Is Growth Over?

A review of Robert Gordon's book The Rise and Fall of American Growth.

http://democracyjournal.org/magazine/43/is-growth-over/

From the site:

But Robert Gordon thinks otherwise. In his magisterial new work, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, the influential economist “distinguishes between the pace of innovation and the impact of innovation.” (emphasis in original.) He argues that the main benefits of the digital age of information and communication technologies (the “third industrial revolution”) had already occurred by 2004. Further, he says, the new gadgets improve our recreation and leisure but impact only in small ways our consumption of food, housing, health, clothing, and transportation. Finally, Gordon doesn’t see major advances in the future of health care, or gains from the use of small robots, 3-D printing, big data, or driverless vehicles. All this adds up to a bleak forecast on growth: Gordon says growth in the United States will average about 1.3 percent per year for the next 25 years, which is considerably less than the 2 percent growth that existed over the twentieth century.