“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues. The book is not for general readers, but students and scholars in economics and American history will find within these pages much illuminating interpretation of a massive amount of data.Ī masterful study to be read and reread by anyone interested in today's political economy. This Great Leap Forward generated the momentum that continued into the 1970s. These policies, many of which are now considered failures, are thus shown to have provided the groundwork for what was to come. “Our measure of capital input,” he writes, “is newly developed for this book and adjusts for the unusual aspects of investment behavior during the 1930s and 1940s.” The author uses his fresh methods to back his argument for the primary significance of the reforms that took place during the New Deal.
Gordon is primarily concerned with the quality of these successive improvements-which, he writes, “are missing from GDP altogether”-as well as the consumer price index, which tracks current sales and prices. The author also shows how horse-drawn streetcars and steam-powered trains expanded urban activities, and he examines how electrification and the internal combustion engine powered the Second Industrial Revolution. The author identifies advances in lifestyles, and he establishes that New Deal labor policies, which caused real wages to rise faster than productivity, laid the foundation for “the Great Leap Forward” in the middle of the 20th century. He compares the growth of real wages, living standards, and innovations in technology over two periods: 1870 to 19 to 1970.
His emphasis is quite different from the familiar concerns of budget deficits and quarterly profits. Macroeconomics, 2008, etc.), a respected macroeconomist, provides a groundbreaking contribution to political economy. Gordon (Social Sciences/Northwestern Univ. A comprehensive analysis of “one of the most fundamental questions about American economic history.”
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