, Columnist
Goodbye, Golden Age of Growth
Dot-com-era growth was an aberration, not the pattern.
The digital revolution didn't change everything.
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Can future innovations match the great inventions of the past? Will artificial intelligence, robots, 3D printing and other offspring of the digital revolution do for economic growth what the second industrial revolution did between 1920 and 1970? The techno-optimist school of economics says yes. I disagree.
The rise in the U.S. standard of living from 1870 to 1970 was a special century -- and won't likely be repeated. Growth over the next quarter century will resemble the slow pace of 2004–2015, not the faster growth rate of 1994–2004, much less the rapid rate achieved between 1920 and 1970.