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This is more of a long essay than a book. Cowen's analysis will discomfort both the left and the right. Basically, he argues that because economic growth has stagnated, we can't afford the tax cuts that the right typically calls for and we can't afford the expanded welfare state that the left desires. He argues that growth has stagnated, because the US has picked all the low hanging economic fruit. We've expanded across the continent, we face more international competition, and the rate of technological innovation has slowed down. He is short on specific solutions. Generally he says that we need to rethink how we educate people, we need to value scientists more socially, we need to encourage innovation, and for the time being, we need to lower our expectations.

I didn't read this book until 2015 and still found a great deal of valuable lessons. Tyler Cowen is one of my favorite applied economics writers because of his ability to convey complex concepts in easy-to-understand forms. I have minimal economics training but this book helped me better understand why our (American and the world's) economic situation is the way it is and how to be better prepared for the future. Obviously this book doesn't get into the complexities of many contemporary economic issues (it's less than 100 pages), but it conveyed its big, bold concept (that the economic slowdown of the last decade is an inevitable process) in a clear and persuasive manner. I really liked the metaphor of low-hanging fruit (which is used repeatedly throughout the book), as it helped me conceptualize the rather abstract concept of national/global economics in a tangible, visceral manner.

I would highly recommend reading this, either in kindle or hardcover form.

Good but obvious ideas lengthened to a book. I found myself skimming and the book and putting it down because it was a poor return on time. Essentially half the book can be summarized in a few sentences: we haven’t invented much technology that improves human standard of living in 50 years, the internet being the main exception. Government, healthcare, and education are inefficient and money spent there is a poor measure of total value creates, so don’t trust GDP numbers. The internet creates a bunch of value but it isn’t totally measured in revenue (that is the value of a photo you liked) and doesn’t create a lot of jobs.

I was really hoping for a book that spent less time discussing these simple facts, and more time analyzing our way out of this. The last chapter on this topic felt a bit fluffy.

Cowen makes a number of points in a surprisingly short essay. (Shorter is better, I'm paying for points made, not pages used to make them.)

First is that economic progress depends on (among other factors) technological innovation. So far so good; this is nearly a truism. Cowen goes on to say that technological innovation is lumpy (yes) and that the period 1980-2010 is actually a period of low, rather than high, innovation. That last point got my attention. I agree. However, the argument needs more evidence here -- how do you measure worldwide technological innovation over, say, a decade, and then compare that with other decades? On the surface, one can say: electric light + automobile + telegraph + radio (inventions from 1880 - 1920) beat all the inventions from 1970 - 2010 (Internet, and, well, what else?)

Cowen also says: it's difficult to measure increases in human satisfaction ("welfare" is the economic term but some readers may take that to mean something else, so I'll say "human satisfaction" instead). Government outputs that increase human satisfaction are difficult to measure, so economists fall back to measuring the cost of the inputs instead. That leads to self-justified government programs: a 20-person department must be better than a 10-person department because it costs twice as much.

The Internet, the great invention of the past 30 years, poses a similar problem. The internet has taken out so many costs that it's hard to measure human satisfaction from nearly cost-free goods! For example, I bought a copy of "Up from Slavery" for $0.00 from amazon.com. I enjoyed reading it and it inspired me. But how can an economist measure how much better off I am? The Internet has created a mountain of unquantifiable consumer surplus.

If stagnation comes from low innovation, then how does one increase innovation? Cowen offers one proposal: offer more respect to scientists and engineers. Give less of your adoration to entertainers of various types and more of it to people actually improving the world. By itself, this isn't very actionable. However, Cowen points out that some cultures respect engineers more than other cultures, and he predicts that societies with such cultures are going to do better in the future.