"I think we reached a point where we need to cooperation instead of competition if we want to take a step further into a future society." You win the 'smart, yet concise, comment award of the day'.

I am studying to be an Aerospace Engineer, and while I understand his point, I think this serves as a great motivational tool moving forward.

His analysis is too simplified, but he does make a powerful statement. The past century our living standards have grown systematically and might even be saturating today. We can thank previous generations for our comfortable lives. But high living standards are poorly distributed and still tend to come hand in hand with an unsustainable burden. The latter is up to us. Let's make current, and future, innovations truly sustainable and accesible to every soul on this planet !

His textbook Macro-Economics introduced me to economics. He's brilliant

His 'Macroeconomics' is to me the best text book on the subject. Thanks, Gordon.

I find myself agreeing and disagreeing with him. I agree with him that there's been a noticeable slowdown in technological growth in the 1970-2020 time period (with the exception of the dotcom revolution he pointed out). What I disagree with him on, is that we aren't going to have productivity growth ever again which matches the 2% averages we enjoyed prior to 1970. My take on it is that vast improvements in hardware, software, and computational technologies will eventually take us to a point where we will have a record high sustainment of productivity growth. This is because once we have a certain amount of computing power, we can begin to run simulations which will allow us to optimize almost anything that we want. - If we wanted a more aerodynamic car that is cheaper to make for example, a simulation would be able to tell us how to do that perfectly. We could be seeing a situation where everything becomes perfect within the span of 10-20 years which would be the ultimate productivity boom of all productivity booms. This guy isn't thinking big enough and I believe he is overly pessimistic about the future due to the lackluster performance of 1970-2020 growth.

Basically the most sophisticated old man rant I've heard yet. Of course those who are nearing their death can't see what's coming, their lives are too much in the past. Not a problem just a fact. For those of us young enough to see, there are a number of HUGE innovations that we all use and see that have changed a lot, and will continue to change even more as soon as people as old as this guy no longer have influence over large amounts of resources. And when I'm too old it will be the same way.

Our economy is in a huge transition (shifting gears) When you do that, (clutch in and shift), your RPM goes down for a bit until you can re-engage with the drivetrain... There are still tons of ideas and innovations and they are awesome but they have to be implemented at different scales and with different tools that we are familiarizing ourselves with. We are learning cooperating and integration. We are learning to live in a globalized world.

As a 65 year old engineer, I've got a slightly different take on innovation. The 19th century introduction of scientific & engineering principles inevitably would result in a flurry of fundamental inventions, but we are now working on a wide array of refinements & a few fundamentals. The refinements are improving life constantly in many subtle ways that can appear as slower growth if one does not consider their pervasiveness in our more complex world. The widening wealth gap hides this.

Now that more people then ever have access to the knowledge of humanity, its sad to think there wouldn't be tons of innovation. I love being a forward thinking optimist.

That's a great insight into conceptualizing and predicting changes in the standard of living but other factors such as the ease with which firms can produce and insinuate products into the marketplace exist that could increase the velocity of money and further blur class boundaries by increasing their purchasing power.

Ok, thanks! Looking forward to it!! :)

thank you for the link, now it will be more easy to forcibly educate people :D

Good points

Interesting stuff. Although improvement to our quality of life in the future may no longer be directly proportional to economic growth, as it has been in the past. So this needn't be a bad thing.

1950's-2010's will be seen as a golden age by future historians.

I do agree that we are entering the phase of much slower economic growth but I think it largely comes down to enegery. It was first coal and then oil than made the economic growth possible. The economic growth and increase in oil production pretty much went hand-in-hand. Now that oil is more scarce and it takes more money and energy to extract oil and refine it, it also make sense that the economic growth will slow down.

Interesting. Did you watch Erik Brynjolfsson's presentation?

Very educational

1) What do you mean by resources? Raw materials (oil, timber, minerals...) or something else? 2) Under economic growth I understand the increase in assets. But assets are not necessarily used for the satisfaction of needs, in fact they are usually used to acquire more assets, i.e. more growth.

