Sunday, February 21, 2010

Mix Message

This article talks about what the best economic future we can hope for is and what policies we can use to get there. The next economic expansion we experience should not be one "where prosperity was built on a housing bubble and financial speculation," but rather one where growth is accompanied by increases in exports, savings and investment.

Saving has decreased from 10% of income in the 1980s to around 1% in the present. Obama hopes to bring saving back by making retirement plans more readily available and helping employers to increase employee contributions. This increase in saving will be accompanied by an increase in investment which will be better fueled by technological advances. These advances, however, will not change the rate at which they appear. Therefore, the Obama administration is pushing for a faster patent process and less uncertainty in R&D tax credit (which currently must be renewed by congress each year). As savings increase there will be less demand for foreign savings, and alongside this shift other nations will shift to domestic consumption and investment (to rebalance their own economies).

1 comment:

  1. I think this is a developing article, which discuss the possible measurements of the future economy. To be candid, it is very hard to judge whether the policies presented in this article is the optimal based on what I learned so far. However, if the predictions of saving more would be achieved, I think it is a good choice to save more now.

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