What i just put in the Clio

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Not exactly.
It depends largely upon the mix of activities in any given economy.
The US has ample arable land and thus a large agricultural sector. American style farming has resulted in a minmum economic farm size of around a thousand acres, which can then be worked by a farmer and maybe his son using expensive capial equipment. No need for me to explain to you the labor productivity implications.
The US is also blessed with significant mineral wealth and these are industries that also have unusually high labor productivity.
You seem to have missed the point of my post.
Comparing apples to apples, the UK is no more and no less productive than is the US.
If the UK had the arable land and the mineral resources of the US, these economies would end up being in parity for labor productivity as measured by the OECD.
If you understand the limitations of the comparison that you brought, you'll then understand that your argument was falacious to begin with.
 
Yes its due to the mix but you do understand the concept of comparative advantage also don't you?

And you do understand that agriculture is not going to create as high a GDP per person as financial services so saying US agriculture is the reason for higher GDP is laughable!

The City of London is a huge advantage for the UK in terms of the mix required for higher GDP. It is disproportionate in mix compared to Wall St. So actually, the UK, based on industry mix alone should create more wealth and therefore GDP per person.

You can see in the link I provided that the chart was labelled Labor productivity. And that is a definition put forward by economists.

Because in the final analysis, what a country produces overall is measured in $, ie value created. So the US is generating more value per person and that is how we compare productivity in the final analysis. Why? Because the mix is always different. You can't make a productivity comparison between countries by picking micro examples. It has to be done at the macro level using $. Here is an example:

Say 2 countries were producing cars only and they had an equal working population. 1 was luxury and 1 was economy. Say it took longer to produce the luxury cars at a ratio of 8 luxury cars to 10 economy cars. Would you say the economy producing economy cars is more productive? On a per car basis yes but what if luxury cars were sold at a 50% higher price?

Using $ instead of volume cuts through having to make a determination of product and service differences. The luxury car is worth more in the market per labour hour and therefore labor has been more productive, because they have generated more added value. It is not about volume, it is about value added!

And it is not about micro analysis and picking and choosing industries to make the argument. So we use the macro measurement of $ which assigns a value to the utility that consumers get from each product and which tells you for example that even though a country produced less luxury cars than another, their productivity was higher because the market values that product higher because it had greater utility.
 
Btw, you can google any number of studies any get the same conclusion either at the macro level taking GDP per person or even at a more scientific non macro level where economists apply some kind of methodology to the analysis.

What you can't do I'm afraid is pick and choose examples such as agriculture and land availability without a good grounding in economics that informs you how such an issue should be analyzed.

Think about it, Luxembourg has even less land than the UK!
 
Once again, you've missed the point.
If two guys can produce corn or soybeans on 1500 acres of land, then their labor productivity is obviously very high even if the product value is pretty low per unit.
The same is true of producing gas and oil wells as well as open-cast coal and iron ore mines.
The unit values may be low, but the aggregate values are high and the labor required per unit of output is low.
Does the US enjoy higher per capita GDP than the UK?
Of course.
Is the US more producitve on an apples to apples basis?
Probably not.
You'd need to compare comparable operations to make that ascertion.
You'd also need to dig a little deeper and understand the significance of the US allowing the use of third world suppliers to a greater extent than does the EU.
Cheaply sourced components offer higher value added in first world finished goods.
And, yes, I do understand the concept of comparative advantage as well as its irrelevance in a world of far from free trade.
 
So what is the impact of third world suppliers on comparative GDP? Does it account for the 33% difference? Or is some of it agriculture?

I do take your point but the difference is way too stark and study after study shows the UK is way behind the rest of Europe in labor productivity. It is a well known fact that the Brits work longer hours than the rest of Europe and they just don't work as smart.

Multiple numbers and figures prove what I am saying.

You can't hinge your micro argument on the agriculture reason because Luxembourg has higher GDP per person than the US but less land than the UK.

You can't hinge your micro argument on low cost third world supplies because the UK is in the same tariff area as Germany and France and yet even Spain has higher productivity.

