Tyler Cowen opens The Complacent Class with "Disruption has been the buzzword of the decade."
Let's see how much you know about disruption.
What do you know about the US growth rate?
Measured as GDP per a person, the growth rate of the US has slowed since the 70s.
The late 90s saw a jump,
1995-2001 had a growth rate of 2.55%, but overall econmic growth has been much slower.
What do you know about American's tendency to move? What percent of Americans moved out of state for every year since 1950?
Americans have been moving less and less.
Similar figures exist for moving within states (or even within counties).
All this is plausibly due to American job mobility declining as well.
Economists have a measure for the amount of economic growth that derives from new ideas, Total Factor Productivity or TFP.
After adjusting for contributions of capital and labor, TFP gauges how much new ideas have contributed to national output.
How much do you know about TFP over time?
TFP has fallen since pre-1973. This is a rough measure, but it strongly suggests that America was more innovative and dynamic before 1973 than today.
We see a glimmer of hope from the tech industry recently, but this has yet to bring us to previous levels.
If there is so much disruption, why can't we see it?
Majority white schools are schools where more than 90% of the students are white.
How much do you know about how the percent of black students in majority white schools has changed in the south?
Beginning with the Brown Decision in 1954, impressive strides were made in racial equality and integration.
However since the late 80s we have experienced an increase in a kind of educational segregation in the south.
Today the number of black students in majority white schools is lower than the integration level of 1968.
Startups, the young firms you may hear about, are entering the market to innovate and disrupt!
What do you know about the percent of startup firms in the 80s compared to today?
There are obviously successful startups (AirBnB, Lyft, Stripe, Uber), but these successes distract from the trend.
In absolute terms, the number of new firms in the tech sector peaked just after 2000, and in percentage terms, fewer firms are startups today than the 80s.
The buzzword, disruption, may not make for much more than buzz.
According to Cowen, American's have traded dynamism for complacency, a strong predisposition to maintaining the status quo and resisting change. America's economy grows more slowly, we move less, we are more segregated, and we take less risks.
Complacency is a sign of earlier success. With it, comes comfort and safety.
But with comfort and safety, comes fragility. See more
here