Saturday, January 25, 2014

Liberté d'expression

Je commets une entorse à mon principe de me cantonner à l'économie pour donner écho à cet excellent article sur le droit d'expression, et en profiter pour "rappeler que la liberté d'expression est le droit de dire ce que l'on veut à la condition que les propos tenus ne constituent pas une infraction pénale."

Apparemment, la citation (faussement?) attribuée à Voltaire, "Je désapprouve ce que vous dites, mais je me battrai jusqu'à la mort pour que vous ayez le droit de le dire", a peu de poids sur les décisions de Valls et consorts.


L'interdiction des spectacles de l'humoriste est une faute

LE MONDE |  • Mis à jour le  |Par 


La tradition antisémite, profondément enracinée dans notre vieux pays, a été accompagnée à maintes reprises par la puissance publique et des dispositions de droit positif à caractère discriminatoire. Dans les périodes les plus dangereuses pour la sécurité des juifs, cette politique, approuvée par une large majorité de l'opinion, n'a rencontré que peu d'opposition de la part des autorités morales et religieuses et n'a été censurée par aucune autorité judiciaire.

Paradoxalement, la condamnation morale, politique et judiciaire de l'antisémitisme intervient à un moment où les juifs français n'ont jamais été aussi peu en danger.

L'antisémitisme de Dieudonné et de ses épigones, s'il puise son contenu aux sources de la tradition française (conspiration judéo-maçonnique agissant dans l'ombre et usant de son pouvoir financier et culturel pour tirer toutes les ficelles), n'a cependant que peu de chose à voir avec son modèle.

Les tirades judéophobes qui font son succès n'ont pas pour but d'exclure les juifs mais de mettre en évidence une différence de traitement à l'égard d'autres minorités. Le fait est qu'en dépit d'un antisémitisme résiduel les juifs français ne font plus l'objet d'aucune discrimination, alors que les personnes d'origine maghrébine ou africaine, et en particulier les plus jeunes d'entre elles, sont en butte à des pratiques sociales et administratives qui leur donnent le sentiment légitime d'être défavorisées.

La violence des réactions institutionnelles à l'encontre des dérapages volontaires et contrôlés de Dieudonné augmentera ce sentiment et affaiblira un peu plus ce que le ministre de l'intérieur, Manuel Valls, suivi en cela par l'ensemble des responsables politiques, appelle pompeusement la cohésion nationale et le pacte républicain.

Comment éviter en effet la comparaison entre la défense unanime de la sacrosainte liberté d'expression au moment de l'affaire des caricatures de Mahomet et l'entorse manifeste à ce même principe dans la dernière affaire Dieudonné ?

L'interdiction d'un spectacle dont la programmation n'avait provoqué aucune manifestation menaçant de déborder les forces de police au seul motif que son auteur était susceptible de proférer des propos attentatoires à la dignité humaine est un fait sans précédent dans la jurisprudence administrative.

Faut-il encore rappeler que la liberté d'expression est le droit de dire ce que l'on veut à la condition que les propos tenus ne constituent pas une infraction pénale.

Or, les propos qui ont entraîné à titre préventif l'interdiction du spectacle de Dieudonné n'ayant été ni jugés ni a fortiori condamnés par un tribunal indépendant ne peuvent être considérés, si odieux qu'ils apparaissent, comme des infractions.

La décision d'interdire, c'est-à-dire de censurer, un spectacle vivant dont le contenu était susceptible d'être modifié au dernier moment sous prétexte de lutter contre une forme d'antisémitisme moins dangereuse que d'autres manifestations de racisme qui laissent l'opinion généralement indifférente, apparaît comme une erreur de droit, une faute politique et une sottise morale.

L'économiste public et le "pacte de responsabilité" annoncé par F. Hollande

Ci-dessous quelques réactions d'économiste public au "pacte de stabilité" proposé par F. Hollande, et qui consiste principalement à "supprimer d'ici à 2017 les cotisations familiales pesant sur les entreprises, soit l'équivalent de 30 milliards d'euros" (F. Hollande d'après Le Monde du 23/01/14) avec des contreparties de la part des entreprises en termes d'emploi et d'investissements qui "devront être claires précises, mesurables et identifiables" (idem).