I really suggest you google for some facts, figures and studies to support your assertion that folks in the UK overall do things as productively as in the US. You should find something on the medical sector being more productive (mainly because the US is so poor (you'll also find many countries better than the UK)), and you should find something about financial services.
 
Okay, let me make this as simple as I can.
Take an average UK factory and compare it to an average US factory.
Do you really think that there are significant differences in output per worker?
To the extent that there are, how much of that is attributable to "working smarter", to use your phrase, and how much is attributable to the American worker having more capital to work with?
To the extent that American manufaturing is more efficient than manufacturing in the UK, assuming that it is, this is probably entirely attributable to the substituion of capital for labor.
Not a bad thing in itself, but a certain way of drying up decently paid employment opportunities for the low skilled.
The American economic model has created great wealth for most of us with the unfortunate side effect of tossing the lower skilled into poorly paid service sector jobs.
Incidentally, financial services are all about wealth management, not wealth creation. They are a zero sum game.
 
Originally Posted By: fdcg27
...
Here's an example:
Why does Norway's labor productivity appear to be so high?
If the OECD figures included the extractive economies of the Middle East, the answer would be obvious.


Yep. Norwegian tax income on oil from the north sea was USD 65 833 333 333 (USD 1 - 6 NOK, NOK 395 000 000 000) in 2012. Around 1 500 000 oil barrels a day.
 
Last edited:
Originally Posted By: fdcg27
Okay, let me make this as simple as I can.
Take an average UK factory and compare it to an average US factory.
Do you really think that there are significant differences in output per worker?
To the extent that there are, how much of that is attributable to "working smarter", to use your phrase, and how much is attributable to the American worker having more capital to work with?
To the extent that American manufaturing is more efficient than manufacturing in the UK, assuming that it is, this is probably entirely attributable to the substituion of capital for labor.
Not a bad thing in itself, but a certain way of drying up decently paid employment opportunities for the low skilled.
The American economic model has created great wealth for most of us with the unfortunate side effect of tossing the lower skilled into poorly paid service sector jobs.
Incidentally, financial services are all about wealth management, not wealth creation. They are a zero sum game.


There was no argument about the inherent skill of the worker and if their productivity is higher because they or their employer uses more capital. There was just the statement about productivity being higher. UK manufacturers are free to use as much capital as they want, they are free to employ specialists who look at how to improve productivity. The end result, for whatever reason, is the UK workers are less productive. Some of the cause lies with management, some with workers. But in general, I put it down to a lack of willingness to educate and to seek better ways of doing things by the country as a whole.

Secondly, financial services do create wealth. They allocate capital to profitable endeavors. Insurance is a service that gives people peace of mind which means they go about their business with more confidence. Sure, its hard to understand how derivatives create wealth but not many other things in financial services. Even the concept of options is used by businesses and individuals to reduce uncertainty. I've used options a few times myself to lock in a position that I could not realize when it became profitable.
 
Think carefully through the flow of funds through any financial services transaction.
There is never any creation of wealth, merely a reallocation of funds from one party to another.
Insurance represents merely a pooling of risk and options of all kinds, particularly futures contracts, are properly used as a form of insurance.
It's also rather silly to actually write that the UK is somehow backward in education as a whole.
Some would say the same of our country relative to many others, but the promise of wealth for talent here seems to suck in many of the best and the brightest from those countries with lower per capita GDPs than ours.
Very low marginal tax rates in the US don't hurt either in attracting talent.
A lot more involved than you seem to think.
The figures don't lie, but you have to have the knowledge to put them into context.
 
You need to think carefully about how wealth is created. Your simplistic view is that financial services doesn't create wealth because it is shifting money.

But I gave you several examples which you are ignoring. One is the efficient allocation of capital. There are limited funds for investing and investing them well generates more economic growth than investing them badly. So a financial service such as accounting and auditing generates trust in financial reports. Financial analysis and activities such as investment banking look for how best to invest and things like corporate development and m&a look at how to develop markets. These activities must generate wealth otherwise they would not exist.

