Entrevista com Tyler Cowen

Entrevista de Cowen para a National Review sobre seu novo livro: His most recent work, The Great Stagnation, has quickly become one of the most talked-about books of the year among economics wonks. Its thesis: The U.S. has seen a slowdown in the growth of median wages since the 1970s because we have eaten “all the low-hanging fruit” in technology, education, and resources — innovations that increased the efficiency of industry, facilitated the provision of new skills to capable but previously deprived students, and expanded access to freely available land. But ever since those gains were realized, our productivity, and hence our average income, has slowed its forward march, leaving us on a technological and economic plateau. Our more recent innovations, like the Internet, improve our quality of life but don’t show up in the material measurements of Gross Domestic Product. This makes Cowen pessimistic about our prospects for regaining 1950s-style economic growth in the near term, but he has some ideas for brightening our future, or at least having more fun under gray skies.