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Business news summarized a MarketWatch article thusly: "One reason growth is not faster is because technology is helping customers more than companies." As a technocrat, I thought that was the whole idea.
"Two roads diverged," Robert Frost wrote in what is perhaps the most popular poem of all time, "The Road Not Taken." Frost's opening words keep playing in my head every time an economic indicator is released, a global macro forecast is revised, or financial markets take a tumble. In all cases, the bulls and the bears find enough ammunition to support their diametrically opposed views on the U.S. economy.
Rarely have two roads diverged so dramatically for so long. It took six years for mainstream economists to come around to the notion that no, this is not your grandfather's economy; and no, real economic growth isn't going to accelerate to 3% next year, the perennial forecast. Trend economic growth of 3% or 4% is a thing of the past, constrained as it is right now by anemic productivity and labor-force growth.
Even the 2.1% average growth [in] real gross domestic product since the Great Recession ended in June 2009 is a source of controversy. The economic bulls maintain that the price of information technology is being overstated, which means real GDP and productivity growth are being understated. For this group, the low level of both jobless claims and the unemployment rate is telling the true story of a robust economy that isn't being captured by the statisticians.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Sunday May 01 2016, @04:28AM
Well, you can walk away from all that by just reaching over and punching that off switch.
There is far more to technology than that screen you are looking at. Cars, houses, power grids, farms (yeah, farms).
But you are right, the statement is still silly. The cars are welded by robots, the houses cookie cutter cut by cheap labor, power grids employ tiny tiny work forces, and even farms are automated.
Industry gains from technology can't be said to be less than consumers in any meaningful way. The statement is ludicrous.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.