True, productivity growth is very low compared to the past. It seems that the long recession coincided the hyping of certain new tech (self-driving cars, drone

True, productivity growth is very low compared to the past. It seems that the long recession coincided the hyping of certain new tech (self-driving cars, drone delivery) leading some people to wrongly believe that we were on the verge of robots causing mass unemployment. On the other hand, I think we might not have really dealt with the changes from mass automation in the past. If you look at things like "bullshit jobs"[1], or large sectors of the economy that provide negative value to society, it seems like previous automation freed up huge amounts of labor that simply haven't been used to improve society. Since that's already happened, though, it's much harder for people to see it as a problem. [1] https://www.newyorker.com/books/under-review/the-bullshit-job-boom https://www.newyorker.com/books/under-review/the-bullshit-jo...