Superluminal Effects

On the rare occassions when I can get an economist to actually admit to the correlation between low fertility and economic growth, they doggedly insist that the growth causes the demographic transition rather than vice versa. Odd that the effect so consistently precedes the cause, however. Clearly, some sort of superluminal propagation of information is required.

Or maybe economists don't want to admit the primacy of an effect that by and large doesn't care whether the nation in question is communist or capitalist, democratic or authoritarian. Those things no doubt matter, especially for the people of the country involved, but they don't seem to be primary or perhaps even very important for economic growth.

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