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In the century after the Civil War, an economic revolution improved the American standard of living in ways previously unimaginable. Electric lighting, indoor plumbing, motor vehicles, air travel, and television transformed households and workplaces. But has that era of unprecedented growth come to an end? Weaving together a vivid narrative, historical anecdotes, and economic analysis, The Rise and Fall of American Growth challenges the view that economic growth will continue unabated, and demonstrates that the life-altering scale of innovations between 1870 and 1970 cannot be repeated. Gordon contends that the nation's productivity growth will be further held back by the headwinds of rising inequality, stagnating education, an aging population, and the rising debt of college students and the federal government, and that we must find new solutions. A critical voice in the most pressing debates of our time, The Rise and Fall of American Growth is at once a tribute to a century of radical change and a harbinger of tougher times to come.
- Sales Rank: #11286 in Books
- Brand: imusti
- Published on: 2016-01-12
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.40" h x 2.20" w x 6.30" l, .0 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 784 pages
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- University Press Group Ltd
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Winner of the 2017 Excellence in Financial Journalism Book Award, New York State Society of Certified Public Accountants
Winner of the 2017 PROSE Award in U.S. History, Association of American Publishers
A New York Times Bestseller
One of Bloomberg View’s “Five Books to Change Conservatives’ Minds,” chosen by Cass Sunstein
#36 on Bloomberg’s "50 Most Influential" List
One of Bloomberg’s Best Books of 2016
One of Financial Times (FT.com) Best Economics Books of 2016
One of The Economist’s Economics and Business Books of the Year 2016
One of the Strategy+Business Best Business Books 2016 in Economy
One of Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Books of 2016 in History
One of Bloomberg View’s Great History Books of 2016
One of The New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2016
One of The Wall Street Journal’s “The 20 Books That Defined Our Year” 2016
One of Foreign Affairs’ Editors’ Picks 2016
One of the Washington Post’s Best Economics Books 2016
Shortlisted for the 2016 Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award
One of The NewYorker.com Page-Turner blog’s “The Books We Loved in 2016”
Longlisted for the 2016 Cundill Prize in Historical Literature, McGill University
"The Rise and Fall of American Growth. . . is the Thomas Piketty-esque economic must read of the year."--Rana Foroohar, Time
"This is a book well worth reading--a magisterial combination of deep technological history, vivid portraits of daily life over the past six generations and careful economic analysis. . . . [The Rise and Fall of American Growth] will challenge your views about the future; [and] it will definitely transform how you see the past."--Paul Krugman, New York Times Book Review
"[An] authoritative examination of innovation through the ages."--Neil Irwin, New York Times
"Robert Gordon has written a magnificent book on the economic history of the United States over the last one and a half centuries. . . . The book is without peer in providing a statistical analysis of the uneven pace of growth and technological change, in describing the technologies that led to the remarkable progress during the special century, and in concluding with a provocative hypothesis that the future is unlikely to bring anything approaching the economic gains of the earlier period. . . . If you want to understand our history and the economic dilemmas faced by the nation today, you can spend many a fruitful hour reading Gordon's landmark study."--William D. Nordhaus, New York Review of Books
"Mr. Gordon uses exhaustive historic data to buttress his thesis."--Greg Ip, Wall Street Journal
"[The Rise and Fall of American Growth] is full of wonder for the miraculous things that America has accomplished."--Edward Glaeser, Wall Street Journal
"A masterful study to be read and reread by anyone interested in today's political economy."--Kirkus
