Economic output is determined by productivity per worker-hour and the total number of hours worked. Normally, then, increases in productivity have led to increases in output. But we were, as a society, well above subsistence levels in 1988. In principle, the past twenty years worth of increases in productivity could have resulted in flat output but decreased hours worked. That could be in the form of a lot of unemployment, with the unemployed provided some fairly generous welfare payments or else everyone just having longer vacations or retiring earlier or any combination of such measures.

Obviously, that’s not what happened. But isn’t it something that could happen in the future? Isn’t it even likely to happen, as average wealth levels increase and therefore the marginal utility of additional wealth declines? That’s not to say that people will sit around doing nothing all day, but maybe we’ll see tons and tons of hobby pursuits — people retiring at 50 and putting in five hours a day on their unpaid blog.

And speaking of unpaid blogging, tell Brad DeLong I expect answers to these questions.

I liked BeyondDC’s quip on green architecture: “LEED architecture without good urban design is like cutting down the rainforest using hybrid-powered bulldozers.”

I don’t actually think that’s totally fair since the electricity and heating resource consumption of buildings is a legitimately big deal, but suffice it to say that the current LEED system for rating the sustainability of buildings will be radically incomplete until the Neighborhood Development rating system is done. How buildings relate to each other and to other people in the community is a crucial issue.

Kids — I’m off today for a week-long trip to Helsinki, Finland where I and some other DC-based policy thinkers and writers are going to be guests of the Finnish government to learn about their education system. Finland is a world leader in PISA scores and other measures of educational success, so as the United States tries to reverse the current disturbing trend toward declining educational attainment, it seems that perhaps we have something to learn not only from how Finnish schools function, but from the larger social and economic policy context in which children learn.

In general, I think the United States has a lot to learn from the social models prevailing in northern Europeans countries such as Finland. Finland’s per capita GDP is roughly the same as America’s, but Finland’s gini coefficient is far lower, suggesting that typical Finns enjoy higher material living standards than do Americans. Add to that longer life expectancy, lower crime rates, and lots of modernist design and architecture and it seems like a nice place. On the other hand, they have worse weather. I once spent an extremely long layover in Helsinki Airport where I was surprisingly well treated by Finnair rather than given the usual “we’ve stranded you here and it’s all our fault but we refuse to apologize or take responsibility” schtick one usually gets form airlines, so I’ve long felt a deep appreciation for the Finnish way and I’m very eager to see some non-airport portions of the country (the view from the terminal looked nice).

At any rate, you know the drill — blogging will continue, but on a reduced and somewhat sporadic schedule. Of course you should expect some commentary on Helsinki’s public transportation (metro, tram, and commuter rail — a veritable trainapolooza) system.

Peggy Noonan revives the long-simmering issue of why we’ve given our border security and disaster recovery agency the creepy and un-American name “Department of Homeland Security”:

By the way, [Barack Obama] should both reorder the Department of Homeland Security, that hopeless bureaucracy, and change its name. Homeland is a Nazi-ish word, not an American concept at all. And at this point “Homeland Security” is associated more with pointless harassment than safety. No one knows who came up with it.

Steve Benen observes that there’s no mystery here — it was Joe Lieberman. I say we call it “The Department of Lieberman.”

Meanwhile, I saw Punisher: War Zone last night. Predictably, it’s bad. But beyond that, you can add it to the pile of the large number of films that portrays the Department of Homeland Security as some kind of incredibly badass intelligence or paramilitary outfit. I don’t understand why this keeps happening. We have all kinds of badass agencies — intelligence, special forces, SWAT teams, etc. — but DHS does border security and disaster relief, not the FBI’s counterintelligence and counterterrorism functions.

Congressional Democrats set to offer Detroit a mini-bailout so real decisions can be made in January when Barack Obama’s in office and the GOP congressional majority will have less influence.