Its funny that you presume I am not putting information into context. You doubted that labor productivity is higher in the US than the UK and were shown numbers that you could have easy found yourself. Indeed you should have known about these numbers if you have anything above a laymans interpretation of economics.

The idea that financial services does not create wealth is laughable. I'm sorry but that is what it is. And if you state otherwise you are clearly a layman. Please find one economist who agrees with you on this point otherwise this discussion has run its course and I'm done.
 
Capital aggregation is not the same thing as efficient capital allocation.
If you had any knowledge of efficient market theory, then you'd know that financial analysis is of limited value.
This is why index funds generally outperform managed funds.
It's pretty well understood that the value crated by the financial services sector and all of the clever analysts was negative only a few years ago.
As the old saying goes, it doesn't take a genius to make money in an up market and you can make even more money by borrowing funds to invest as long as you have a positive spread. The other side of that is that when these financial empires built on debt felt a little cold breeze, they colapsed like the houses of cards they were and we were all left with the tab.
It may not be fair to say that the financial services sector caused the 2008 recession, but it is fair to state that an excess of leverage and too little equity brought about a widespread colapse in this sector which resulted in a far deeper and more prolonged reduction in output than would otherwise have been the case as well as a very slow recovery in output growth.
Oh, you wanted the name of an economist who'd agree that financial analysis is a waste of time?
I guess you've never heard of Eugene Fama?
 
So all investment decisions in the economy are performed by retail customers investing in non index funds?

All financial analysis is performed by fund managers?

You're taking very selective and narrow information to make your points and misrepresenting or not understanding what actually goes on. And in fact index funds vs non index funds has nothing to do with your earlier assertion that the financial sector doesn't create wealth. In fact you're now claiming the financial sector reduces wealth, which is interesting because earlier you claimed it simply shifted money. So at least now we are making progress in that you've realized the financial sector has the ability to make decisions that affect wealth.

Of course not everyone in the market makes perfect decisions. Not every investor makes perfect investment decisions. But not making perfect investment decisions is a feature of any market. Why? Because we don't have perfect information. A financial market works like any other market except that it is faster. There are buyers and sellers, there are transactions and there is imperfect information. So some investors do better than others, just like some people buy airline tickets cheaper than others.

Theoretically, markets create what is known as "normal" profits and they drive out excess profit through arbitrage. Financial markets do this faster than other markets. When does this typically go wrong? When govt or regulations fail. Make money cheap by having low interest rates, you get an asset bubble. Guarantee mortgages, you remove moral hazard. The market looks to make profit in the conditions presented. The examples you have are actually examples of markets doing what they do. The reason they gave adverse outcomes is the interplay of govt policy with them.

Now onto financial analysis. Sure you can pick on index vs non index funds but as mentioned it is about imperfect information and the choice of people to buy what they decide to based on the information they have and how they choose to use it rationally or irrationally. But you also do realize that how retail investors choose to invest in portfolios is not the same as how overall investment decisions are made don't you?

Firstly companies have to make profit to reinvest and / or convince lenders to give them money. This money is not coming from retail investors portfolio decisions. Furthermore, when retail investors make made decisions or fund managers create bad portfolios, guess what happens? Those making good decisions make more profit than those making bad decisions. And guess what happens then? Those who made good decisions control a larger proportion of investments. Think about the rise in hedge funds. Think about Buffet, Ichan, Soros. All making financial transactions that create wealth because they drive out inefficiencies. Buffet has helped build up numerous companies and hedge funds that break up underperforming companies are working to reallocate capital. Silicon Valley investors from angels to VCs take their experience to back startup that turn into Googles and Facebooks.

All these people make mistakes too, Buffet admits he made mistakes, many startups fail. But overall these investors create wealth and the market rewards them and they are allowed to keep doing what they are doing.

Nobody is saying financial markets are perfect, but they work to generate wealth. I as much as anyone am against certain setups that allow certain players to game the system, but that does not detract from the fact that just like any other market, they help to generate wealth.
 
And by the way, about Fama and financial analysis being a waste of time.

