When quality improves, we have trouble making comparable adjustments. A TV today is until recently was much cheaper than a TV of 60 years ago. The number of people involved in doing what would be described as primitive times is unproductive. We pay that penalty of decreasing the perfection and decreasing the optimization in order to have long-term growth.
Kevin Kelly talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about measuring productivity in the internet age and recent claims that the U.S. economy has entered a prolonged period of stagnation. Then the conversation turns to the potential of robots to change the quality of our daily lives.