The effective corporate tax rate on profits in the US is 12.1% in 2011. So, while "Corporations are taxed on PROFITS", effective labor is tax rate was 17.4% in 2009.

Perfect time to have this talk. Not because its accurate but because it will appear accurate. We are in a mids of economic recession that most likely will not get better in the most recent future. This recession is not caused by slowing of the innovation but by badly managed economics of countries all over the world (which actually is done on purpose because it benefits certain individuals) Inventions Today dwarf the inventions of the past.

I was the one that said growth must stop in the foreseeable future. You asked what that has to do with current society. I explained. I didn't make a value judgement. I'm arguing that in order to make the future a pleasant place to live we need to stop attempting something that can't work in the current society. I've shown many times why it can't work. That the road we're on is a dead end. Driving a car fast toward a dead end doesn't affect the car until it reaches the end.

This is very interesting.

Was put on to this via Benjamin Wallace-Wells in NYmag and on WNYC. "The Blip"

Commercial supersonic flight isn't a great example of a "failure" of innovation. It's not just the difference between 330 and 350 m/s, it's the difference between being surrounded by a normal particle system and being surrounded by thousands of dangerous shockwaves.

1972 -- and the name was: "The Limits to Growth".

Does stasis also depend on expenditure of energy?

AI, Smarthouses, Virtual Reality, Smart Watches, Google Glass, Google Now (personal assistants), 3D Printing, Personal Health Trackers, Small Business, Web Blogging, Self-Publishing, DIY, Art, Teaching, Connecting...there are lots of areas that are ripe for innovation. The thing is, we need to shift our focus and learn these new things. It's a big undertaking. Also...there are many things which are kind of waiting for an overarching infrastructure to really take off.

We're on the cusp of cost-effective genetic manipulation, hydroponic farming, biological computing, cost-effective solar power, advanced personal robotics, and... commercially viable 3D printing. All markers point to an absolute boom in innovation, new jobs, fields and growth areas. We may be creating a larger class of laborers than ever before what with the state of our education, but at the same time our innovation is now blooming. I'm optimistic.

Can you give an example? This is a very interesting solution. As the platitudes go: "waste not, want not." "less is more." "make do or do without."

Do you see how it says "United States Total Energy" at the top? Do you see how it says "Total U.S. Energy consumption in all forms since 1650" in the caption?

The thing he's saying is, our living standards will not improve the same way they did in the 1900s because there aren't as many revolutionary inventions now compared to that time. That's all, that's the whole point of the talk. I don't even see how people are debating in the chat.

The only difference between a phrase and its abbreviation is the amount of space taken up in both written and spoken mediums. They are grammatically identical (except for an occasional difference in "a/an").

10:10 "My name is Colpants"

Why are you going to award an Oscar to an inventor or scientist? An Oscar is a prize for cinematic film achievements. I want to add, this is the type of thinking we had prior to TED talks, welcome to the future guys. Sorry for all the old and ignorant people who are stuck using 20th century thought

This is absurd... the only reason we're lacking growth is a lack of demand which can be stimulated, as in the past, by government projects.

For instance, different buildings like your own house, workplace, stadium, mall, theater, classroom, museum, art show, etc...would have different parameters and defaults, etc. that would help make the digital world a lot more connective and responsive to the situation. At a baseball stadium, I could easily see what kind of vendors there are and what they are selling and order by mobile device and scan the QR code on the armrest and they can deliver the product.

"a sudden and unprepared for end to growth [...] will lead to collapse." So, if I get in a 2014 Corvette Stingray Z51 with MagneRide option, and accelerate to 60 mph in 3.8 seconds, suddenly stopping all acceleration at 60 mph, the car will "collapse"? Why?

"I've never seen an example of industrialised stasis." Try taxing heat.

It is a Pareto principle. It would be MUCH harder to move to the next level. Probably depends on better understanding of quantum mechanics, fusion, etc

Look at the entry for ATM on the Merriam-Webster website (I'd link to it, but KZfaq doesn't allow that) It is listed as a noun, because the abbreviation has become a word in and of itself.

"ATM" isn't an adjective modifying "machine" because it already contains the word "machine".

