In an earlier post, I had pointed to a new "Goldilocks Economy" which is not too good, not too bad:

...For example, India and China have emerged as significant sources of productive capital that enable good and services to be produced at lower costs. So, as a U.S. consumer, while my bonuses and wage raises have been stalled, low inflation rates are not reducing my real wages and the goods and services that I consume are getting cheaper...

However, most commentators on the post emphasized that the "not so good" part was that the "not so bad" was not being heard. The Wall Street Journal, in a recent article, chose to call the U.S. expansion the "Rodney Dangerfield economy" because ... well, it "gets no respect." The Journal revisited the most derided and ridiculed growth cycle of the American economy, which it insists is one of the most impressive.

Take outsourcing, for example. Forget the 2004 debate on "jobless recovery". The reality is this, says the Journal:

The great American jobs machine has averaged a net increase of nearly 200,000 new jobs a month this year. Some 4.5 million more Americans are working today than in May of 2003, before the Bush investment tax cuts. The employment expansion in financial services, software design, medical technology and many other growth industries dwarfs the smaller job losses in the domestic auto industry.

Even many of the widely publicized lost jobs at Delphi and General Motors are silently offset by the tens of thousands of Americans employed at new domestic plants built by multi-national companies like Honda and Toyota of North America. This job growth has been accompanied from 2001 to 2005 with the best rate of labor productivity over any four-year period since the Labor Department started tracking this statistic. This productivity revolution augurs well for higher wages in 2006.

I agree. And so do most people. Heck, even in Germany, companies across the country are quietly striking ultra-flexible deals with workers over wages and working conditions. When Linde, the German engineering group decided to build a factory in eastern Europe last year to take advantage of that region's lower wage costs, local officials of Germany's IG Metall trade union offered to match the intended 15 per cent or so in cost savings through a combination of longer hours, more shifts and less pay for workers who build fork-lift trucks at Linde's existing German plants. Underscoring that outsourcing is no longer a dirty word. It has significant economic benefits, improves competitiveness of firms, and more important, is a part of the competitive landscape that dictates adaptation and response strategies. Well, it also emphasizes how accommodating German workers are willing to be.