1. Un résultat de base de l'économie publique est qu'une taxe (ou une cotisation sociale ici) est imposée sur une transaction et que le fait que la taxe soit payée par une partie ou l'autre à la transaction n'a aucun impact économique. Dans le cas étudié, la cotisation augmente l'écart entre le coût du travail pour l'employeur et le salaire net pour l'employé. Le fait que ce soit l'employeur (plutôt que l'employé) qui fasse le chèque vers les pouvoirs publics n'a aucun impact. Et pourtant, les médias insistent lourdement sur le fait que ce sont les entreprises qui supportent cette taxe.

J'ai d'ailleurs la même remarque sur la taxe à 75% sur les salaires de plus d'un million d'euros: la presse a beaucoup insisté sur le fait que cette taxe serait payée par l'employeur et non les travailleurs, mais d'un point de vue économique cela ne fait aucune différence.

2. L'incidence fiscale consiste précisément à étudier les conséquence d'une taxe. Une taxe amène les agents économiques à changer leur comportement. Calculer l'incidence fiscale consiste à comparer l'allocation économique obtenue avec la taxe avec ce qu'elle aurait été sans la taxe. Diminuer une taxe a pour conséquence généralement d'augmenter en partie le prix perçu par l'offreur du bien/service taxé et de diminuer le prix payé par l'acheteur. Dans le cas d'une taxe sur le travail, sa diminution va profiter en partie au demandeur (l'employeur) qui voit le coût du travail baisser, mais aussi à l'offreur (le travailleur) dont le salaire net augmente. Les consommateurs bénéficient également si l'entreprise profite de cette baisse de ses coûts pour baisser ses prix (ce qui est probable en situation de concurrence). Et dans un contexte de chômage, on peut s'attendre à ce qu'une baisse relative du coût du travail induise les entreprises à substituer du travail au capital, c'est-à-dire à embaucher plus.

Calculer l'incidence fiscale d'une taxe est très complexe, en grande partie car cela suppose de calculer un équilibre contre-factuel, non observable (ce qui se passerait si on (ne) supprimait (pas) cette taxe). Cet exercice prend du temps et nécessite une grande expertise. Je n'ai rien vu de tel dans les journaux ni dans les communications du gouvernement, qui ont l'air de supposer que la totalité de l'incidence fiscale bénéficiera aux "entreprises", ce qui est extrêmement peu probable. De la même façon, je ne comprend pas d'où viennent les chiffres de création d'emplois avancés par les organisations patronales.

3. Le gouvernement (quand il dispose d'une majorité parlementaire) peut changer les conditions fiscales d'un trait de plume. Les conséquences économiques de ce changement proviennent en revanche de l'interaction entre les comportements de millions d'acteurs: demandeurs et offreurs de travail et de capital, consommateurs, etc. Les résultats de ces interactions sont difficiles à prévoir (voir point ci-dessus). J'ai beaucoup de mal à comprendre comment "les entreprises" (même via une association représentative) peuvent collectivement "s'engager" à quoi que soit. En conséquence, comment signer un "pacte" quand une des parties ne contrôle pas ce qu'elle est supposée s'engager à accomplir? Comment également mesurer si l'engagement est respecté, car pour cela il faut comparer les emplois crées à ceux qui l'auraient été si la mesure n'avait pas été adoptée?

La rationalité de ce pacte semble plus politique qu'économique: convaincre les électeurs que le "cadeau aux entreprises" que représente cette baisse des cotisations aura des conséquences bénéfiques sur l'emploi et l'investissement. Présenter cela sous la forme d'un pacte est peut-être souhaitable d'un point de vue politique pour faciliter le passage de cette mesure, mais je trouve cette façon de procéder dommageable à plus long terme car elle renforce dans la population des croyances totalement fausses d'un point de vue économique. J'aurais préféré utiliser cette décision de baisser des cotisations comme un moment de pédagogie: qui osera expliquer les bases de l'incidence fiscale aux journaux de 20 heures?