"You want to make a ship sail against the winds and currents by lighting a bonfire beneath her deck? I have no time for such nonsense." Napoleon, somebody with no vision. Apparently he is not alone.

"Why not just enjoy ourselves by using up all of these finite resources in this generation?" Well that seems to be the course of action we've embarked upon. I don't think the crunch will come in my lifetime, I'm old, but I think it will come in my daughter's lifetime. That's been the principle employed by every human society ever recorded. I doubt we will be different. However, either way, growth will end. Either in a crunch or in a stable society.

Did you look up ATM? The only part of speech that it's labeled as is "noun." Not "noun, adjective." Just "noun."

yes always.

A good look back, but lacks any vision on a fututre based on curent trajectories: medicine (stem cell research for example), technology (robotics as another example), on-line education, democracy in developing countries, etc. I agree that population is a serious issue. But he missed environmental sustainability as a potential "headwind" altogether. And I am sorry, debt is not a serious problem it is a political ruse used to maintain a higher level of inequality in the developed nations. I would give this talk a B-.

The 1980s brought us "ATM machines"? Fascinating. Where can I find an automated teller machine machine? Do they have them in the Department of Redundancy Department?

You listed examples innovating to "scaling existing technology". Making a light brighter vs inviting the light bulb. Creating a base 16 logic gate to replace binary would be an inventing. That would change how all electronics work at the lowest level solving many heat and scaling problems.

There are also physical limits on running those programs. They require energy to change state and manipulate information. There are physical limits on how much energy is available for that too.

There are a great many examples. Oil is perhaps (in a way sadly) one of the best examples. The easiest sources of oil have largely been exhausted, and the price has indeed as a result risen, but so too has output. The increase price of oil has enable previously non-economical sources of it to become economical, such as deep sea drilling, fracking and tar sands.The solution to using oil is that technological development continues with alternatives, and at a certain point they become cheaper.

Which makes my point. Even with billions of years worth of energy (at current rates) it's all going to be gone in a few hundred years. I think we agree, surely, that growth will stop for far more fundemental reasons that the ephemera pointed out by the speaker. You propose that stasis can work. I've never seen an example of industrialised stasis. Is there some plan you can point to of how we can get to there from here? I can't see it.

Basic research is mostly funded by the government because the combination of horrendous budget requirements and the uncertainty about the profitability of the findings is a too high risk even for the biggest corporations.

First off, the planet is not finite, it has an external energy source and we can grow up and down as much as we have spread out over a single surface. Secondly, you CAN grow infinitely in a finite system (which the Earth is not) if you are producing more while using less resources. It just so happens that doing more with less is exactly what technology is all about, and is also the exact formula for running a profitable business. Things are not as bleak as you might think.

I think it belittles all the great crucial achievements of these times that are taken for granted simply because they work behind the scenes but really there are cogs and gears that move this modern machine onwards that without them we wouldn't have what we have, Innovation happens everyday just because we don't feel it doesn't mean it doesn't impact us.

The US dept of interior defines how the Secretary uses the term "within the foreseeable future" as "the extent to which the Secretary can reasonably rely on predictions about the future". There's no more reliable predictions than the fourth power law for black body radiation. Determining policy for the future in light of that certainly comes under the heading of "within the foreseeable future"

So, you think that to stop the acceleration of a car, say once one has reached 60 mph and wishes to maintain that speed, one must either "apply the brakes" or crash into a fixed object? Have you ever driven a car?

exactly my thoughts. the described drop in growth seems to be more of an illusion to me. there's no need trying to match the results of the 19th and early 20th century inventors, since we already are on the best way to top them. :P

Economic growth is driven by energy. Innovation happens as one of various results.

Yes, I did. It is a good presentation of how government will in the future continue to have more and more resources to waste and thereby still deprive the people of any real growth in their standard of living, just like they have been doing for the last 15 years.

corporations have never paid taxes. Their customers do. The corporations just collect the taxes for the IRS.

There is so much innovation happening right now, trust an Economist to just completely ignore all the amazing technology that is right around the corner. As a student Engineer I see enough innovation everyday, that would clearly blow this mans tiny little mind several times over. Superconductors, nano materials, graphene, 3D printers...... So what if the R and D costs a little more, these are all game changing technologies. This man clearly doesn't watch enough TED.

