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Jul. 18th, 2015 09:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
timeletsI'm still baffled by the fact that economists had to come up with a special term "technology" (or technological progress) to explain economic growth in developed countries. For example, in his Nobel Prize lecture Simon Kuznets says that the traditional approach based on evaluating standard inputs (labor and capital) doesn't account for the dramatic rise in productivity in western democracies (except Canada) and Japan.
It seems to me that technology turned out to be the critical component that was fundamentally missing from the Marxist perspective, which dominated advanced economic thought since the beginning of the 20th century. Even the Keynesian take on growth could not explain why the new growth was so dramatic in the absence of major capital inflows measured in money.
upd. "Technology" explains why we make more stuff with less (i.e. the productivity aspect), but it doesn't explain why we consume more and more of that stuff.
It seems to me that technology turned out to be the critical component that was fundamentally missing from the Marxist perspective, which dominated advanced economic thought since the beginning of the 20th century. Even the Keynesian take on growth could not explain why the new growth was so dramatic in the absence of major capital inflows measured in money.
upd. "Technology" explains why we make more stuff with less (i.e. the productivity aspect), but it doesn't explain why we consume more and more of that stuff.