"Normally, these kinds of big-think books end with a whimper, as the author totally fails to identify solutions to the problem he is writing about. But Gordon's conclusion offers some admirably definitive policy advice."--Matthew Yglesias, Vox
"Magnificent. . . . Gordon presents his case. . . with great style and panache, supporting his argument with vivid examples as well as econometric data. . . . Even if history changes direction. . . this book will survive as a superb reconstruction of material life in America in the heyday of industrial capitalism."--Economist
"Every presidential candidate should be asked what policies he or she would offer to increase the pace of U.S. productivity growth and to narrow the widening gap between winners and losers in the economy. Bob Gordon's list is a good place to start."--David Wessel, WSJ.com's Think Tank blog
"[W]hat may be the year's most important book on economics has already been published. . . . What Gordon has provided is not a rejection of technology but a sobering reminder of its limits."--Robert Samuelson, Washington Post
"Robert Gordon's The Rise and Fall of American Growth is an extraordinary work of economic scholarship. . . . Moreover, this is one of the rare economics books that is on the one hand deeply analytical . . . And on the other a pleasure to read. . . . [A] landmark work."--Lawrence Summers, Prospect
"Ambitious. . . . The hefty tome, minutely detailed yet dauntingly broad in scope, offers a lively portrayal of the evolution of American living standards since the Civil War."--Eduardo Porter, New York Times
"Two years ago a huge book on economics took the world by storm. Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century . . . became a surprise bestseller. . . . Robert Gordon's tome on American economic growth stretches to 768 pages and its central message is arguably more important."--David Smith, Sunday Times
"A landmark new book."--Gavin Kelly, The Guardian
"Looking ahead, judging presidents by policies rather than outcomes may be all the more important. In a new book, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, the economist Robert Gordon argues that we are in the midst of an era of meager technological change. Yes, we now have smartphones and Twitter, but previous generations introduced electric lighting, indoor plumbing and the internal combustion engine. In Mr. Gordon's view, technological change is just not what it used to be, and we had better get used to slower growth in productivity and incomes."--N. Gregory Mankiw, New York Times
"The Rise and Fall of American Growth is likely to be the most interesting and important economics book of the year. It provides a splendid analytic take on the potency of past economic growth, which transformed the world from the end of the nineteenth century onward. . . . Gordon's book serves as a powerful reminder that the U.S. economy really has gone through a protracted slowdown and that this decline has been caused by the stagnation in technological progress."--Tyler Cowen, Foreign Affairs
"[A]n important new book."--Martin Ford, Huffington Post
"[A] lightning bolt of a new book."--Harold Meyerson, The American Prospect
"So powerful and intriguing are the facts and arguments marshaled by Gordon that even informed critics who think he is wrong recommend that readers plow through his The Rise and Fall of American Growth, with its 60 graphics and 64 tables spread over more than 700 pages. You don't need to be an economist to appreciate or understand the book. His thesis is straightforward."--David Cay Johnston, Al Jazeera America.com
"What is novel about Gordon's approach to this problem is that he doesn't try to find political causes for our economic woes. . . . [E]xhaustive and sweeping in scope, and novel in its thinking about growth."--Chris Matthews, Fortune.com
"[A] fascinating new book."--Jeffrey Sachs, Boston Globe
"One of the most important books of recent years. . . . Powerful and impressive."--Cass R. Sunstein, Bloomberg View
"This is a tremendous, sobering piece of research, which does a lot to explain the febrile, nervous state of modern Western democracies."--Marcus Tanner, The Independent
"A new book by economist Robert Gordon--The Rise and Fall of American Growth--is causing quite a stir."--City A.M.
