ࡱ;   R F97CompObj\WordDocument ObjectPoolC7C7./01234567 FMicrosoft Word 6.0 DocumentNB6WWord.Document.6;  (Nowd`drw2P.LP. ZConsider the automobile. The automobile replaces both the horse and buggy and the traction-driven cable car. It greatly expands the area that is "local." With a horse, a shopping expedition to a store six miles away is an all-day expedition. With a car, it takes an hour. Thus the automobile makes the standard suburb-with-shopping-malls "denser"--in the sense that there are more places and types of places you can reach in an hour--than even the densest of pre-industrial cities. It thus allows suburban residents to have the best of both worlds: the relatively large houses and lawns that had been associated with country or luxury living in the pre-industrial past, plus the density of human contacts, the cultural opportunities, and the economic opportunities of a densely-populated city. Today three million people live within half an hour of downtown Boston. A century ago only some 100,000 lived within half an hour of downtown Boston. Thus the automobile has made "living in Boston" an option for thirty times as many people. The Atlantic Monthly of 1901 contains a short anonymous article by a college professor complaining about his low salary--which was about five times the productivity of the average worker in 1901, and gave him the same place in the relative income distribution as a salary of $330,000 a year would today. He could not afford an "appropriate" house within walking distance of campus. They did not have the spare income to keep a horse. So they rode bicycles--not comfortable in New England or the Midwest in winter, fall, or spring. And they spent as large a share of family income on the family bicycles as someone would on, say, a Honda Civic today. The increase in material wealth produced by the fact that we today can not only make bicycles more cheaply and efficiently but also make automobiles is included nowhere in the calculations of an eight-fold increase in material wealth over the past century. ࡱ;  Oh+'0  % 1=E MYv ~SummaryInformation(-2 APwrbk 1400 HD:Microsoft Office:Microsoft Word 6:Templates:NormalConsider the automobile. The automobile replaces both the horse and buggy and the traction-driven cable car. It greatly expands the area that is "local." With a horse, a shopping expedition to a store six miles away is an all-day expedition. With a car, i Brad De Long Brad De Long'@ػ7@v@ػ7@Microsoft Word 6.0.11ܥhO e lllllll  2O       &X+2l2llll llll `Consider the automobile. The automobile replaces both the horse and buggy and the traction-driven cable car. It greatly expands the area that is "local." With a horse, a shopping expedition to a store six miles away is an all-day expedition. With a car, it takes an hour. Thus the automobile makes the standard suburb-with-shopping-malls "denser"--in the sense that there are more places and types of places you can reach in an hour--than even the densest of pre-industrial cities. It thus allows suburban residents to have the best of both worlds: the relatively large houses and lawns that had been associated with country or luxury living in the pre-industrial past, plus the density of human contacts, the cultural opportunities, and the economic opportunities of a densely-populated city. Today three million people live within half an hour of downtown Boston. A century ago only some 100,000 lived within half an hour of downtown Boston. Thus the automobile has made "living in Boston" an option for thirty times as many people. The Atlantic Monthly of 1901 contains a short anonymous article by a college professor complaining about his low salary--which was about five times the productivity of the average worker in 1901, and gave him the same place in the relative income distribution as a salary of $330,000 a year would today. He could not afford an "appropriate" house within walking distance of campus. They did not have the spare income to keep a horse. So they rode bicycles--not comfortable in New England or the Midwest in winter, fall, or spring. And they spent as large a share of family income on the family bicycles as someone would on, say, a Honda Civic today. The increase in material wealth produced by the fact that we today can not only make bicycles more cheaply and efficiently but also make automobiles is included nowhere in the calculations of an eight-fold increase in material wealth over the past century. /2II. Wealth A. Increasing wealth This twentieth century has been above all the century of increasing material wealth. The growth in the wealth of the industrial economies over the twentieth century has been unprecedented compared with all other economie! Vcc   !,!,!,!, !,!,!,!,! K@Normala c"A@"Default Paragraph Font    ` Brad De LongPPwrbk 1400 HD:From old powerbook:Website:TCEH:June 1997 Slouching Folder:snipped@ @OMTimes New RomanTimes Symbol"MArialHelvetica MTimes"1hd"d"!+Consider the automobile. The automobile replaces both the horse and buggy and the traction-driven cable car. It greatly expands the area that is "local." With a horse, a shopping expedition to a store six miles away is an all-day expedition. With a car, i Brad De Long Brad De Longࡱ;