4. Pour avoir un point de vue complet sur l'incidence fiscale, il convient d'étudier également ce que les pouvoirs publics comptent faire suite à la baisse des ressources (para)fiscales que cette suppression de cotisations va engendrer. Si le gouvernement ne fait rien, il accroît le déficit et donc la dette publique, qui devra être financée plus tard, et il importe de savoir quand et comment. Si cette baisse de cotisations est financés par augmentation d'autres taxes, il faut savoir lesquelles. Et si ce sont les dépenses qui seront baissées en compensation, il faut également préciser lesquelles. Tant que les réponses à ces questions ne seront pas données, l'économiste public ne pourra procéder à l'étude de l'incidence fiscale de la suppression des cotisations familiales.

5. La presse rapporte toujours les montants absolus concernés (30 milliards d'euros ici), mais sans (presque) jamais les mettre en perspective. Et comme ces montants sont bien plus élevés, en valeur absolue, que ceux que le commun des mortels a l'habitude de gérer, ils finissent par ne plus rien vouloir dire. 300 millions, 30 milliards, 300 milliards, quelle différence?

Il faut garder des ordres de grandeurs en tête. Le produit intérieur brut de la France en 2013 s'établit à environ 2 000 milliards d'euros. La dette publique représente a peu près le même montant. Donc, 20 milliards d'euros représentent environ 1% de la valeur totale des richesses produites et échangées sur des marchés en France en un an, et 1% de la dette accumulée. Le déficit budgétaire en 2013 est d'environ 72 milliards d'euros, soit environ 4% du PIB.

Plutôt que de lancer des chiffres absolus à la tête de leurs lecteurs/auditeurs/spectateurs, les journalistes feraient bien mieux de les mettre en perspective, en proportion du PIB, du déficit public annuel ou des recettes fiscales du gouvernement.

Friday, January 3, 2014

Quote/Thought of the day

By Neil deGrasse Tyson (from the Hayden planetarium, American Natural History Museum in NYC, our family's favorite museum):

I’m perennially intrigued how people who lead largely evidence-based lives can, in a belief-based part of their mind, be certain that an invisible, divine entity created an entire universe just for us, or that the government is stockpiling space aliens in a secret desert location.

Thursday, January 2, 2014

Two recent working papers by Yours truly

I have recently produced two working papers modeling the influence that richer people can have on the allocation of resources through the political system.

The first one (here) is co-authored with Pierre Pestieau (U Liège) and deals with "Lobbying, family concerns and the lack of political support for estate taxation".

Abstract
We provide an explanation for why estate taxation is surprisingly little used over the world, given the skewness of the estate distribution. Taxing estates implies meddling with intra-family decisions, which may be frown upon by many. At the same time, the concentration of estates means that a low proportion of the population stands to gain a lot by decreasing estate taxation. We provide an analytical model, together with numerical simulations, where agents bequeathing large estates make monetary contributions that are used to play up the salience of the encroachment aspects of estate taxation on family decisions in order to decrease its political support.


The second one (here) is written with John E. Roemer (Yale U) and proposes "An allegory of the political influence of the top 1%".

Abstract
We study how rich shareholders can use their economic power to deregulate firms that they own, thus skewing the income distribution towards themselves. Agents differ in productivity and choose how much labor to supply. High productivity agents also own shares in the productive sector and thus earn capital income. All vote over a linear tax rate on (labor and capital) income whose proceeds are redistributed lump sum. Capital owners also lobby in order to ease the price cap imposed on the private firm. We solve analytically for the Kantian equilibrium of this lobbying game together with the majority voting equilibrium over the tax rate, and we perform simulations. We obtain numerically that, as the capital income distribution becomes more concentrated among the top productivity individuals, their increased lobbying effort generates efficiency as well as equity costs, with lower labor supply and lower average utility levels in society.

Comments most welcome!

Social Democratic America (?)

Lane Kenworthy has just published two interesting documents on "Social Democratic America", with his ideas further summarized in a Foreign Affairs article.

