I’m glad someone likes the name. Our intuitions seem to differ on this one. For me, “infectiousness” implies self-replication. Cost disease is more like cardiovascular disease.
What makes the term “cost disease” unintuitive to me is that calling cost disease a “disease” implies that it’s a bad thing. But wages increasing due to increase productivity of labor is mostly a good thing. I mean, it’s bad for people who want to hire the labor that didn’t increase in productivity (and people who buy from them, etcetera). But it’s good for basically everyone else, especially the people whose wages increased. It’s only bad for non-working owners of capital in stagnant industries. I feel like the term was coined by an aristocrat.
“Cost disease” is a great name. The relevant aspect is infectiousness, not degeneration.
I’m glad someone likes the name. Our intuitions seem to differ on this one. For me, “infectiousness” implies self-replication. Cost disease is more like cardiovascular disease.
What makes the term “cost disease” unintuitive to me is that calling cost disease a “disease” implies that it’s a bad thing. But wages increasing due to increase productivity of labor is mostly a good thing. I mean, it’s bad for people who want to hire the labor that didn’t increase in productivity (and people who buy from them, etcetera). But it’s good for basically everyone else, especially the people whose wages increased. It’s only bad for non-working owners of capital in stagnant industries. I feel like the term was coined by an aristocrat.