Is Competition the Cause of the Productivity Slowdown

Contrary to the robots taking our jobs story, Robert Samuelson gets the basic story right. Productivity growth has fallen through the floor, rather than going through the roof as the robot story would have us believe. Productivity growth has averaged just over 1.0 percent annually since the start of the recession in December of 2007. It has been less than 0.4 percent a year in the last two years. 

Samuelson speculates that this slow growth might be due to the old economy competing with t...