Economic growth does not require the consumption of additional resources. You can produce more value with the same resources. For instance, an iPhone does not contain more plastic, etc. than a rotary phone from 1970, but produces far greater value.

No the average wage in Australia is 75000 dollars. I was talking about change in tax rates. Tax rate went up by 0.26% So for someone paying 30% it went from 30% to 30.26%. Then went down with tax cuts by about 3%. Say down to 27.26%. Overall tax went down. People earning 18 000 per year had been paying 10%. That was dropped to zero, but increased to 0.26% through heat tax. Despite being better off the electorate *WILL NOT* stand for a heat tax. They're absolutely besides themselves with hate.

The greatest headwind is lack of cheap energy..

An economy doesn't have to grow to enable companies making profits.

Anyone who thinks you can have indefinite growth on a finite planet is either mad or an economist.

I agree. With the collective mind, there is proberly no limit to what we can achieve.

Government has been stifling innovation in the past few decades most but doing so since times like Nikola Tesla. Patents, copyrights, resource monopolies, regulations, handouts, corporatism, militarism, social engineering, complex tax codes, government sector overgrowth, degraded educational system to keep bureaucrats happy, inefficient healthcare system, artificial scarcity, debt based economy, extreme consumerism and massively inflated fiat currency.

So, if I have a delivery service with a fleet of 1-mpg vehicles, and I switch to 2-mpg vehicles while doubling my delivery mileage, thus using the same amount of energy, I haven't grown economically? How so? . "then the price of energy (a scarce resource) would become abitrarily low" ...Relative to people's wealth, if people gradually got wealthier, the price of fuel could gradually become cheaper. How is that absurd? In fact, over the term, that very phenomenon has happened for all commodities.

That's more a reflection of how we credit individuals than anything else. Edison's research lab developed the first marketable light bulb, but Edison himself was not the guy sitting in the lab doing it. Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce are not names you hear every day, but the integrated microchip is just as revolutionary as the incandescent light bulb. Name recognition is not a good measure of progress.

Why not?

Don't forget the 20th century saw the advent of nuclear power, robotics, genetic engineering, vaccines, space travel, personal computers, mobile phones and the internet, all of which have contributed immensely to our quality of life. New ideas are spreading faster than ever. The 21st century has only just started and already there's talk of mining asteroids and colonising mars and virtual reality and self-driven cars.

Resources are finite. Why expect growth to be infinite? Eventually recycling, manufacture and design/concept will all have to plateau or the system will collapse under the weight of its own leftovers. Unless you define growth as alternate ways to reuse what already exists then of course growth will fluctuate wildly between advances.

And you base your opinion on what exactly?

3) We now know that just using glass and masonry we can build homes that heat themselves! People didn't know that then, they spent months chopping firewood!! They used to throw their feces out the window in England, but since we now know it's valuable chemically, for fertilizer and chemicals, we save it and treat it and re-use it.

Maybe we need another great philosophers such as Immanuel Kant, David Hume,.. to answer this question.

english subtitle is 20% wrong!!!!

Because the metaphor (like all metaphors) breaks down when you try to use it for more than superficial understanding. However, the current economic system, if you stop acceleration *does* break down. Completely. There's no industrialised steady state economy. They're either going up or down. Up is out, we can't do that. That leaves down. Unless we invent one and do it soon.

You said "the waste heat would cook us all within 100 years". You then said you believe that because of an article you read that says the temperature would reach 100 C in over 400 years if we grew our power consumption over that period at rates that only non-OECD nations experience now, and will soon virtually stop given the fact that the OECD nations have virtually stopped their power consumption growth, and given the fact that world population is predicted to stop growing soon.

Smarthouses for instance, ideally need a universal kind of set of protocols on top of the Internet and Web that replace/connect the different proprietary standards that are currently in place for multimedia control and various data handling. There is lots of room for innovation across the board. I am of the opinion that we need a universal type of protocol that is centered around basically user experience as well as "venue, building, location, etc."...as well as Social.

