‘Serious challenge’ for local economy
SYDNEY Writers’Festival guest Daniel Altman (right) is an economist with a difference. Altman, the author of Outrageous Fortunes: The 12 Surprising Trends that will Reshape the Global Economy, has made his mark looking beyond sharemarket trades, currency fluctuations and interest rate rises and falls. He focuses on trends that will shape our world for the next generations.
SYDNEY Writers’Festival guest Daniel Altman (right) is an economist with a difference. Altman, the author of Outrageous Fortunes: The 12 Surprising Trends that will Reshape the Global Economy, has made his mark looking beyond sharemarket trades, currency fluctuations and interest rate rises and falls. He focuses on trends that will shape our world for the next generations.
“Many forecasters make their economic predications without understanding the deep processes that drive trends over the course of decades, not just months or years,” the Harvard-educated writer told The AJN. “But you cannot make good forecasts by simply looking at a string of numbers and then trying to guess what the next number will be.”
The Connecticut-born Altman sees serious challenges in Australia’s economic future.
Altman, a former journalist with The Economist and The New York Times, said prices for goods and services in this country “are bound to go up” because of the huge mining profits.
He said there were two ways out of this: to put all mining windfall earnings into a sovereign wealth fund to avoid inflation, or to use the wealth to expand and diversify the Australian economy. “The first strategy would make quite a few people worse off, at least in the short run. The second strategy would require more labor as well as more investment in capital, so immigration would be a necessity.”
One of Altman’s most controversial predictions is that cultural barriers will slow China’s rapid growth over the next three to four decades.
“When China can no longer rely on waves of workers migrating to cities to keep wages for its exports down, and where there are no more technologies to copy from advanced economies, [China] will have to grow based on its ability to innovate and promote entrepreneurship,” he said. “Right now, China is a lousy place for both of these things.”
NAOMI LEVIN
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