The starting point of this article is misleading. It would be more accurate to say that most Western nations saw historic and extraordinary productivity gains f

The starting point of this article is misleading. It would be more accurate to say that most Western nations saw historic and extraordinary productivity gains for much of the early 20th Century, building up to the astonishing economic activity of the post war boom, 1945-1973, what the French call "les Trente Glorieuses." Since that time, every Western nation has suffered the Great Stagnation, but the Great Stagnation has been punctuated with several short revivals. France saw productivity boom in the early 1980s, but that boom died out. The USA saw productivity return to the boom levels from 1995 to 2005, but then die out. This article starts its analysis with 2005, but lacks the broader historical context that might offer deeper explanations for the malaise that it is about.