"If he's right, and one links this with growing income inequality, our would-be leaders will have difficulty in making the case for achieving the American dream through steady incremental progress achieved through collaboration and political compromise."--Michael Hoffmann, Desert Sun
"Robert Gordon's new book on productivity in the U.S. economy, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, is masterful. . . . Gordon skillfully lays out myriad information about the history and trends of productivity. One can learn a great deal."--Edward Lotterman, St. Paul Pioneer Press
"[I]mpressive."--Peter Martin, Sydney Morning Herald
"In his unsettling new book, Gordon, who teaches at Northwestern, weighs in on the role of technology in the U.S. over the past century-and-a-half. He does so forcefully, so forcefully, in fact, as to wipe the smiles off the faces of most techno-optimists, myself included."--Peter A. Coclanis, Charlotte Observer
"[A] thoughtful new book."--David D. Haynes, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
"[The Rise and Fall of American Growth] is this year's equivalent to Thomas Piketty's Capital in the 21st Century: an essential read for all economists, who are unanimously floored by its boldness and scope even if they don't agree with its conclusions."--Adam Davidson, New York Times Magazine
"Gordon makes a compelling case for why the era of fast growth in America ended around 1970 and will not return in the foreseeable future, if ever."--Dick Meyer, DecodeDC
"Gordon argues that we are not going to get another surge soon and that there are several headwinds that are going to work against faster growth, including income inequality, education as a differentiator and not an equalizer, the debt overhang, and demography."--John Mason, TheStreet.com
"[The Rise and Fall of American Growth] challenges every political claim, and every pundit's remedy, regarding how to get the lackluster American economy to boom again in the decades ahead, as it once did a half-century or more ago. . . . [The book] represents the culmination of Gordon's many years of investigation into this key economic question of our age, namely: ‘Why is it that the American economy has never been able to return to the happy boom years of our grandparents' time?' Why is it that, decade after decade, administration after administration, annualized productivity growth has only been about one-half to one-third that of the age of Truman and Eisenhower?"--Paul Kennedy, Tribune Content Agency
"[M]asterful. . . . Gordon skillfully lays out information about the history and trends of productivity. One can learn a great deal. . . . The Rise and Fall of American Growth is a rare example of a work with solid economics that can be understood, and enjoyed, by nearly any lay person."--Ed Lotterman, Idaho Statesman
"As an economic historian, Gordon is beyond reproach."--Edward Luce, Financial Times
"Provocative."--Associated Press
"The Rise and Fall of American Growth, is a deep dive into the past with an eye to the future. . . . [The book] is part of a fascinating debate about future prospects for the American economy."--Knowledge@Wharton
"[The Rise and Fall of American Growth] has set the wonky world of economics aflame."--Ryan Craig, TechCrunch
"Magisterial."--John Kay, Financial Times
"[A] contentious new book."--Margaret Wente, The Globe & Mail
"[A] fabulous new book. . . . [I]mpressive."--Dr. Mike Walden, Morganton News Herald
"Northwestern Bob Gordon's new book, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, offers a deeper explanation for the underlying mechanics behind slowed economic growth."--Jon Hartley, Forbes.com
"So much of what the presidential candidates and the American people want to accomplish over the next four years and beyond depends on the U.S. economy growing faster, and more inclusively, than it has in recent years. This year's hot economics book, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, by one of America's most distinguished macroeconomists, Robert Gordon, casts a pall on whether this is possible, arguing that the U.S. had a golden century of increasing innovation from roughly 1870 to 1970, but this was unique."--Robert Litan, Fortune.com
"Gordon's book offers the definitive account of how the many technological innovations between 1870 and 1940 dramatically improved life in the United States."--Richard A. Epstein, Hoover Institution's Defining Ideas blog
"[M]agiserial. . . . The Northwestern University professor lays out the case that the productivity miracle underlying the American way of life was largely a one-time deal."--Matt Phillips, Quartz
"Robert Gordon's new book The Rise and Fall of American Growth has taken the economics world by storm this winter."--Myles Udland, Business Insider
