Dutch disease is a concept that describes an economic phenomenon where the rapid development of one sector of the economy (particularly natural resources) precipitates a decline in other sectors. It is also often characterized by a substantial appreciation of the domestic currency.
@Undisciplined and @SimpleStacker your views on the possibility of US ailing with the Dutch Disease?
That seems like a very strange claim for the most diverse economy in the world. To be fair, though, I didn't read the article.
Here's the point:
Yes, that's the point. Does it mean that other sectors of US economy are in a free fall?
I assume that they aren't in a free fall, but they aren't booming either. For decades now, only the US dollar is working as a shield for the US economy.
Exporting the dollar has definitely impacted manufacturing in this country. It's the driving force behind the trade deficit, so I suppose it fits the description. Manufacturing has been taking a beating since the 80s
Manufacturing jobs have taken a beating. There's still a lot of manufacturing in the US.
Well, there were like 19 to 20 million manufacturering jobs in 1980 compared to 12 million now. Also, for every manufacturing jobs created, roughly 2.2 jobs are supported.
I'm not sure what actually counts as Dutch disease, but there's a major sector in this country that's obviously suffering.
The amount of stuff manufactured kept growing though. That could just be the normal course of technological progress, like how we produce more agriculture than ever despite a 90%+ reduction in farmers.
If that were the case, then I don't think we would be in a trade deficit and certainly not for decades.
I suppose Dutch Disease is more of a continuum than a binary.
My sense is that we wouldn't be able to maintain the reserve currency of the world if our economy stopped being the biggest one that everyone else wants to invest those dollars in.
author's point, too, was that strong/weak institutions determine how the spoils of a resource find are spent. U.S. has weak institutions, thus it gets spent opportunistically on, in this case, the wealthy political insiders.
That point, I find nice and persuasive
I mean, yeah. That's the whole point of counterfeiting money, isn't it?
lol
Just read the initial few paragraphs. I didn't bring them here because I wanted you to read the claims by FT in detail.
Archived link: https://archive.is/WQyjX
Thanks.
It was not Paywalled for me when I shared, but now it is. Strange from FT!
I assume that the function
paywall()is no longer statically assigned, like so:if (article.paywalled) { return paywall(); }but nowadays more something dynamically assigned based on views/virality/non-subscriber interactions, like so:
if (article.current_virality > article.category.target_virality) { return paywall(); }meaning that every article can get a paywall depending on interaction. The ironic thing here is that by sharing the article you may trigger the paywall.
Wow! Thanks. I'm absolutely certain I triggered the paywall for this article.. haha
I thought you were talking about this, of which we have plenty:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_elm_disease
Haha!
FT created this clickbait deliberately.
Yes.
(And I love reading that dude, Greeley. He always digs up interesting things)
Yeah, it’s a fair question — especially with the dollar’s strength and how much capital gets sucked into finance and tech while manufacturing keeps thinning out. Feels like the U.S. version of Dutch Disease is more about financialization than oil, but the end result’s similar: hollowed-out real economy, bloated asset markets, and a strong currency that makes exporting harder. Curious to hear what @Undisciplined and @SimpleStacker think, but it’s not far-fetched to say the U.S. might already be showing symptoms.
excellent. Silly of author to go into contemporary politics and buhu, Trump tax bill is for the wealthy shit, but otherwise excellent