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Georgerufus
Ireland ranked number one, Australia number 6, USA number 14 down from number 7 in 2001 ?.
I see what you're saying. Do you think its possible that the low wages in the US are the result of market interference by corporations and business that effectively act as governments by using their control of the labour market over the individual employee as a way of increasing their profits. That is still a type of market distortion. Workers can't always go to a new job thats why we have unemployment.
Less than optimum wage, harm to overall economy.
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No, "low" wages are not the result of business interferring with the market. Low wages are the result of people having little or no useful skills.
Quote:
Georgerufus
I could open a show for steak flavoured cofee, but no one would buy my product and I would go broke. Demand fuels supply
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Yes and no, the possibility or speculation of a demand can also fuel supply for individual products or services.
Also, very few new businesses, goods, or services have demand fall into their laps from day one. There is a substantial element of risk involved. In fact, most new business ventures are not profitable in the first few years of operation.
Now, on the OECD rankings, most of the countries who's average growth rates over the last 15-20 years are countries with much smaller economies substantially lower GDP per capita, and while their growth rates have been impressive, they are still largely playing catch up with the rest of the industrialized world and have actually been disproportionately helped by the U.S. growth and even the less than stellar growth of the rest of the G7.
Amond the older OECD economies, the U.S. is consistently at or near the top over the long term. From 1995-2005 U.S. averaged 3.3% growth rate, 37.5% faster than the G7 overall (and substantially higher once you take out the US from that), 18% faster than the U.K., 22% faster than Sweden, 50% faster than the EU-15 (or "old Europe" as Rumsfeld so aptly labeled them), 57% faster than France, 65% faster than the Euro Zone, 135% faster than Germany, and 175% faster than Japan (Germany and Japan which were touted by the perpetual predictors of the fall of the U.S. to be the next great thing in the 1970s and 1980s respectively)
The smaller countries growth is also distorted by the U.S.'s contribution to that growth. A country 1/20th the size of ours can see their growth rate skyrocket by a level of increase in exports which reflects a relatively miniscule portion of our national wealth.
For example, if I make $100,000 and make only $20,000 a year and get a 3.3% raise, I get an extra $3,300 a year, whereas you would have to get a 16.5% raise to have your income increase by that much. Now, let's say that out of my $3,300 raise, I increase my spending to you by $1,000. My raise will be 2.3% (or $2,000 dollars after what I spend with you), and but that $1,000 which represents only 1% of my income increases your income by 5%.
But as I originally pointed out, the country with the most stellar success has been Ireland, a country with economic policies far more in line with what Republicans propose, and the worst performers have been the old-European Social Welfare states who are increasingly saddled by the unsustainable systems they have in place (the ones the democrats all slober over themselves to emulate economically).