On Feb 2, 2011, at 4:44 PM, David Green wrote:
> Can someone explain to me the relevance of Gordon's study to education,
> employment, or poverty? Can someone explain why I should supposedly believe that
> in a rich country in which productivity still increases steadily, that somehow
> that reflects a problem with what or how much students allegedly learn or know,
> as based on standardized tests? I don't mean these questions at all
> rhetorically. But what I draw from the data is that most Americans don't benefit
> from increased productivity, and that educational achievement literally pretty
> obviously has nothing to do with it
Gordon's point is that productivity won't be increasing very rapidly in the coming decades. If income growth sucks now, it's really going to suck if he's right. He also said that the U.S. was about the only country in the world where younger cohorts are not surpassing the educational attainment of older cohorts. He didn't mention standardized tests, as I recall.
And of course education has something to do with productivity - I don't even see the point of making the argument. How the gains of productivity are distributed is a political question. But productivity does put an upper bound on income growth.
Doug