This summer, many will be carrying Robert Gordon’s massive The Rise and Fall of American Growth to the beach (or perhaps to the lake, here in the Midwest), which argues the pessimistic view.7 For balance, maybe bring along Brynjolfsson and McAfee’s The Second Machine Age, which take a more optimistic view and is a great deal shorter.8 One factor that may contribute to low productivity growth is the notable decline in recent decades in measures of the dynamism of our economy.
Overall, as a result of the fall in output in the second quarter, real GDP is projected to decline by 8.0% this year, before growing by 5.0% in 2021 and 3.2% in 2022.