Tuesday, 16 June 2015

More Westerosean Economics

Washington Post's WonkBlog draws some lessons from Westeros.

Their summary list:

  1. People aren't good at stocking up for the future.
  2. The economy still doesn't employ women to their full potential.
  3. America could be the Iron Bank, but does it want to?
  4. The Fed is the realm's quiet protector.
It's worth reading the whole post, not least of which because it quotes Ryan Decker quoting me.

I remain puzzled about the lack of savings for winter in Westeros. Sure, your food stores might make you more attractive to raiders, but I still can't see why there weren't better advances in food preservation technology - which also helps your own armies come winter.

WonkBlog concludes:
It's not winter per se that I think the U.S should worry about, but the White Walkers. In other words, regular business cycle recessions are not our greatest threat, but looming and ignored long-term threats. In our case, I think coming demographic challenges are our white walkers. The political parties battle over who sits in the Iron Throne, but the dangers of a quickly aging population and high dependency ratio march towards us.

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