"[M]assive."--Ben Casselman, FiveThirty Eight
"[G]roundbreaking."--Zeeshan Aleem, Mic
"With a painstaking--and fascinating--historical analysis of American productivity, [Gordon] argues that the innovations of today pale in comparison to earlier in our history and that we might actually be entering a period of prolonged stagnation. He may very well be right."--Greg Satell, Forbes.com
"[P]rovocative."--Barrie McKenna, The Globe & Mail
"[I]nfluential."--Martin Neil Baily, Fortune.com
"[A] stimulating book."--George Will, Washington Post
"Compulsive reading."--Andrew Hilton, Financial World
"Gordon is not an alarmist, far from it. His is a sober voice of concern, of caution, which needs to be heard by those in the helm in America. And a fascinating lesson for ambitious and growing countries like India."--Dr R Balashankar, Sunday Guardian
"[A] fascinating convergence of green and mainstream thought."--Tom Horton, Chesapeake Bay Journal
"[T]his panoramic book makes good reading."--Shane Greenstein, Harvard Magazine
"The book's great contribution is the tapestry it weaves of all the innovations that changed most Americans' lives beyond recognition in the century from 1870 to 1970."--Martin Sandbu, Financial Times
"The Rise and Fall of American Growth is unquestionably an important book that raises fundamental questions about the United States' economy and society."--New Criterion
"[A] masterpiece."--Martin Wolf, Financial Times
"[An] impressive book. . . . Gordon's book provides sufficient ammunition to show the colossal problems facing capitalism."--Socialism Today
"Rich with detailed information, meticulous observations, and even anecdotes and stories . . . a fascinating read."--Ricardo F. Levi, Corriere della Sera
"The Rise and Fall of American Growth is essential reading for anyone interested in economics."--Choice
"In an important new book, economist Robert Gordon makes the case for pessimism. He believes that technologies like smartphones, robots, and artificial intelligence aren't going to have the kind of big impact on the economy that earlier inventions--like the internal combustion engine and electricity--did."--Timothy B. Lee, Vox
"Robert Gordon has written an engaging economic-based history of America. . . . Gordon is to be commended for helping to stimulate a national debate on the current low level of economic productivity."--Allan Hauer, Innovation: The Journal of Technology & Commercialization
"If you want to see how far we have come and how tough life was a century and a half ago, read Gordon's book."--David R. Henderson, Regulation
"A fantastic read."--Bill Gates, GatesNotes
"The book is well written, and one can only be in awe of Gordon's mastery of the factual history of the American standard of living."--Robert A. Margo, EH.net
"Monumental."--John Cassidy, NewYorker.com
"Zeitgeist-defining."--Myles Udland, Business Insider
"[A] magisterial treatise."--Nick Gillespie, Reason.com
"[A]n essential read for anyone interested not only in US economic history but also American economic prospects . . . a tremendous achievement."--Diane Coyle, Enlightened Economist
"A comprehensive history of American economic growth."--Eric Rauchway, American Prospect
"Professor Robert J. Gordon's The Rise and Fall of American Growth is a magisterial volume that will benefit any serious student of economics, demographics or history."--Wendell Cox, New Geography
"A wonderful new book."--Jeff Sachs, Boston Globe
"The most important economics book of 2016."--Steve Chapman, Chicago Tribune
"This spectacular history traces the rise and the plateau of the American economy since industrialization."--Jay Weiser, Weekly Standard
"[A] landmark book. . . . An impressive history of how the American people progressed in their standards of living and productivity in the ‘golden century' of 1870-1970."--Stephen M. Millett, Strategy & Leadership
"Gordon's encyclopedic The Rise and Fall of American Growth, a new history of modern U.S. economic life, [is] perhaps the best yet written."--Jonathan Levy, Dissent
"One of our greatest economic historians. . . . Gordon's exhaustive research program . . . has knocked me back on my intellectual heels."--J. Bradford DeLong, Strategy + Business
"This is the most important book on economics in many years."--Martin Wolf, Financial Times
"Robert Gordon's The Rise and Fall of American Growth set out a thesis of technological diminishing returns that does much to explain an age of economic pessimism."--Lorien Kite, Financial Times
