Homework for Today: LT Economic Trends & Structural Changes
Re Conversations with Dave
You might recall the issue stack I put together a couple of years ago.
I've been carrying around a to-do for some time that amounts to creating an integrated picture of these issues, how the critical metrics of these issues have changed over time, and, especially, what all this might portend for the future.
Even though this is a complex, chaotic, rapidly changing world, much of it is, I believe, deterministic. We are where we are for a reason. Whether we like where we are or not, we ought to know how we got here.
I'm no longer satisfied with focusing on economics (if, in fact, I ever did with any aplomb). Economic growth, of and by itself, is no longer is enough. I need, people need, to understand the integrated picture and reckon its implications.
Doubtless the books you have given me and recommended me will help in this regard.
This is a recapitulation of issues we have been discussing for some time. I expect the conversation will continue. And once we've resolved all this, we will find something else to occupy our dotage.
James Drogan
1 Comment
Reader Comments (1)
When you get to the point where you'd like to consider how all these things link together might I suggest a starting point for consideration:
Basic Sociometric Dyanmics Framework
Attached are some supplemental extensions of this. Your stack of issues could/should then be considered as instances of particular problems to be worked out in this framework, perhaps ? For example int'l relationships are the institutional framework governing int'l trade and economics as well as strongly influencing domestic ones, with security a subset.
Of course this is a path, albeit a major one. One could also, and should take the issues and simply use the mapping technique to sort out the relationships for the key areas in your stack and then use mappings of them back to the more general framework as tests.
The charts I sent on are l.t. structural relationships that could be regarded, in engineering control technique, as the outputs of the 'black boxes' where the preceeding char is the internal structure. They also reveal, when put into the broader context, all the various socio-political and economic trends that have gone on. One can see for example the massive shift from a manufacturing-based to a service-based economy and the implied, concomittant changes in structure of the labor force, demands for skills and education, etc. As well as the ability and demand to fund healthcare, which wouldn't be a policy issue if that shift hadn't freed up the resources to make it affordable.
Too bad we can't look to some consortium of think tanks and unversity research institutes to further develop and apply these tools.