12 Quotes by Robert J. Gordon

Since 2000, we have seen a sharp decline in growth in output per person and its two components—growth in productivity and in hours of work per person—after corrections for the ups and downs of the business cycle. Because the basic data are unambiguous in registering a significant and deepening growth slowdown, the book’s title, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, has become a statement of fact.

The combined effects of growing inequality, a faltering education system, demographic headwinds, and the strong likelihood of a fiscal correction imply that the real median disposable income will grow much more slowly in the future than in the past.

See the USA in your Chevrolet, America is asking you to call, Drive your Chevrolet through the USA, America’s the greatest land of all.[Quoting The Dinah Shore Chevy Show theme song, c. 1952, in an epigraph to Chapter 11: See the USA in Your Chevrolet or from a Plane Flying High Above.]

Don’t be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better. – Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1841.

Morris Kleiner has calculated that the percentage of jobs subject to occupational licensing has expanded from 10 percent in 1970 to 30 percent in 2008.

For instance, the degree of enjoyment provided by an hour of leisure spent watching a TV set in 1955 is greater than that provided by an hour listening to the radio in the same living room in 1935.

This paradox is resolved when we recognize that advances since 1970 have tended to be channeled into a narrow sphere of human activity having to do with entertainment, communications, and the collection and processing of information. For the rest of what humans care about – food, clothing, shelter, transportation, health, and working conditions both inside and outside the home – progress slowed down after 1970, both qualitatively and quantitatively. Our.

If the automobile had followed the same development as the computer, a Rolls Royce would today cost $100 and get a million miles per gallon, and explode once a year killing everyone inside. – Robert X. Cringely, InfoWorld magazine.

Hearst was eager to stoke the flames of conflict between Spain and the United States over Cuba and sent Frederick Remington the photographer, who could find no signs of war. In a famous exchange of cables, Hearst responded to Remington, “You provide the pictures; I’ll provide the war.”10.