I immensely enjoyed reading "The Rise & Fall of American Growth” and found it repeatedly thought-provoking. I don’t have any professional or much academic background in economics, but find the book highly readable and entertaining and would certainly recommend the book to anyone who has even a bit of wonkish interest in economics and history (I assume you know who you are).
1. The book’s central message is surprising at first. For years I have heard that “the pace of change in business is accelerating faster and faster" This relentless message was so drummed into my head that I would not have dreamed to question it prior to reading this book. I’d always pictured the office worker of mid-20th century America languidly composing letters to his secretary to type and mail, having a 3-martini lunch and playing golf - in contrast to today’s worker firing off e-mails, writing blog posts and white papers, participating in international conference calls, etc (sometimes all at the same time). Surely we are creating more productivity growth today? Professor Gordon’s book makes a convincing case we are not.
2. The single most thought-provoking element in the book for me was the thought experiment of imagining how much technology completely transformed the day-to-day life of Americans over the period between 1870-1920. I am curious to see this thought experiment carried into more recent periods — especially given that much of disagreement with the book is that most people cannot accept that each passing decade is not necessarily seeing an exponential jump in technological advances in our lives. I found myself analyzing friends and family's day-to-day technology experiences throughout the last century and especially more recently --
a. My grandmother (and great grandmother) described to me a life that went from a frontier “Little House on the Prairie” level of hardship around 1900 to modern comfort by 1930 perfectly capturing the author’s central theme.
b. My parents experienced a largely unchanging day-to-day routine from roughly the late 1950s all the way into the early 2000s — not much beyond television turning to color and cooking with a microwave. But suddenly around 2000 they embraced internet shopping, the Kindle, DVR & streaming, etc.
c. My own day-to-day life was transformed between 1995-2005 from totally being centered around my office desk and world of paper and phone tag, to a peripatetic existence focused on my laptop and e-mail (and mobile phone to less extent). In contrast, technologies' day to day effect on my life since 2005 has been very incremental.
d. My nephew’s life hadn’t particularly liked using a computer, but then his life totally and completely changed around the year 2010 — centering around work from TaskRabbit., texts and social media — he reaches for his phone as he wakes up and hardly puts it down.
I imagine for the average person this thought experiment is more interesting than productivity growth statistics..
3. Experience of air travel — As a young boy my father took me to the Boeing 747 plant to gawk at one of first of this new line of aircraft. At that time only a bit more than 60 years had passed since the Wright Brothers had first taken flight and my relatives patted my head and repeatedly exclaimed how “when I get older planes will be so much bigger and faster and more comfortable". I thought about this as I was crammed into coach on a delayed 11-hour flight to Tokyo. Almost 50 years have passed since this childhood memory and planes have not improved in the manner I was led to expect. Even the Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner — no question a marvel of engineering with its millions of miles of wiring and carbon-fiber construction — was a relatively disappointing improvement in terms of passenger’s flying experience from the perspective of my historic timeline. The book brilliantly puts my experience into context.
4. Autonomous vehicles — I have to disagree with the author's dismissal of the potential disruption of driverless vehicles. Yes, it is not nearly the transformation of moving from horses to cars, but potential household savings ($6,500/household), environmental impact, potential change in city planning and the way people live their day-to-day lives would at least start to rival some of the early 20th century technological advances. Couldn’t one expect a virtuous/vicious economic cycle similar to the one that the book describes between 19010 and 1930 when reduced automobile price and spiraling costs for transit and other transport options that led to vehicle registration exploding?
5. Author correct SO FAR on productivity growth — I just read that annualized US Total Factor Productivity Growth has been well under 2% over the past 3 years — roughly the time since the book was published. Even 2% was considered a very pessimistic projection. So for the moment at least Professor Gordon is completely correct and his critics quite wrong about the productivity effect of artificial intelligence and other IT advances.
Whether or not you agree with The Rise and Fall of American Growth's predictions about the future impact of technology on productivity and quality of life, the historical context the book provides is extremely valuable.
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Emanuele
HA le caratteristiche per diventare un grande saggio
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