But in the 21st, the opposite fear has arisen: that the future promises not too much economic growth but too little. Since the early 1970s, the annual rate of growth has fallen by more than half, to around 1.4 percent.7 Growth over the long term is determined largely by productivity: the value of goods and services that a country can produce per dollar of investment and person-hour of labor. Productivity in turn depends on technological sophistication: the skills of the country’s workers and the efficiency of its machinery, management, and infrastructure.
