I love the scare quotes on "output" because that's exactly it - the paper wealth that's escalating is very ephemeral. Until you know exactly how Google is a re

I love the scare quotes on "output" because that's exactly it - the paper wealth that's escalating is very ephemeral. Until you know exactly how Google is a real company, it doesn't much look like one. And my experience is that explaining this can be a challenge. But, say, a textile worker in the 1950s had about as much marginal production as they do now. So the textile work goes to where that's good enough - for now. Eventually, it gets automated. I think what's really decoupling is price and value-as-utility. My Dad, born in the 1930s, had three shirts, two pairs of pants and at most two pairs of shoes until he went in the the military. That wasn't unusual. Now, I can buy a decent shirt for what I make in minutes. I think it was Megan McCardle who noticed that in the "Little House on the Prairie" books, they could not afford a third tin cup for Carrie, the baby. Yet the Ingalls were middle class for their time and place. That time was right before the big productivity boom in farming - from mechanization.