He said no such thing. This is a good example where you have had to google something to defend the points you believe to be true and have gotten it wrong because you don't have any background in this, so are forced to make things up as you go along. So you take micro information and assert it to be bigger than it is. Again, ironic that you accuse me of not putting information in context when you have neither.

Fama was talking about technical analysis and this came from his phd in the 70s. Here is an explanation of his conclusion that Technical Analysis is a waste of time. This in no way equates to the financial analysis that goes in in companies and the financial sector for all sorts of decisions.


"A popular technique used to predict stock prices, called technical analysis, is to study past stock price data and search for patterns such as trends and regular cycles. Rules for when to buy and sell stocks are then established on the basis of the patterns that emerge. The efficient market hypothesis suggests that technical analysis is a waste of time. The simplest way to understand why is to use the random-walk result derived from the efficient market hypothesis that holds that past stock price data cannot help predict changes. Therefore, technical analysis, which relies on such data to produce its forecasts, cannot successfully predict changes in stock prices."

Quite a leap from that to financial markets don't create wealth isn't it?

If you don't give up your argument here it doesn't matter because I'm done. You've misrepresented what a noble prize winning economist has said under the guise of you having some background in this topic and you're other leg has now fallen off.
 
I thought you were already done?
From what you've written, I guess you had to Google Fama?
I didn't, since his seminal paper was assigned reading when I was in school.
You should try actually reading what he wrote in detail, rather than relying upon Wiki as your source.
Fama's whole point was that no analysis will allow any investor to beat the market average at any given risk level.
The whole goal of portfolio theory is to construct a basket of investments where returns cannot be increased without increased risk and risk cannot be reduced without reducing return.
This is called an efficient frontier.
You should try Googling it.
You might also Google the terms "systematic" and "unsystematic" risk.
You should also check out the concepts of operating and financial leverage as well as the historical capital structure of major non-financial companies versus those typical today.
I think you'll be amazed at how little long term debt major non-financial enterprises used up until about forty years ago.
Did you do anything productive today?
We went shopping buying some wine and some produce (asparagus sure is cheap at the moment), I got a haricut and I gave the Forester a needed oil change.
I think we'll have eye of round rare along with asparagus and a nice Beaujalais Nouveau (a red my wife likes) for dinner around eight.
How about you?
 
I'm in Vegas trying some of the Michelin restaurants this weekend, thanks for asking.

Beaujolais Noveau? How common! You should see how they sneer at it in the UK.

Yes I do know about Fama. I did my degree in economics at one of the top institutions in the world. I never saw anyone take specific points and extrapolate them like you have though.
 
We've been to the UK and I'm not sure that they have much to sneer about, although it is a very nice place to visit with a depth of history you won't find on this continent.
Anyway, they would of course sneer at anything French, just as the French sneer at them, but then the French sneer at just about everyone.
I did my degree in finance and Fama was a part of what we studied, along with many other noted capital market theorists.
It was so disapointing to me to learn that I couldn't beat the market average over time just by being clever.
Fama has more recently said that the clever small investor probably can beat the market average rate of return.
I always have with my hobby SDIRA.
 
Originally Posted By: fdcg27
We've been to the UK and I'm not sure that they have much to sneer about, although it is a very nice place to visit with a depth of history you won't find on this continent.
Anyway, they would of course sneer at anything French, just as the French sneer at them, but then the French sneer at just about everyone.
I did my degree in finance and Fama was a part of what we studied, along with many other noted capital market theorists.
It was so disapointing to me to learn that I couldn't beat the market average over time just by being clever.
Fama has more recently said that the clever small investor probably can beat the market average rate of return.
I always have with my hobby SDIRA.


I agree in your insights in terms of the French and Brits.

But I still don't know how we went from labor productivity to Fama's findings that the average investor won't beat the market using technical (historical) analysis techniques and how that is in any way connected.
 
Btw in the UK the people sneering at Beaujolais Noveau are those who believe they know a little about wine laughing at all the wine wannabes.
 
Fair enough, but it was you who went from what oil some Brit put in a small diesel Citroen to this.
On another note, since the UK produces nothing that can fairly be called wine, nobody in the UK is in a position to laugh at those of us from regions that can and do.
 
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