In this one, he tackles the subject of income inequality, explains why it matters (including its impact on fairness, on equality of opportunity, on health,...) and should be reduced, but also why it should not be first priority of the US government. Among other things, he lists all the claims made against income inequality (including claims made by Joseph Stiglitz, that inequality is bad for growth and creates bubbles) and loks at the (lack of) empirical evidence. His approach is definitely not very sophisticated from an econometric viewpoint, but I like the way he sweeps the data/literature and summarizes it (keeping in mind he is no economist but a sociologist...)

In this second document (the first chapter of his recently published book), he takes a larger view and advocates the enlargement of social insurance programs in the US. His description of most public services as social insurance programs is very convincing and reminds me of Paul Krugman's quip that the US federal government is a gigantic insurance company with an army on the side.

I don't agree with all of the very extensive list of new social programs he recommends ("government as employer of last resort" ???), but I am very sympathetic to his argument that the larger economic risks the US population is facing (due to globalization, etc.) should call for a wider and better social safety net. On the political side, his argument is that the increased riskiness of economic life will translate into a demand by the population for more social protection, which will in turn generate the adoption in Congress of more social insurance programs. I am doubtful about the two steps in his arguments, mainly because they don't take (voters and parties) ideology into account, including the fact that very rich individuals have both the incentives and the means to try and influence voters against introducing new social programs (more on this in the next blog).

Anyway, I like his analysis, his long term perspective and a viewpoint stressing, in his words, that "Government Social Programs Have Economic costs, but Also Benefits"!

Bad criticism of economics

So True!

Every mainstream science which touches on political or religious ideology attracts more than its fair share of deniers: the anti-vaccine crowd v mainstream medicine, GMO fearmongers v geneticists, creationists v biologists, global warming deniers v climatologists. Economics is no different, but economics cranks differ in that they typically make false claims about the content of economics itself, as opposed, or as a prelude, to false claims about the way the world works. That target sometimes making it hard for non-economists to differentiate crankery from solid criticism.

Here, then, are some symptoms of bad critiques of economics:
  1. Treats macroeconomic forecasting as the major or only goal of economic analysis.
  2. Frames critique in terms of politics, most commonly the claim that economists are market fundamentalists.
  3. Uses “neoclassical” as if it refers to a political philosophy, set of policy prescriptions, or actual economies. Bonus: spells it “neo-classical” or “Neo-classical.”
  4. Refers to “the” neoclassical model or otherwise suggests all of economic thought is contained in Walras (1874).
  5. Uses “neoclassical economics” and “mainstream economics”interchangeably. Bonus: uses “neoliberal economics” interchangeably with either.
  6. Uses the word “neoliberal” for any reason.
  7. Refers to “corporate masters” or otherwise implies economists areshills for the wealthy or corporations.
  8. Claims economists think people are always rational.
  9. Claims financial crisis disproved mainstream economics.
  10. Explicitly claims that economics is not empirical, or does so implicitly by ignoring empirical economics.
  11. Treats all of economics as if it’s battling schools of macroeconomics.
  12. Misconstrues jargon: “rational.”
  13. Misconstrues jargon: “efficient” (financial sense) or “efficient” (Pareto sense).
  14. Misconstrues jargon: “externality“.
  15. Claims economists only care about money.
  16. Claims economists ignore the environment. Variant: claims economics falters on point that “infinite growth on a finite planet is impossible.”
  17. Goes out of its way to point out that the Economics Nobel is not a real Nobel.
  18. Cites Debunking Economics.

Welcome to 2014 ... from 1964

It is always fun to look back at predictions and discover how wrong they were.

The SF writer Asimov tried his luck 50 years ago in the NYT. As often, there is over-estimation of progress made on hardware (robots, transportation, houses,...) and under-estimation for software (telecommunications, Internet, etc). But the two fields where Asimov gets it (nearly) totally wrong are demography and economics. Contrast his economic predictions with the recent book by Angus Deaton titled "The great escape".

