I went back to Collison and Neilsen's 2018 article. I read it as you did, expressing a strong concern. I would love to see their rank-ordered lists of all discoveries in each field that achieved Nobel status, but the supplemental material that the Atlantic article linked to has gone to 404-land. Is it available in the academic literature somewhere?
The most interesting part of this article for me was the discussion of population stagnation. Its underappreciated how people are actually the way the world improves rather than a drain on resources. A shrinking society also takes fewer risks and blows all of its money on transfer payments to the elderly.
I appreciate the incredibly hard work of putting all of this together. I think you've at least blunted much of the force of the techno-pessimism forecasts and made a pretty good case that some degree of optimism is warranted. I particularly like the close, with the "optimism of the will" statement. Nothing breeds success like the belief that success is possible.
RE: TFP and education... Vollrath's absolutely right. You can only make 100% of the people literate. You can only get so many people up to a Bachelor, Master, or Ph.D.
An argument that I haven't heard discussed much is that increased specialization means that each individual invention has less impact:
> The reason the textbooks always name Kay, Hargreaves, Crompton, Cartwright and Arkwright, is because they made improvements to what was already one of the most important sectors of the economy: textiles. In the eighteenth century, textiles as a whole accounted for a whopping 16-17% of the British economy. So any growth in the value of wool, linen, and increasingly cotton goods, had an appreciable impact on overall economic growth. Today, by contrast, you’d be hard pressed to find many sectors that account for even 5% of the country’s economy (except construction, and possibly financial services, depending on how broadly you define them). And while Britain may have long lost its role as the workshop of the world, textile production in China today still only accounts for about 7% of the country’s economy. To put it another way, the modern Arkwrights and Cartwrights and Cromptons of China, to have any comparable effect on national statistics, would have to make productivity improvements to their industry that are at least three times as impressive.
I'm a tax attorney, not an economist. Query: IRC § 1014 adjusts the basis of property transmitted upon death. Assume that business assets are transmitted (as is the case if the business is a sole proprietorship or partnership for tax purposes). That means that the heirs receive a new, generally higher, basis for the assets. That, in turn, means that IRC § 1014 rewards the heirs with income tax benefits (increased depreciation/amortization) that tend to incentivize them to hold on to the business rather than dump the assets. Am I right that, seen in this light, the current proposal to repeal IRC § 1014 will benefit the economy by incentivizing the liquidation of "old (presumably less productive) assets" and investment in newer (more productive) assets?
I went back to Collison and Neilsen's 2018 article. I read it as you did, expressing a strong concern. I would love to see their rank-ordered lists of all discoveries in each field that achieved Nobel status, but the supplemental material that the Atlantic article linked to has gone to 404-land. Is it available in the academic literature somewhere?
The most interesting part of this article for me was the discussion of population stagnation. Its underappreciated how people are actually the way the world improves rather than a drain on resources. A shrinking society also takes fewer risks and blows all of its money on transfer payments to the elderly.
I appreciate the incredibly hard work of putting all of this together. I think you've at least blunted much of the force of the techno-pessimism forecasts and made a pretty good case that some degree of optimism is warranted. I particularly like the close, with the "optimism of the will" statement. Nothing breeds success like the belief that success is possible.
If general AI that can do its own R&D is invented, invention starts happening really fast.
RE: TFP and education... Vollrath's absolutely right. You can only make 100% of the people literate. You can only get so many people up to a Bachelor, Master, or Ph.D.
Maglev trains also seam to fit as candidates of technologies of little by little then all of sudden.
An argument that I haven't heard discussed much is that increased specialization means that each individual invention has less impact:
> The reason the textbooks always name Kay, Hargreaves, Crompton, Cartwright and Arkwright, is because they made improvements to what was already one of the most important sectors of the economy: textiles. In the eighteenth century, textiles as a whole accounted for a whopping 16-17% of the British economy. So any growth in the value of wool, linen, and increasingly cotton goods, had an appreciable impact on overall economic growth. Today, by contrast, you’d be hard pressed to find many sectors that account for even 5% of the country’s economy (except construction, and possibly financial services, depending on how broadly you define them). And while Britain may have long lost its role as the workshop of the world, textile production in China today still only accounts for about 7% of the country’s economy. To put it another way, the modern Arkwrights and Cartwrights and Cromptons of China, to have any comparable effect on national statistics, would have to make productivity improvements to their industry that are at least three times as impressive.
From: https://antonhowes.substack.com/p/age-of-invention-the-paradox-of-progress
We’ll have better batteries, but the way we will solve the solar/wind intermittency issue is with cheap fusion.
I'm a tax attorney, not an economist. Query: IRC § 1014 adjusts the basis of property transmitted upon death. Assume that business assets are transmitted (as is the case if the business is a sole proprietorship or partnership for tax purposes). That means that the heirs receive a new, generally higher, basis for the assets. That, in turn, means that IRC § 1014 rewards the heirs with income tax benefits (increased depreciation/amortization) that tend to incentivize them to hold on to the business rather than dump the assets. Am I right that, seen in this light, the current proposal to repeal IRC § 1014 will benefit the economy by incentivizing the liquidation of "old (presumably less productive) assets" and investment in newer (more productive) assets?