But having said that, important technological changes have been emerging in recent years that are altering, in ways with few precedents, the manner in which we organize production, trade across countries, and deliver value to consumers. To explore the significance of those changes and their relevance to the possibility of a “new economy”, we need to first detail some key features of our system.
The American economy, like all advanced capitalist economies, is continually in the process of what Joseph Schumpeter, a number of decades ago, called “creative destruction”. Capital equipment, production processes, financial and labor market infrastructure, and the whole panoply of private institutions that make up a market economy are always in a state of flux -- in almost all cases evolving into more efficient regimes.