The "stagnation" argument is probably specifically about productivity growth, which is best documented by Robert Gordon: https://www.nber.org/papers/w18315 htt

The "stagnation" argument is probably specifically about productivity growth, which is best documented by Robert Gordon: https://www.nber.org/papers/w18315 https://www.nber.org/papers/w18315 https://www.nber.org/papers/w24554 https://www.nber.org/papers/w24554 https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691175805/the-rise-and-fall-of-american-growth https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691175805/th... The above are strictly American phenomena, though similar trends exist elsewhere in the world. Gordon also claims that these trends are most visible in the US, since the US is in many ways at the vanguard of technology-driven productivity growth; other economists have well documented that GDP growth is highest among economies playing "catch up" (which is why, in bull markets, developing markets often have far greater growth than developed markets). I don't have them on hand, but there are some interesting papers on the "cost of innovation", some of which have recently been on HN. The estimated ROI (measured by cost-per-patent or cost-per-new-pharmaceutical development, for example) is claimed to be declining. (See https://hbr.org/2019/11/why-the-u-s-innovation-ecosystem-is-slowing-down https://hbr.org/2019/11/why-the-u-s-innovation-ecosystem-is-... for a summary.) To your specific examples: * Life expectancy increased primarily due to widespread vaccination and better public health (e.g. clean drinking water, pasteurization). These are "one time" gains; the efficacy and returns (in terms of QUALYs) on investment in new health technologies have been much lower in the last few decades, which leads one to wonder if the low-hanging fruit have been plucked. * Use of space has had some meaningful productivity gains (like GPS, mass wireless communications, or cheaper areal surveillance), but, again, these seem to be declining returns; it's not clear that we possess the technical means to make interplanetary travel economically viable, so this seems analogous to an observation of Gordon's that I love: that in 1960 you could get between NYC and San Francisco in about 6 hours, and today, you can do so in about 6 hours. Interestingly, I disagree with the authors of this essay in exactly the opposite direction you do: I think the "Great Stagnation" is real, and I think their "innovations" are underwhelming. (So I can wear a screen on my face instead of holding it in my hands? Big deal!) Ray Kurzweil somewhat famously suffers from a severe recency bias when he claims increasing rates of innovation: to him, the change from (say) iron to steel is kind of minor, but the change from analog to digital TV—that's a big deal! I feel these authors make a similar error. In 100 years, I don't think many people are going to care deeply about when we came up with the Oculus.