The United States' Slowdown

This article discusses a new highly debated e-book called "The Great Stagnation" by Tyler Cowen. He explains that pre-1974, the United States economy experienced great economic growth and wealth by harvesting "low-hanging fruit" due to the availability of mass amounts of cheap land, growing education levels, and technological revolutions. Since then, however, the United States has experienced a slow-down in just about everything- slower life expectancy increases, slower job creation, etc. He says that all of this is essentially a technological plateau that we are currently stuck on. What this can mean is a change of values to a more postmaterial set of priorities and the improvement of quality of life without material gain necessarily. The author runs through the lives of 2 hypothetical men who grew up during different times in American history and thus have very different value sets. I really liked this article; I think it is a really interesting perspective on economic outputs and what our society is producing that is different from what we have been looking at and measuring it by traditionally.