A very good video discussing the different interpretations of U.S. economic growth and innovation by Tyler Cowen, author of "The Great Stagnation," and Erik Brynjolfsson of MIT.
Watch the full episode. See more PBS NewsHour.
The arguments are very important, though I do believe the two have similar opinions with regards to one thing: education.
Brynjolfsson argues that we are not able to keep up with the rapid innovations in technology. In other words, rapid innovation is making obsolete too many current technologies, which increases job churn and, because newly emerging technologies do not necessarily coincide well with existing technologies, makes for slow and costly retraining of workers.
In the past, it wasn't too costly to take a laborer off the farm and train him for an assembly line job working some primitive, mostly manual, machine. As innovation in the manufacturing sector progressed, newer automated machines replaced the primitive machines, but the innovation still wasn't terribly difficult for retraining workers for employment on the new machinery. Computer programming and networking require totally different skill sets however, and our schools are failing to put out workers who can readily train for this kind of technology. Higher paying jobs today require more math and science, subjects for which today's high school students are woefully inadequately prepared for work in the new tech sectors.
Cowen's argument, too, is that our schools are failing to adequately educate the next generation of workers by failing to educate them in the most important fields of math and science. (Math and science education are invariably the weakest links in secondary schools today given the opportunity costs of people with math and science degrees and the failure of schools to pay differential wages.) Making this worse, at least in the U.S. (I'm guessing Tyler argues this is happening across most of the Western world), is that our culture glorifies fame rather than accomplishment, which means kids dream of becoming the next Albert Pujols or Lady Gaga and not the next great scientist or mathematician. (I can hear the groans already.) Consequently, kids today fail to prepare themselves for jobs of the future. (Read his outstanding book, What Price Fame?)
UPDATE: I should make it clearer that it's not just high schools inadequately preparing students in math and sciences, too few who do go on to college end up majoring in the hard sciences, math, and engineering.
As I noted before, and as Bryan Caplan argues much better, we are not capturing the true value to consumers of new technologies. If I could buy a robot for $100 (or even $10,000) that would take care of most all of my wants (grow my food and cook my meals, grow cotton and make my clothes, assemble my car, build my home, etc.), are we as a society really made worse off given that this consumer surplus is not easily accounted for?
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