Word: blindered
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...when the Federal Reserve jacked up interest rates to keep prices from getting out of hand. But these days, inflation is barely on the radar screen, even though the unemployment rate has fallen to 4.9%, a level not seen since Richard Nixon was President. That astonishes Princeton economist Alan Blinder, a former Fed vice chairman. If he had bet on such results four years ago, Blinder notes, "I could have got odds of 10,000 to 1 [against them]. That's how unexpected this expansion has been...
...TIME board consists of former Fed vice chairman Alan Blinder, now at Princeton University; former Reagan adviser Martin Feldstein, now at Harvard University; Stephen Roach from Morgan Stanley; Allen Sinai from Primark Decision Economics; Edward Yardeni from Deutsche Morgan Grenfell; and J. Antonio Villamil from Washington Economics Group. An influential lot, for sure. Yet they can't measure whether computers are making people more productive. They can't agree on whether Americans are better or worse off than a few years ago. They don't know if the economy can grow faster and unemployment recede further without whipping up inflation...
...trillion economy that has lately been exceeding all those figures. The difference between 2.5% and 4% growth is $120 billion. That'd put a new car in a few driveways. The knowledge gap is widest when productivity is assessed. We assume that computers increase employee output. But Blinder wonders if we aren't using computers to get the usual amount of work done and then surfing the Net for fun. This is critical because accelerating productivity allows an economy to pick up the pace of growth without stoking inflation. If Blinder's fears are true, we're probably...
...self-delusions such as: "Watching Baywatch is good for me because it allows me to most thoroughly absorb and understand exactly what Jefferson meant by the pursuit of happiness" or "Staying in the dining room so that none of my friends eat alone will teach me what Baumol and Blinder mean when they talk of consumers with different tastes and preferences...
...Baumol and Blinder clueless?" I thought to myself frantically. "How can increased productivity of labor help the economy when it leads to layoffs...