The end of economic growth

[UtwigMU]

http://www.ted.com/talks/robert_gordon_the_death_of_innovation_the_end_of_growth#t-722464

The US economy has been expanding wildly for two centuries. Are we witnessing the end of growth? Economist Robert Gordon lays out 4 reasons US growth may be slowing, detailing factors like epidemic debt and growing inequality, which could move the US into a period of stasis we can't innovate our way out of. Be sure to watch the opposing viewpoint from Erik Brynjolfsson.

This talk is about something I've been wondering myself. In 1900 we used horse buggies at 1% of speed of sound. In 1960 we used planes at 90% of speed of sound. But today we're still not supersonic. Has the best growth age passed.

For example: The fastest plane ever, the SR-71 flew 50 years ago. The fastest passenger planes The Concorde and Tu 144 flew in 68/69. If you look at sci-fi films from 1980s predictions for now - they extrapolated growth from 1900 to 1960 (despite two world wars) and came up with predictions for 2000s and 2010s.

(I googled this up, to illustrate my point).

Between 1940 and 1970 energy consumption per capita doubled but hasn't grown as much since then.

I think we're merely maintaining and optimizing our current level of technology and energy. Short of any breakthrough (fusion or other cheap and abundant energy source) economic growth levels will fall from 2-4% to under 1%

[Dr Mordrid]

Noise and damage (broken windows etc.) from sonic booms is what prevented SST's from becoming common, not so much economics though it was a factor wrt fuel consumption. Today's aircraft are much lighter, so that's not such a deal now.

The noise and damage from supersonic jet fighters ticked people off enough that when Concorde was announced this resulted in regulations which banned SST's from overflying populated areas, which is a big market lost wrt flights like NY to/from Florida, LA, Seattle, Texas or SF. Ditto in Europe and Asia.

I remember well fighters from Selfridge AFB overflying our farm at supersonic speeds. Booms broke windows, knocked items off shelves and in general turned my mother into a fire breathing demon.

Your SST analogy also breaks down in light of several point-to-point suborbital (read: hypersonic) transportation vehicles under development, Elon Musk once again talking of an electric SST, and NASA having a major program to reduce or eliminate sonic booms from atmospheric SST's.

This because of major tech advances over the last few years.

[VJ]

But consider tech for the household... Back in 2000, what could you to with a 2 year old computer? Let alone a 4 year old computer. Now, even a 6 year old computer can keep up for normal work. People don't need new gear that often. Most people that want tablets have tablets. Same goes for smartphones. There is a limit to how much stuff people need and more and more people have more stuff...