Quotes from Robert J. Gordon

Since 2000, we have seen a sharp decline in growth in output per person and its two components—growth in productivity and in hours of work per person—after corrections for the ups and downs of the business cycle. Because the basic data are unambiguous in registering a significant and deepening growth slowdown, the book's title, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, has become a statement of fact.

Between 1940 and 1970, output per person and output per hour continued to increase rapidly, in part as a result of three of the most important subsidiary spinoffs of IR #2—air conditioning, the interstate highway system, and commercial air transport—while the world of personal entertainment was forever altered by television.

The inexorable rise of inequality can be countered at the top by higher taxes on the highest earners who have captured so much more of the income pie than was true forty years ago. At the bottom, an increase in the minimum wage and an expansion of the earned-income tax credit can divert more of the economic pie to those in the bottom half.

The most important unmeasured benefit of all, the extension of life expectancy, occurred much more rapidly from 1890 to 1950 than afterward.

The consequences of dependence on the horse in 1870 involved negative externalities unrecognized by GDP, including manure and urine distributed on the streets and the cost of the unlucky laborers assigned to clean up the tons of horse waste, not to mention the diversion of a substantial part of agricultural production to feed the ubiquitous horses, in 1870 numbering 8.6 million, or roughly one horse for every five people.

There are four headwinds that are just hitting the American economy in the face: They're demographics, education, debt and inequality. They're powerful enough to cut growth in half.