"In the course of Gordon's book, a vivid picture of everyday life as our parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents lived it emerges. . . . What lingers in my mind, alongside these ideas, is a new, weightier sense of the past, and of what the people who lived in it ate, touched, heard, saw, and did. Reading The Rise and Fall of American Growth, I thought a lot about my grandparents. Gordon's book has made their lives more real to me."--Joshua Rothman, NewYorker.com's Page-Turner blog
"Magisterial. . . . While the book has gotten attention because of its bold projection of slow growth in the future, this is actually just one small element of a magnificent and detailed presentation of how our economy has changed since 1870. Most people don't fully appreciate what life was like in the past and Gordon gives a blow-by-blow description of how people lived in America from 1870 on. In addition, he carefully explains how each new innovation was created and how its adoption changed people's lives."--Stephen Rose, Democracy: A Journal of Ideas
"Gordon constructs a strong case using conventional economic principles and exacting data measurement."--Don Pittis, CBC News
"Gordon's genius is to weave together economic history with the story of the technology, know-how, politic, demographics and medicine that made the astonishing progress of the US perhaps the most remarkable ever."--Sean O'Grady, The Independent
"The Rise and Fall of American Growth, by Robert Gordon, is that rarest thing: a work of densely researched macroeconomics that is compulsively readable."--Bill Morris, The Millions
From the Back Cover
"The story of our standard of living is a vital part of American history and is well told in this fascinating book. Gordon provides colorful details and striking statistics about how the way we live has changed, and he asks whether we will live happily ever after. His answer will surprise you and challenge conventional assumptions about the future of economic growth. This book is a landmark--there is nothing else like it." --Robert Solow, Nobel Laureate in Economics
"A towering achievement that will utterly transform the debate on U.S. productivity and growth. Robert Gordon chronicles the stunning swiftness with which American lives have advanced since 1870, and raises profound questions about whether we have benefitted from one-offs that cannot be repeated. Combining eloquent description with forceful and clear economic analysis, Gordon's voice is gripping and compelling. This is economic history at its best."--Kenneth S. Rogoff, coauthor of This Time Is Different
"The Rise and Fall of American Growth is a tour de force with an immensely important bottom line. It is packed, page after page, with insights and facts that every reader will find fascinating and new. A profound book that also happens to be a marvelous read."--George Akerlof, Nobel Laureate in Economics
"Keynes dismissed concerns about economic trends by remarking that in the long run, we are all dead. Gordon turns this upside down by reminding us that we inherited somebody else's long run. If you care about the legacy we will leave future generations, read this richly detailed account of America's amazing century of growth."--Paul Romer, New York University
"Robert Gordon has written the book on wealth--how Americans made it and enjoyed it in the past. If we're going to create more wealth in the future instead of arguing about dividing a shrinking pie, we have to read and understand this book."--Peter Thiel, entrepreneur, investor, and author of Zero to One
"This book is as important as it is unsettling. Gordon makes a compelling case that the golden age of growth is over. Anyone concerned with our economic future needs to carefully consider his argument."--Lawrence Summers, Harvard University
"In The Rise and Fall of American Growth, Gordon looks at the evolution of consumption and the standard of living in the United States from the end of the Civil War to the present day. His work brims with the enthusiasm of discovery and is enriched by personal anecdotes and insights derived over a long and very productive career."--Alexander J. Field, Santa Clara University
"The Rise and Fall of American Growth makes use of economic history to argue that Americans should expect the rate of economic growth to be, on average, slower in the future than it has been in the recent past. Gordon is the most important exponent of the pessimistic view working today and this is an exceptional book."--Louis Cain, Loyola University Chicago
About the Author
Robert J. Gordon is professor in social sciences at Northwestern University. His books include Productivity Growth, Inflation, and Unemployment and Macroeconomics. Gordon was included in the 2016 Bloomberg list of the nation's most influential thinkers.
Most helpful customer reviews
115 of 116 people found the following review helpful.