To quote the review by David Leonhardt

By the most meaningful measures — how long we live, how healthy and happy we are, how much we know — life has never been better. Just as important, it is continuing to improve.


Here is to 2014!

Visit to the World's Fair of 2014

By ISAAC ASIMOV
The New York World's Fair of 1964 is dedicated to "Peace Through Understanding." Its glimpses of the world of tomorrow rule out thermonuclear warfare. And why not? If a thermonuclear war takes place, the future will not be worth discussing. So let the missiles slumber eternally on their pads and let us observe what may come in the nonatomized world of the future.

What is to come, through the fair's eyes at least, is wonderful. The direction in which man is traveling is viewed with buoyant hope, nowhere more so than at the General Electric pavilion. There the audience whirls through four scenes, each populated by cheerful, lifelike dummies that move and talk with a facility that, inside of a minute and a half, convinces you they are alive.

The scenes, set in or about 1900, 1920, 1940 and 1960, show the advances of electrical appliances and the changes they are bringing to living. I enjoyed it hugely and only regretted that they had not carried the scenes into the future. What will life be like, say, in 2014 A.D., 50 years from now? What will the World's Fair of 2014 be like?

I don't know, but I can guess.

One thought that occurs to me is that men will continue to withdraw from nature in order to create an environment that will suit them better. By 2014, electroluminescent panels will be in common use. Ceilings and walls will glow softly, and in a variety of colors that will change at the touch of a push button.

Windows need be no more than an archaic touch, and even when present will be polarized to block out the harsh sunlight. The degree of opacity of the glass may even be made to alter automatically in accordance with the intensity of the light falling upon it.

There is an underground house at the fair which is a sign of the future. if its windows are not polarized, they can nevertheless alter the "scenery" by changes in lighting. Suburban houses underground, with easily controlled temperature, free from the vicissitudes of weather, with air cleaned and light controlled, should be fairly common. At the New York World's Fair of 2014, General Motors' "Futurama" may well display vistas of underground cities complete with light- forced vegetable gardens. The surface, G.M. will argue, will be given over to large-scale agriculture, grazing and parklands, with less space wasted on actual human occupancy.

Gadgetry will continue to relieve mankind of tedious jobs. Kitchen units will be devised that will prepare "automeals," heating water and converting it to coffee; toasting bread; frying, poaching or scrambling eggs, grilling bacon, and so on. Breakfasts will be "ordered" the night before to be ready by a specified hour the next morning. Complete lunches and dinners, with the food semiprepared, will be stored in the freezer until ready for processing. I suspect, though, that even in 2014 it will still be advisable to have a small corner in the kitchen unit where the more individual meals can be prepared by hand, especially when company is coming.

Robots will neither be common nor very good in 2014, but they will be in existence. The I.B.M. exhibit at the present fair has no robots but it is dedicated to computers, which are shown in all their amazing complexity, notably in the task of translating Russian into English. If machines are that smart today, what may not be in the works 50 years hence? It will be such computers, much miniaturized, that will serve as the "brains" of robots. In fact, the I.B.M. building at the 2014 World's Fair may have, as one of its prime exhibits, a robot housemaid*large, clumsy, slow- moving but capable of general picking-up, arranging, cleaning and manipulation of various appliances. It will undoubtedly amuse the fairgoers to scatter debris over the floor in order to see the robot lumberingly remove it and classify it into "throw away" and "set aside." (Robots for gardening work will also have made their appearance.)

General Electric at the 2014 World's Fair will be showing 3-D movies of its "Robot of the Future," neat and streamlined, its cleaning appliances built in and performing all tasks briskly. (There will be a three-hour wait in line to see the film, for some things never change.)

The appliances of 2014 will have no electric cords, of course, for they will be powered by long- lived batteries running on radioisotopes. The isotopes will not be expensive for they will be by- products of the fission-power plants which, by 2014, will be supplying well over half the power needs of humanity. But once the isotype batteries are used up they will be disposed of only through authorized agents of the manufacturer.

