But these differences reflect, again, not unfair economic inequality, but differences in productive output.
Is the increased spending on defense systems that were never completed, or deployed, actually a productive output?
During the War, as productive output was diverted to the front, consumer goods were rationed back home and living standards fell.
Is the expansion of government services really a productive output?
Reynolds digs deep into the underlying data to show that what has been reported as rising inequality involves primarily changing demographics that reflect changing patterns of work and productive output, as well as misunderstood changes in the meaning and composition of the numbers being reported themselves.
Over the last three decades, American factories have become vastly more productive in terms of output per hour of labor.
Whatever the case, the investor intends to create output, to increase productive capacity, and to make money.
Overall, U.S. industry has become among the most productive in the world--output has doubled over the past 25 years, and productivity has grown at a rate twice that of the rest of the economy.
What it would do is shift economic activity from the less productive government sector to the more productive private sector, thereby stimulating aggregate output and growth.
Now, pay is supposed to be linked to output, though becoming more productive is not easy for desk-bound civil servants or workers in factories that have no power, raw materials or markets.
The economic burden of the tax system, which measures the lost economic output from a tax system that penalizes productive behavior.
If so, output will in total have fallen by almost one-third relative to productive potential (as measured by the economy's trend growth rate of 7%).
This naturally shifted employment from the more productive manufacturing sector, where fewer workers are needed to produce a given increase in output, to service industries where more workers are needed.
Disincentives for people to be productive, which have exploded in recent years, not only reduce employment, but reduce output and growth as well.
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What is the cost in terms of the lost output if some of the new spending simply attracts already employed workers from other productive jobs?
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