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62 sats \ 10 replies \ @SimpleStacker 11 Jul \ parent \ on: Does the US have Dutch disease? econ
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.
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Manufacturing jobs have taken a beating. There's still a lot of manufacturing in the US.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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I mean, yeah. That's the whole point of counterfeiting money, isn't it?
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