And experimental fusion-power plant or two will already exist in 2014. (Even today, a small but genuine fusion explosion is demonstrated at frequent intervals in the G.E. exhibit at the 1964 fair.) Large solar-power stations will also be in operation in a number of desert and semi-desert areas -- Arizona, the Negev, Kazakhstan. In the more crowded, but cloudy and smoggy areas, solar power will be less practical. An exhibit at the 2014 fair will show models of power stations in space, collecting sunlight by means of huge parabolic focusing devices and radiating the energy thus collected down to earth.

The world of 50 years hence will have shrunk further. At the 1964 fair, the G.M. exhibit depicts, among other things, "road-building factories" in the tropics and, closer to home, crowded highways along which long buses move on special central lanes. There is every likelihood that highways at least in the more advanced sections of the world*will have passed their peak in 2014; there will be increasing emphasis on transportation that makes the least possible contact with the surface. There will be aircraft, of course, but even ground travel will increasingly take to the air*a foot or two off the ground. Visitors to the 1964 fair can travel there in an "aquafoil," which lifts itself on four stilts and skims over the water with a minimum of friction. This is surely a stop-gap. By 2014 the four stilts will have been replaced by four jets of compressed air so that the vehicle will make no contact with either liquid or solid surfaces.

Jets of compressed air will also lift land vehicles off the highways, which, among other things, will minimize paving problems. Smooth earth or level lawns will do as well as pavements. Bridges will also be of less importance, since cars will be capable of crossing water on their jets, though local ordinances will discourage the practice.

Much effort will be put into the designing of vehicles with "Robot-brains"*vehicles that can be set for particular destinations and that will then proceed there without interference by the slow reflexes of a human driver. I suspect one of the major attractions of the 2014 fair will be rides on small roboticized cars which will maneuver in crowds at the two-foot level, neatly and automatically avoiding each other.

For short-range travel, moving sidewalks (with benches on either side, standing room in the center) will be making their appearance in downtown sections. They will be raised above the traffic. Traffic will continue (on several levels in some places) only because all parking will be off-street and because at least 80 per cent of truck deliveries will be to certain fixed centers at the city's rim. Compressed air tubes will carry goods and materials over local stretches, and the switching devices that will place specific shipments in specific destinations will be one of the city's marvels.

Communications will become sight-sound and you will see as well as hear the person you telephone. The screen can be used not only to see the people you call but also for studying documents and photographs and reading passages from books. Synchronous satellites, hovering in space will make it possible for you to direct-dial any spot on earth, including the weather stations in Antarctica (shown in chill splendor as part of the '64 General Motors exhibit).

For that matter, you will be able to reach someone at the moon colonies, concerning which General Motors puts on a display of impressive vehicles (in model form) with large soft tires*intended to negotiate the uneven terrain that may exist on our natural satellite.

Any number of simultaneous conversations between earth and moon can be handled by modulated laser beams, which are easy to manipulate in space. On earth, however, laser beams will have to be led through plastic pipes, to avoid material and atmospheric interference. Engineers will still be playing with that problem in 2014.

Conversations with the moon will be a trifle uncomfortable, but the way, in that 2.5 seconds must elapse between statement and answer (it takes light that long to make the round trip). Similar conversations with Mars will experience a 3.5-minute delay even when Mars is at its closest. However, by 2014, only unmanned ships will have landed on Mars, though a manned expedition will be in the works and in the 2014 Futurama will show a model of an elaborate Martian colony.
As for television, wall screens will have replaced the ordinary set; but transparent cubes will be making their appearance in which three-dimensional viewing will be possible. In fact, one popular exhibit at the 2014 World's Fair will be such a 3-D TV, built life-size, in which ballet performances will be seen. The cube will slowly revolve for viewing from all angles.

One can go on indefinitely in this happy extrapolation, but all is not rosy.

As I stood in line waiting to get into the General Electric exhibit at the 1964 fair, I found myself staring at Equitable Life's grim sign blinking out the population of the United States, with the number (over 191,000,000) increasing by 1 every 11 seconds. During the interval which I spent inside the G.E. pavilion, the American population had increased by nearly 300 and the world's population by 6,000.

