The author of this article believes there must be steps to taken
to “return to the productivity growth and broad economic inclusion of the past.”
Do you agree with his premise and conclusion? Is there less innovation happening in the
United States today? Has research and development--and
subsequently, imagination, exploration, experiment and discovery--been sacrificed
for necessary short-term gains in firms?
How should the government, educators and/or individuals look
to prop up innovation and long-term economic growth? Is more
corporate oversight by boards and government regulators necessary?
Thoughts or comments?
This is interesting because my friends and I were talking about this the other day. We came to the conclusion that innovation has been going down. A lot of people see their lives as comfortable and can not imagine things to make it better or easier, which leads to less innovation.
ReplyDeleteThis article starts well when he says "...it would (also) be a mistake to misunderstand the relation of inequality and innovation," and that people have always gained from their innovations and taxing them is not the way to encourage it. His next line though, i have problems with it. "It is less innovation — not more — that has widened inequality in the United States in recent decades." I would like to know where he is getting this, because I think innovation is still happening beyond the fields he states.
ReplyDeleteOne has to keep in mind that the rise in unemployment is a consequence of the lack of worker training and not by the innovation. As the article mentions "The gap between the less advantaged and the more advantaged widened as the gap between high-school graduates and dropouts and Americans with college and graduate degrees rose". So, the problem is in the education. That is why the government should focus on this area to promote the more innovation program. Although the article said that the government could push the company to the innovation, one should know that this means a hazard risk. However, I do not think the government should work on it. Sometimes, I do not understand what people expect from the government. Some people engage the government participation, but then they ask less intervention. What is the role of the government? I do not think the government's job is to create innovation. This means many functions for a single institution made by human begins.
ReplyDeleteI find this author's argument quite convincing. Innovation upsets the status quo, making lucrative professions obsolete and making the services they provide affordable for more people. When we see stagnation in, say, the health care sector or education, the pay of these professionals stays high while their services continue getting more and more expensive. Thus, you get inequality. I'm not sure innovation always brings down income inequality (see financial sector), but it seems like it usually brings down consumption inequality. The mass production of the automobile certainly helped lower the gap between the living standards of those who once couldn't afford cars and their wealthy counterparts.
ReplyDeleteTyler Cowen has advanced the argument that a slowdown in innovation is the root of much of our economic woes, and he has a TED talk here on what he calls "the great stagnation".
I'm not sure what the answer is. More government funding of basic research is probably warranted, there are undoubtedly some elements of patent law and a few regulations that slow down innovation, a better education system would maybe help. At the end of the day, someone just needs to come up with a good idea.
Phillip mentioned the idea at looking at various elements of patent law as one possible solution. I think increasing the length of patents (thereby increasing the incentive to innovate) would be a good first step to take to stimulate innovation. While there are some drawbacks to this idea, it requires very little government spending in comparison to financing private sector research, for example. I can't imagine this would be sufficient enough to solve the whole problem, but I think it would be a good place to start.
ReplyDeleteThe backbone of America is that we are a breading ground for innovation. We have been first, or perfected first nearly all of the cornerstone inventions that I can think of that shape the world today. America needs to continue to foster this kind of growth. Yes in this time after the technological revolution we do seem to have stalled a bit, but that is the cycle of it. I presume we will soon be on the horizon of another advancement revolution, perhaps in medicine?
ReplyDeleteI have never found an article presenting such a correlation between innovation and inequality. The links between income and lack of innovation seem accurate. In terms of what to do to find further innovation, I agree with what Priscilla said and quoted from the article about education. More education, more innovation. But, I don't think this is the government's position to "create" innovation.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Rohitha that people are provided with high technology that make it harder for them to be more creative and imaginative. Government reforms are not sufficient enough to narrow the inequality, a wider embrace of the old ethos of imagination, exploration, experiment and discovery is what needed right now. Because "without its revival, no amount of government intervention can fully mitigate the widening inequality that the slowdown in innovation has helped create".
ReplyDeleteWell I agree that, in comparison to the past there is less innovation and I agree with Travis on the point that this is the part of the cycle and will definitely go up in the future. The analysis of correlation between innovation and inequality is interestingly presented in the article but I don't think innovation is too influential to determine the overall inequality. There are lot of other factors which affect inequality.
ReplyDeleteIt definitely seems like it is harder to innovate and to create without proper resources and capital. I think the decline in innovation is also a cultural thing. We have become so mechanized in our educational system that it has become more about getting numbers, scores and grades than about growing as a person, a citizen and an original person. Many critics of the educational system say one of the biggest problems is the lack of interest in school that is developed through these mechanical schooling practices. If we start to encourage and foster creativity and innovation, I think that innovation and creativity will start to be more valued in society and it will in turn create a higher supply of it. But this can't just happen in well off schools, it has to happen every where. I am a huge believer in the impact a better educational system can have on our society, economy and the overall well being of our country.
ReplyDelete