You do not make the light brighter, you just use the same technologies for creating the light bulb to create other types of light sources. My point still stands, the complexity for inventing in this era is much larger than before. Research becomes expensive as we dive into new technologies.

Too True!

That is exactly what he is saying, that the economic growth came from innovation. And that if we are to continue our economic growth we have to be as innovative today as we were during our most innovative period in history.

No one ever talks about what's really killing modern society: slothfulness. We've invented such easy lifestyles, it is difficult to teach children to work hard.

"Yes of course there are." It's interesting you would claim that, given that Albert Bartlett says there aren't physical limits to how many computer programs I can write.

"What acreage per person would be sustainable.?" ...For what period of time?

Gordon touched briefly on debt... But if standard of living is what we are striving for, he under-stated the harm that debt (credit) has caused us. Having available dollars lets us spend more than we have at the moment, which creates demand- and causes inflation. Look at college tuition after government guaranteed student loans. A student now can be $200,000 in debt after a 4 year degree, yet has no guarantee of a job, let alone one that can afford to pay back the loan! As we now have 6 and 7 year car loans, autos average $40,000 while salaries average $50,000. This is nuts folks. While innovation is important, we need to eliminate debt and cap credit so that prices remain stable so we can possibly catch up within a generation or two.... And I didn't even throw in government debt, now $21 Trillion.

It'd be a lot of fun watching this guy debate Paul Romer. Romer would rip him to shreds. Just because you're incapable of fathoming the creativity of humankind and the tremendous potential for further technological development doesn't mean it doesn't exist. I know you can't measure *future* innovation with all your data tools, but don't sweat it.

Why are people disliking this? He is giving his view with evidence.

Economic growth is the creation of more resources than are destroyed. Needs satisfiers are resources. Get it? If you're satisfying more needs than you used to, you have grown economically. Period.

Resources are NOT finite. They just get harder to find and therefore more expensive, which in turn motivates people all the more to do more with less, find alternatives, and recycle previously used resources. This can go on indefinitely given that external energy source. And yes, extraterrestrial resources are indeed an option. And invoking entropy death trillions of years from now is a pretty desperate excuse for pessimism.

I never said that I'm a fan of capitalism. Even though capitalism is cruel, it helped us to develop faster than we ever did before in human history but I think we reached a point where we need to cooperation instead of competition if we want to take a step further into a future society. Why ? Because research became too expenive for just one/a few corporations/governments to finance it.

Once you develop your tools further, they unlock technologies and inventions that could not be possible before. e.g. 3D printers, compact thorium reactors, anaerobic digestion, signal over power line. And remember that the washing machine was made of building blocks that weren't new either. Subscribe to a science podcast like ABC science show or even TED. We can't just gauge progress by the technologies that we are familiar with.

taxes are an expense and like all expenses (electric, gas, labor etc.) it's passed on to the customer. The goods and services you buy from a corporation are a little more expensive to cover the cost of taxes.

"we're seeing the first signs now [of heat related problems]" Antarctica still has a big block of ice on it. I asked you before and you dodged the question: "How are you planning on melting the ice that soon?" . Do you understand that melting is a cooling process? You can't cook, when you've still got ice. . "I think growth will stop" What would keep people from using heat pumps and space radiators?

Without economic growth you can't afford expensive research in a capitalistic system.

I would say we need to 'de'-tool government. Much of the problem is because the tools of government are essentially for sale to whomever has an interest to lobby. And given that the benefits of government meddling are always concentrated and the costs always diffuse, the system is built to encourage those who benefit to lobby and those who pay to not do so. No single person loses enough from any given program sufficient to motivate them to lobby against the special interests. So grows Gov.

yes indoor plumbing>iphone, but also food>protection>mating>indoor plumbing>etc. the fact is that there is a human needs hierarchy and before satisfying the lower tears you will not care about the higher ones. that's where the 100% idea misleads people, it's not the end mark, it's an "exp" amount required to level up to the next human need. it's also partially why the new generation is usually considered to be spoiled since older generations are used to lower satisfaction averages