10-31-2016, 08:12 PM
Warren Dew Wrote:Use of BLS statistics for productivity isn't invalid if they're the best available.
They aren’t invalid. Turchin’s use of the was invalid. By definition, productivity is total output divided by hours worked.
So for all workers, average productivity per worker = GDP / total number employed. Turchin has demand = GDP / productivity. This gives demand = GDP / GDP * total employed or just total employed. That is demand for workers is equal to the number of workers that have been hired. After all, if there was no demand for a worker, he/she wouldn’t have been hired in the first place. It’s tautological.
What Turchin did was go to the BLS site and download their productivity series and assumed it applied to all workers. It doesn’t. It assigns ALL the GDP to a fraction of the work force. So when Turchin calculated demand all he did was obtain the fraction of the workforce upon which the BLS used for their productivity calculations. It’s an artifact.
Quote:However, I'm surprised if BLS statistics go back far enough to differentiate between an 80 year cycle and Turchin's longer cycle. Do they?
No, he used a fixed growth rate from a different source so it was a smooth exponential curve between 1927 and 1947.
Quote:Also, do they include slaves? Do Turchin's immigration statistics include slaves? Do his height statistics?
Immigration does not include slaves. Some height data comes from military records (this is why it is often male height that is cited). There is some slave data too, since slaves sometimes have heights recorded during sales.
Quote:I'd be very surprised if overall average height didn't correspond to nutritional well being.
It does, also to general health.
Quote:It would be interesting to see how well IQ corresponds to sex adjusted height, but I'm pretty sure IQ tests haven't been around long enough to differentiate the cycle lengths.
IQ tends to rise with time, a phenomenon known as the Flynn effect. I suspect this is due to cultural accumulation.