It's All about Growth
By David Shulman
Northwestern economics professor Robert Gordon has a written a mostly very good and a very long book (762 pages in the print edition) on the history of economic growth in the United States from 1870 to the present. In his view it is all about the rise and fall of total factor productivity (the gains in output not due to increased labor and capital inputs, or if you will technological improvements). I know this sound very boring, but he explains the growth in output in terms of how it affected the daily home and work lives of average Americans. In other words he tells a very good story as to how the typical American moved from a completely disconnected life without indoor plumbing in 1870 to a fully connected life with water, sewerage, electricity, radio and telephones by 1940. The American of 1940 would not recognize the life of an American in 1870 while the American of today would readily recognize the life of a typical 1940 American.
To him much of this improvement is due to what he calls the second industrial revolution which was brought into being by the widespread adoption of electricity and the internal combustion engine. along with indoor plumbing remade the economy. In a way his book is a paean to industrial capitalism whose innovations brought about this revolution. Further, although it is hard to believe today, the introduction of the automobile in the early 1900s was the clean technology of its day. Simply put the major cities of the country were knee deep in horse poop and horse piss that local residents struggled to avoid. They were literally swimming in pollution.
Compare this to the third industrial revolution we are experience today involving information technology, computers and communications. Sure those technologies have improved our lives, but how do they compare to indoor plumbing and electric lights. Gordon demonstrates through a careful analysis of the data that the information revolution peaked from 1996-2004 and has since slowed down. Specifically Moore’s Law which states computer chip capacity doubles every 18-24 months which held from the late 1960s to the early 2000s broke down in the past decade to a pace of doubling every four to six years.
Going forward Gordon is a “techno-pessimist.” He views the 1870-1970 period as a one off event. The recent slowdown in productivity and economic growth certainly supports his view. Whether he is right, or not, only time will tell. Where I would disagree with Gordon is that he labels the rise of income inequality as an impediment to growth. To me that is a stretch because during his golden age of 1870-1940 there were two distinct periods of high and rising income inequality. The first was the gilded age of 1895-1910 and second was the roaring twenties. During those two time periods the standard of living for the average American grew rapidly and it is hard to see in the data that it was an impediment to growth especially when Gordon admits the official data grossly understated overall economic growth.
I know that this review has hardly done justice to Gordon’s magisterial work. I highly recommend it for those interested in how our lives came to be.
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful.
Does Growth Matters When People Cannot Make a Living?
By Knowledge Bee
The author has a wealth of knowledge. Writing a book spanning across almost 150 years of history is no small task. What impressed me most is the author's knowledge on so many different topics. The author has done an excellent job in organizing the materials and makes it easy to read.
Setting aside the reference pages, the book is about 700 pages. If you are unsure whether this is the right book for you, the author did a presentation for LSE which will give you a good indication whether you will like this book or not. You can look it up on google.
You might not agreed with everything in the book. But there is certain truth when it comes to things such as social media. For example, do we consider Facebook a technology company and does it increase productivity? There are a lot of discussion on which technology is a big driver for growth and which one is not. For example, invention such as Penicillin was a small idea that saved millions of lives. But let's not forget the fact that there are other factors such as the two World Wars have shifted power from Europe to the US. And the immigrants from Europe and other countries have been a big part in driving the economic growth of this country.
I also applaud the author for making a bold prediction for the future. Currently, there is so much hype about machine learning and deep learning. And yet, nobody question the usefulness of artificial intelligence. Does it really increase productivity? And at the end of the day, do people care more about productivity or living standard? For a lot of people, if they cannot make a living, why would they care about growth?
If one can read the book with an open mind, you can learn a lot from the book. I certainly benefited from it.
169 of 186 people found the following review helpful.
America's Future Economic Growth Will be Slower and Less Transformational -
By Loyd Eskildson
There was virtually no economic growth for millennia until 1770 (0.06%/year from AD 1 to AD 1820), only slow growth then until 1870 (the kitchen was often the only heated room in the home, and carrying cold water from the outside and warming it was such a nuisance that some bathed only once/month). The world of 1820 was lit by candlelight, folk remedies 'treated' health problems, and travel was no faster than possible by hoof or sail - the railroad, steamship, and telegraph set the stage for more rapid progress after 1879. Then came remarkably rapid growth in the century ending in 1970, and slower growth since then. The economic revolution of 1870 to 1970 was unique, unrepeatable because many of its achievements could happen only once. Housework was increasingly performed by electric appliances, darkness replaced by light, and isolation replaced not just by travel but also by color television images. Most important, a newborn infant could expect to live not to age 45, but to age 72.
