PeakTrader.com

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PeakTrader:

Denis, what happened to South Korea, Greece, and Mexico? Were they in severe recessions or were they omitted for some reason?

According to a report from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development:

“Across the O.E.C.D., the average number of hours worked was 1,764 in 2008, the last year data were available.

That’s a slight decrease from 1998, when the average number of hours worked was 1,821.

American workers’ annual hours were in the middle in 2008, with the typical American worker logging 1,792 hours over the course of the year.”

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/12/s-koreans-put-in-most-hours/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0

From Wikipedia:

“Most countries in the developed world have seen average hours worked decrease greatly. For example, in the U.S in the late 19th century it was estimated that the average work week was over 60 hours per week. Today the average hours worked in the U.S is around 33, with the average man employed full-time for 8.4 hours per work day, and the average woman employed full-time for 7.7 hours per work day.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_time

I suspect, over the past few years, working Americans are working harder to support more unemployed, underemployed, retired, and disabled Americans, along with supporting welfare recipients (it’s no wonder bridges aren’t getting repaired).

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Denis, your list from the book: “Average hours worked in OECD countries in 2004.”

Here’s a list of OECD countries, which include South Korea, Greece, and Mexico, which were members before 2004:

http://www.oecd.org/about/membersandpartners/list-oecd-member-countries.htm

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Denis, it should be noted, EU-27 GDP and U.S. GDP are roughly the same size.

However, the EU-27 has about 200 million more people than the U.S..

When people work more hours, they can produce more. So, they can consume more.

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Arne, perhaps, in the late 19th century, when Americans worked over 60 hours a week, they didn’t really work that much, because of severe economic boom/bust cycles.

Maybe, many often worked over 60 hours a week for a year and then were unemployed for a year.

So, perhaps, they had periods of feasts and famines, or floods and droughts (to use some analogies).

Or, maybe, women took an increasingly larger share of men’s work, in the 20th century. So, married men, for example, didn’t have to work that hard, particularly with the inventions, and improvements, of household appliances, or women became more independent.

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Nominal GDP would be lower without accommodative monetary policy. Other factors (which I cited some before) are holding back growth.

Producers and consumers don’t see a lasting pick-up in demand to drive real growth, inflation, and interest rates higher.

The beginning of a tightening cycle, at this point, would just cause a recession, and we’d be back to quantitative easing.

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Edward, what you’re really saying is destroying potential output faster, through a recession, will lead to normal growth, and higher interest rates, more quickly.

I agree, if a smaller economy is the goal.

However, the Fed has been minimizing the destruction of potential output through faster nominal growth, ceteris paribus.

Accommodative monetary policy continues to be a positive for everyone, directly or indirectly.

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