Optimizing its resource allocation is far from all that China must do to boost prosperity. It is time to focus on workers and elevating the experience of their labor, the importance of which economists from Adam Smith to Karl Marx and Alfred Marshall have placed at the center of their concerns.
NEW YORK – Decades of plodding growth together with the 2008 financial crisis have prompted a seismic shift in economic thinking in much of the world. There is talk of moving resources from investment to consumption, from heavy industry to “services,” and from private sector to public sector. But what strikes me is that these arguments focus only on improving the mix of outputs within an economy, with no attention paid to labor.
NEW YORK – Decades of plodding growth together with the 2008 financial crisis have prompted a seismic shift in economic thinking in much of the world. There is talk of moving resources from investment to consumption, from heavy industry to “services,” and from private sector to public sector. But what strikes me is that these arguments focus only on improving the mix of outputs within an economy, with no attention paid to labor.