The article is really just a bunch of academics arguing about growth rates. When one of them denies that the Industrial Revolution even happened, he's making a

The article is really just a bunch of academics arguing about growth rates. When one of them denies that the Industrial Revolution even happened, he's making a pretty specific claim about economic growth and worker's wages. He's not talking about technological capability at all. The thing is, the ability to buy an affordable train ticket from London to Brighton doesn't show up on national growth statistics, or even the retail price index. Also if people spend the same amount on clothes, but now they are made with far superior machine woven cloth in a variety of styles and fashions using vibrant dyes, again the economic statistics won't even blink. Whether the US government spent $25bn in 1973 dollars on putting Astronauts on the Moon, or on 2 years of the war in Vietnam, is invisible to the kind of analysis being done by these economists.