In 2014, there is every likelihood that the world population will be 6,500,000,000 and the population of the United States will be 350,000,000. Boston-to-Washington, the most crowded area of its size on the earth, will have become a single city with a population of over 40,000,000.

Population pressure will force increasing penetration of desert and polar areas. Most surprising and, in some ways, heartening, 2014 will see a good beginning made in the colonization of the continental shelves. Underwater housing will have its attractions to those who like water sports, and will undoubtedly encourage the more efficient exploitation of ocean resources, both food and mineral. General Motors shows, in its 1964 exhibit, the model of an underwater hotel of what might be called mouth-watering luxury. The 2014 World's Fair will have exhibits showing cities in the deep sea with bathyscaphe liners carrying men and supplies across and into the abyss.

Ordinary agriculture will keep up with great difficulty and there will be "farms" turning to the more efficient micro-organisms. Processed yeast and algae products will be available in a variety of flavors. The 2014 fair will feature an Algae Bar at which "mock-turkey" and "pseudosteak" will be served. It won't be bad at all (if you can dig up those premium prices), but there will be considerable psychological resistance to such an innovation.

Although technology will still keep up with population through 2014, it will be only through a supreme effort and with but partial success. Not all the world's population will enjoy the gadgety world of the future to the full. A larger portion than today will be deprived and although they may be better off, materially, than today, they will be further behind when compared with the advanced portions of the world. They will have moved backward, relatively.

Nor can technology continue to match population growth if that remains unchecked. Consider Manhattan of 1964, which has a population density of 80,000 per square mile at night and of over 100,000 per square mile during the working day. If the whole earth, including the Sahara, the Himalayan Mountain peaks, Greenland, Antarctica and every square mile of the ocean bottom, to the deepest abyss, were as packed as Manhattan at noon, surely you would agree that no way to support such a population (let alone make it comfortable) was conceivable. In fact, support would fail long before the World-Manhattan was reached.

Well, the earth's population is now about 3,000,000,000 and is doubling every 40 years. If this rate of doubling goes unchecked, then a World-Manhattan is coming in just 500 years. All earth will be a single choked Manhattan by A.D. 2450 and society will collapse long before that!

There are only two general ways of preventing this: (1) raise the death rate; (2) lower the birth rate. Undoubtedly, the world of AD. 2014 will have agreed on the latter method. Indeed, the increasing use of mechanical devices to replace failing hearts and kidneys, and repair stiffening arteries and breaking nerves will have cut the death rate still further and have lifted the life expectancy in some parts of the world to age 85.

There will, therefore, be a worldwide propaganda drive in favor of birth control by rational and humane methods and, by 2014, it will undoubtedly have taken serious effect. The rate of increase of population will have slackened*but, I suspect, not sufficiently.

One of the more serious exhibits at the 2014 World's Fair, accordingly, will be a series of lectures, movies and documentary material at the World Population Control Center (adults only; special showings for teen-agers).

The situation will have been made the more serious by the advances of automation. The world of A.D. 2014 will have few routine jobs that cannot be done better by some machine than by any human being. Mankind will therefore have become largely a race of machine tenders. Schools will have to be oriented in this direction. Part of the General Electric exhibit today consists of a school of the future in which such present realities as closed-circuit TV and programmed tapes aid the teaching process. It is not only the techniques of teaching that will advance, however, but also the subject matter that will change. All the high-school students will be taught the fundamentals of computer technology will become proficient in binary arithmetic and will be trained to perfection in the use of the computer languages that will have developed out of those like the contemporary "Fortran" (from "formula translation").

Even so, mankind will suffer badly from the disease of boredom, a disease spreading more widely each year and growing in intensity. This will have serious mental, emotional and sociological consequences, and I dare say that psychiatry will be far and away the most important medical specialty in 2014. The lucky few who can be involved in creative work of any sort will be the true elite of mankind, for they alone will do more than serve a machine.


Indeed, the most somber speculation I can make about A.D. 2014 is that in a society of enforced leisure, the most glorious single word in the vocabulary will have become work!