The central 'figure' in these improvements is total-factor productivity growth (economic expansion over and above the growth of capital and labor) - beginning at less than 0.5%/year prior to WWI, rising to over 3% during the 1940s, then falling below 1% after 1970.
What makes the period 1870-1970 so unique is that the inventions during that period cannot be repeated. Electricity made it possible to create much more useful light, the electric elevator allowed buildings to extend vertically instead of horizontally, small electric machines replaced huge and heavy steam boilers that transmitted power by leather/rubber belts - allowing buildings to return to horizontal expansion, motor vehicles replacing horses freed society from allocating a quarter of land to support the feeding of horses and needing a sizable labor force for removing their waste, and the Boeing 707 brought travel to near the speed of sound in 1958. Production/storage of food also was revolutionized during this century - the Mason jar made it possible to preserve food at home, the first canned meats were fed to Northern troops during the Civil War, and during the late 19th century an array of processes foods entered American homes. In 1916, Clarence Birdseye brought a method for freezing food, though this had to wait until the 1950s to become practical until the 1950s when electric refrigerators became capable of maintaining a zero temperature in their freezer compartments. In 1870, shoes and men's clothing were purchased from stores, but women's clothing was made at home by mothers and daughters. By the 1920s, most female clothing was purchased from retail outlets that did not exist in 1970 - urban department stores and mail-order catalogs. Public waterworks revolutionized housewives daily routine and protected every family against waterborne diseases. Development of anesthetics in the late 19th century made gruesome amputations a thing of the past, and antiseptic surgery reduced death rates. X-rays, antibiotics, and modern treatments were all invented and implemented in this special century.
Hours released from housework (eg. they no longer had to lug water from outside, often 8 - 10 times/day, with up to 50 gallons alone for a single load of laundry) became available for women to participate in market work. In 1870, more than half of men were engaged in farming, while working-class jobs in the city required 60 hours/week. Over half of teenage boys were engaged in child labor, and male heads of households worked until disabled or dead.
At the 1851 Crystal Palace exhibition in London, Cyrus McCormick displayed a reaper that could do the work of 40 men, and Samuel Colt's revolver used interchangeable parts - a new and distinctive American method of manufacture.
Total factor productivity after 1970 grew at barely one-third the rate achieved between 1920 and 1970. This puzzling decline in economic growth since 1970 is because advances since 1970 have tended to be channeled into activity having to do with entertainment, communications, and the collection and processing of information. Changes have become evolutionary and continuous. While IT and the communication it enables have progressed much faster after 1970 than before, but total spending on all electronic entertainment, communications, and IT amounted to only about 7% of GDP.
Price indexes miss the quality and welfare benefits of new products (eg. TV vs. radio) , and overstate how much consumers pay for various items (eg. eggs in supermarkets vs. Walmart), and miss the contributions of safer working conditions and transportation (auto and airplane). The welfare benefits to consumers were greatest long ago - eg. the transition from the scrub board to automatic washing machine was more important than the shift from manual to electronic washing machine controls.
Both the Great Depression and WWII directly contributed to the 1920-70 Great Leap in productivity. Had there been no Great Depression, there probably would have been no New Deal that promoted unionization and contributed to a sharp rise in real wages and shorter hours - the former promoting substitution from labor to capital and shorter hours by reducing fatigue. WWII and the New Deal also brought the TVA and Hoover Dam. During the high-pressure WWII economy, production miracles (eg. Henry Kaiser's shipyards) taught firms and workers how to operate more efficiently; also the federal government financed new plants and equipment - their acquisition cost in real terms was equal half the stock of privately owned equipment that existed in 1941. (The 'Republican' version contends that competition pushed American entrepreneurs to streamline and innovate - an explanation that fails to address the subsequent decline in the rate of improvements.) The war's aftermath then brought a pouring of money into higher education, and America's largely uncontested domination of international trade --> economies of scale and more jobs.
