Brad DeLong, with whom I often disagree but who’s invariably worth reading, points out some interesting data in the latest economic report. Bottom line:
Take the 7.6% [productivity] growth rate of the last quarter of 2001, the 8.3% growth rate of the first quarter of 2002, the 1.7% growth rate of the second quarter, and now the third quarter’s 4.0%, and realize that over the past four quarters America’s measured economic productivity has grown by 5.4%. This is an amazing performance for a time over which total hours worked have been falling.
As readers know, I’m no trained economist, but it strikes me that the huge productivity gains of recent times are extremely good news for all of us. There was much in the boom that was dumb, much in the bubble that was ludicrous, but much underneath that may one day be seen as a big leap forward for the American economy.
HITCHENS ON REGRETS: “I think that regret is for those you didn’t sleep with, while remorse is for those with whom you did. There are some past battles where I wish I had done more for the cause, and very few moments over which I feel embarrassment. (I was fifty-two, since you ask, on 11 September 2001.) It was a clarifying day all right, but the thing began for me on 14 February 1989, when Khomeini issued his “fatwah” against Salman Rushdie. I have been denouncing “under-reaction” to Islamic theocratic violence ever since, and it begins to look like steady work.” – more reader and Hitchens to-and-fro on the Book Club Page.
THE GOODS ON LAW: Did he once tell this guy to keep quiet about sexual abuse? At this point, you can’t rule it out. Can anyone tell me why Cardinal Law hasn’t resigned yet?
THE GOODS ON THE FBI: Heather Mac Donald examines how the Clinton administration kept the FBI ham-strung in the run-up to 9/11.
SIMON PANDERS: Yep, it’s not just the Dems that gay-bait, of course. The hopeless Republican candidate in California has been trying to use anti-gay themes in his outreach to Latinos. Isn’t this exactly what’s wrong with the Republican Party? There’s a whole new constituency out there to woo and win, i.e. Hispanics. So why do you have to scapegoat and smear another group to do it? Got nothing else to say?
WELLSTONE ON GAYS: Not what you might have imagined. Wellstone eagerly voted for the “Defense of Marriage Act,” sponsored by the religious right and signed by Bill Clinton. The Judd Brothers have more, including a particularly brutal piece about Wellstone’s alleged attitude toward gays in something called ‘The Progressive Review.” First time I knew of this. I guess none of Wellstone’s radical supporters would bring it up, would they?
The Dish 