whilst productivity figures have improved, median incomes and stock market prices—and thus the returns to capital and labor—have not improved. Furthermore, government consumption (i.e. government activity excluding transfer payments) represents between 15–20% of GDP—yet since this sector is measured at cost it becomes less and less productive as it grows larger. Thus, the more government consumption there is, the more published GDP figures tend to overestimate growth in living standards. In health care (17% of GDP), the problems of asymmetric information and moral hazard mean that increased spending results in little or no improvement in health outcomes. A similar result is observed in education—6% of GDP—where outcomes have not improved in the last forty years. Chapter three considers whether the internet and other computing technologies disprove the argument. Cowen writes that while the internet has been fantastic for the intellectually curious, it has done little to raise material standards of living. The biggest internet companies employ at most a few thousand people and relatively few services are paying. "We have a collective historical memory that technological progress brings a big and predictable stream of revenue growth across most of the economy. When it comes to the web, those assumptions are turning out to be wrong or misleading."〔Cowen (2011:38)〕 Chapter four examines American politics in light of the thesis. Cowen says Paul Krugman's ''The Conscience of a Liberal'' (2007) puts the "cart before the horse" in asking for high marginal tax rates, unionization, and an egalitarian distribution of income and wealth. These policies worked in the 1950s precisely because the real income growth was there to support them.〔 Cowen argues that the failure to recognize the stagnation has led to poor policy ideas from the right (such as "revenue generating tax cuts") and the left (redistribution of incomes).〔Cowen (2011:39)〕 Cowen laments the "exaggeration" of both sides and the influence of political lobbying on economic policy. The growth in government he says, was affordable during the period of low-hanging fruit, indeed the advances in transportation, industrial production, electronic communications and scientific management facilitated it. Chapter five proposes a simple cause for the 2008 financial crisis "We thought we were richer than we were."〔Cowen (2011:46)〕 He argues that despite a series of regular, smaller crises since the 1980s, the crash was ultimately caused by investors taking too much risk across the economy, "housing and sub-prime loans were the proverbial canary in the coalmine".〔Cowen (2011:49)〕 Chapter six looks at solutions to the problem. Cowen praises the development of India and China as producers and consumers, the role of the internet in enlarging the scientific community, and a growing consensus for the reform of educational policy in the USA. He further suggests the social status of scientists be raised this being at least as strong a motivating factor as money can. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「The Great Stagnation」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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