Although the book is about the U.S., many of the inventions involved were made by foreigners in their own lands or who had recently moved to America. These include transplanted Scotsman Alexander Graham Bell, Frenchmen Louis Pasteur, Louis Lumiere for the motion picture, Englishmen Joseph Lister for antiseptic surgery and David Hughes for early wireless experiments, and Germans Karl Benz for the internal combustion engine and Heinrich Hertz for key inventions making possible the 1896 wireless patents of the recent Italian immigrant Guglielmo Marconi. There were also new immigrants Alexander Carnegie, Nikola Tesla, Louis Chevrolet, Igor Sikorsky, and Enrico Fermi. The role of foreign inventors in the late 19th century was distinctly more important than 100 years later, when the personal computer and Internet revolution was led almost entirely by Americans, including Paul Allen, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, Larry Page, and Mark Zuckerberg - Sergei Brin is one of the few to have been born abroad.
Breakthrough inventions of the 1920-1970 (Ford's assembly line, Toyota's 'Lean Production') era cannot be repeated, and thus the rapid economic growth they made possible won't be repeated either. Labor force growth has also slowed.
Now the population is aging (requiring higher taxes to pay benefits, cover growing dementia) and educational attainment growth/performance vs. other nations flagging. Declining marginal returns presents another problem - if technology has already reduced costs by as much as 95%, further costs cuts are both harder to achieve and less noticeable. Our recent immigrants are predominantly poorly educated. The ratio of net investment to capital stock has been trending down since the 1960s (thanks to offshoring); there has been significant foreign investment - mostly in 'right-to-work' states. Moore's Law is sowing down - from its original 2 years doubling time to 8 years in 2009, now back to 4 years in 2014. Addressing global warming is fighting a bad, not creating goods; further it will limit the temporary benefits of lower oil/gas costs. 3D printing will not impact mass production very much, though it does help create prototypes and create very low-volume replacement parts. Smart-phones and smart-tablets have been prevalent since 2007 - mostly personal use. Growing government debt is another 'headwind.' Offshoring production (imports represented 5.4% of U.S. GDP in 1970, reached 16.5% in 2014) gives other nations an advantage in learning how to make modifications for new products - eg. those making TVs then learned how to do flat-screens, curved screens, touch screens, solar film, etc. However, pursuit of scale economies and foreign markets makes it unlikely that significant manufacturing will return to the U.S.
The author is reluctant to predict the impact of driverless cars and robots, and is pessimistic overall about the future - he's dismissive of the impact of cell phones and the Internet, perhaps overly so. His rationale - increasing inequality.
A major question for the future - will the best brains of the future build things of significant innovation as in the past, or dedicate their time to tasks like making Twitter more user-friendly? ("We wanted flying cars but instead got 140 characters." Peter Thiel, venture capitalist) Most of those with the highest incomes now come from a background of financial engineering, sports/entertainment, and top management. The first two groups obviously add nothing to our capital assets, and the latter group has repeatedly been shown to be compensated with little/no regard to value-added.
Gordon recommends legalizing drugs (War of Drugs costs an estimated $90 billion/year and is ineffective), allowing foreign-born graduates of our colleges to become citizens, increased taxes on the rich.
Bottom-Line: America's best days are behind us. We've wasted a great deal of the sacrifices our forefathers made to make America great, thanks to paranoid fear of Communism and idiotic pursuit of Free Trade - the latter derived from selfish industrialists and lazy economists who have distorted the thinking of Adam Smith and David Ricardo from nearly 250 years ago
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The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living since the Civil War (The Princeton Economic History of the Western World) PDF
