Productivity is a Policy Choice (with Preston Mui)

Pitchfork Economics with Nick Hanauer

Civic Ventures

Business, Government, News, Politics

4.8 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 2 April 2024

⏱️ 36 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Preston Mui, Senior Economist at Employ America, recently authored a report titled "The Dream of the 90s is Alive in 2024: How Policy Can Revive Productivity Growth." The report offers a blueprint for policymakers seeking to emulate the successes of an unparalleled period of productivity in the United States. Mui joins us to examine and reflect on the policy decisions which drove the strong productivity growth of the 1990s, and he also identifies dynamic new strategies for revitalizing American production in the present. Preston Mui is a Senior Economist at Employ America, a macroeconomic policy research and advocacy organization committed to achieving and sustaining full employment outcomes. Twitter: @PrestonMui Three Motivations for Interest Rate Normalization: A Playbook for Fed Policy in 2024 The Dream of the 90's is Alive in 2024: How Policy Can Revive Productivity Growth Preston Mui's thread on the “Dream of the 90's” series and report by Employ America Website: http://pitchforkeconomics.com Twitter: @PitchforkEcon Instagram: @pitchforkeconomics Nick’s twitter: @NickHanauer

Transcript

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0:00.0	The rising inequality and growing political instability that we see today are the direct result of decades of bad economic theory.
0:10.0	It's time to build our economy from the bottom up and from the middle out, not the top down.
0:15.5	Middle out economics is the answer.
0:17.8	Because Wall Street didn't build this country.
0:20.1	Great middle class built this country.
0:22.2	The more the middle class thrives, the better the economy from the middle out.
0:42.0	Welcome to the show.
0:44.0	Goldie, today we're going to
0:50.0	Goldie today we're going to focus our attention on the show on the issue of productivity.
0:56.7	Are you saying I've not been productive enough Nick?
0:59.3	That's for sure.
1:00.1	Are we having this conversation again?
1:01.9	Is it my annual review?
1:03.8	Live on air.
1:05.6	Yeah.
1:06.2	Productivity, as you know, Goldie, is output per worker.
1:10.6	And sometimes your output
1:13.0	your output often is very very low but in general we want it to be high
1:20.4	we want people to produce a lot of stuff relative to the number of hours that they work because that is not a perfect, but a directionally correct way to assess if the economy is moving in the right direction.
1:35.0	Is all the effort we're putting in increasing our welfare overall?
1:39.6	Yeah, let's be fair, let's clarify this, It's not just quantity. It's quality.
1:45.0	That's right. It's hard. It's a harder part of productivity to measure.
	...

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