Make Sure All That Spending Is Well Supported

Via
Washington Post

Some transit or rail spending can,
of course, promote efficiency and productivity ...

By Joel Kotkin

It's the new buzzword: infrastructure.

President-elect Barack Obama has promised billions in infrastructure spending as part of a public works program bigger than any since the interstate highway system was built in the 1950s. Though it was greeted with hosannas, his proposal is only tapping into a clamor for such spending that's been rising ever since Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in 2005 and a major bridge collapsed in Minneapolis last year. With the economy now officially in recession, the rage for new brick and mortar is reaching a fever pitch.

But before we commit hundreds of billions to new construction projects, we should focus on just what kind of infrastructure investment we should -- and shouldn't -- be making. More important, we should think beyond temporary stimulus and make-work jobs and about investments that will propel the economy well into this century.

After all, it's not that we stopped spending on infrastructure over the past decade. It's that mostly, we haven't spent on the right things.

New York City, for example, has wasted billions on its bloated bureaucracy and on constructing new sports stadiums and other ephemera deemed necessary to maintain Mayor Michael Bloomberg's "luxury city." Meanwhile, many of its subway and rail lines have deteriorated. Over the decades, brownouts and blackouts, caused in part by underinvestment in energy infrastructure, have become common during periods of high energy use in the summer.

Similarly, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has extolled the Golden State as "the cutting-edge state . . . a model not just for 21st-century American society but the world." Yet California's once envied water-delivery systems, roadways, airports and schools are in serious disrepair. Many even more hard-pressed communities -- Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Baltimore and New Orleans -- have similarly wasted limited treasure on spectacular new convention centers, sports arenas, arts and entertainment facilities and hotels while allowing schools, roads, ports and other critical sinews of economic life to fray.

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Breaking the Mold: the U.S. Productivity Miracle

Via
Citizen Economists

By Cheryl Grey

All other things being equal, high productivity growth—a rise in the ability to create more with less of anything—remains the central driver for a nation’s economy, and United States productivity is world renowned (and envied). In the 1990s, productivity growth in many other economically-developed nations remained flat or even decreased; for example, in Spain productivity in service-related industries slowed -1.2% between 1995 and 2004. But in what some economists are calling a productivity miracle, the U.S. managed a 1.3% acceleration in the same field at the same time.

This productivity miracle is even more impressive considering the concept of convergence. Major technological advances generally happen in economically developed regions, particularly the ones such as the U.S. and the Eurozone that sponsor fundamental (non-patentable) research. Because it’s easier to mimic somebody else’s success rather than create your own, developing countries tend to copy the innovations of their more advanced neighbors and ride on their technological coattails, leading to higher rates of productivity growth. However, as these nations become richer themselves, their growth rates tend to slow to match everyone else's. So while productivity growth rates are high in China (6.4%), Russia (3.7%), and South Korea (3.2%), it’s because they’re toward the beginning of that convergence pipeline, with a long row to hoe before they begin to slow.

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U.K. Manufacturing Output Drops Sharply

News Brief
Via
Wall Street Journal

LONDON -- The recession in the U.K. manufacturing sector deepened in October, with output dropping a larger-than-expected 1.4% on a monthly basis, the Office for National Statistics said Tuesday.

October's decline is the eighth successive monthly drop and marks the longest consecutive contraction in manufacturing output since 1980. The monthly decline was the largest since March 2005.

On a year-to-year basis, manufacturing output dropped 4.9%, a decline unmatched since June 2002.

A Dow Jones Newswires survey of economists had forecast manufacturing output would fall by 0.5% on a month-to-month basis and by 3.2% in annual terms.

Money Tranfers Via Cell Offered

News Brief

Via
Wall Street Journal

Vodafone Group PLC plans to announce a partnership Monday with Western Union Co. to allow international money transfers via mobile phones, as the wireless carrier seeks to tap into the increasing flow of cross-border remittances.

The companies are initially launching a pilot program that will allow residents of Reading in the United Kingdom to send money to family members and friends in Kenya, where Vodafone is the 40% owner of local wireless operator Safaricom Ltd. If that program is successful, the companies will expand it to other countries.

Office Politics: Good Or Bad For Productivity?

APS Editor's Note:
Common wisdom is that office politics can lead to low productivity. Perhaps that is not always the case ...

Via
NY Times

Career Couch

The Win-Win Way to Play Office Politics

By PHYLLIS KORKKI

Q. You’ve been told that to succeed at work, you have to play office politics. You don’t care to play games; you just want to get your work done. What should you do?

A. As hard as it may be to accept, “any workplace that has more than two people has office politics,” said Peggy Klaus, an executive coach in Berkeley, Calif.

Whenever Ms. Klaus gives speeches on this topic, people groan and contort their faces, she said. “They think they’re above the fray, or they deny that politics in their office exists, or they say it’s not important to them,” she said. This is a big mistake that could stall or even derail a career, she said.

Office politics is simply “being smart about how you manage the relationships at work,” said Marie G. McIntyre, a career coach and organizational psychologist in Atlanta and the author of “Secrets to Winning at Office Politics.”

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