That’s the question at the centre of this episode of the American Enterprise Institute’s Political Economy podcast. Host James Pethokoukis moderates the discussion between author and economist Tyler Cowen, AEI’s director of economic policy studies Michael Strain, MIT professor Catherine Tucker, and University of Houston professor Dietrich Vollrath.
America and the broader West’s economic growth and technological progress has been worryingly stagnant since the 1970’s. So can this sluggish trend be reversed with the infusion of new innovations? Whether it’s through advances in artificial intelligence, pandemic accelerated health technology, gene editing, blockchain and cryptocurrency, clean technology, or more, there are some reasons for optimism.
But how hopeful should we really be about what’s to come? Is this a genuine opportunity for a stronger global economy led by a surging America, or is the great stagnation here to stay?
As the author of The Great Stagnation, published ten years ago, Tyler Cowen believes that it is almost certainly over in the biomedical sciences, at least, and that we are poised for breakthroughs elsewhere.
“I think the odds are that we are today on the cusp of another revolution based on new general purpose technologies, which I would define as some mix of internet computers and computational power,” Cowen says.
