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Fine article from a reputable source, but there's a tendency I despise in modern journalism: making it unclear they're talking about a declining growth rate (positive first derivative, negative second derivative: increasing with the convexity down), not a decline (negative first derivative).

But hey, mainstream news sources fail at elementary school math, at least here they're making the effort to fail at high school math.

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This isn't a news article it's primary source information as it's from the New York Federal Reserve discussing data-based correlations in economic factors and outcomes.

"Once electronics were small enough to be used in almost all industries, their effect on productivity vanished."

Which leads the reader to think that removing electronics would keep us at the same level. Poor choice of words.

there's a tendency I despise in modern journalism

This is not journalism, and not written by a journalist. It's from the Federal Reserve.

It's no more journalism than a court decision published on a web site.

I didn't read the article yet but the headline is pretty tactful here on that point: "Slowdown".

eh, I figured it out, but I think even that only works if the writer and reader have shared assumption that the thing in question inevitably grows and so insert "(rate of increase of)"...

"VR slowdown", I'd think less people are buying in, but no-one's throwing their headsets away. "Border crossing slowdown", the number of people crossing the border is actually less than before.

that only works if the writer and reader have shared assumption

It's the Federal Reserve writing for the sort of people who read studies published by the Federal Reserve. That's a pretty specific audience, and one very likely with a large pool of shared assumptions. This wasn't written for HN randos.

I think many hn randos are capable of understanding the piece, but those people will probably not make comments because the thesis here is not exactly non-obvious.

The first sentence of the article makes it very clear they’re speaking of a slowdown in the rate of growth.

No, the article contradicts itself:

> Declining Productivity and Moore’s Law > In the U.S., average labor productivity growth in the 1995-2004 period was 2.85 percent per year. This productivity growth significantly declined in the following decade

Title of section says "declining productivity"; body says "productivity GROWTH declined". Those are two very different things.

The article also states that once electronics “saturate” an industry (i.e., they are adopted everywhere they can be), their affect on productivity is zero. Not true. Their affect on productivity GROWTH may be zero, but take away the electrics, and productive would decline (according to the assumption of the article that electronics improve productivity).

So it seems like the term productivity is jargon for “productivity growth” in this discipline. Still, this seems a bit sloppy and lazy. How hard is it to s/productivity/productivity growth/g?

Another problem with the article seems to be that they are assuming causation and simply using a regression to prove it. There is probably a kernel of truth to the story they are telling, but their argument seems to be begging the question.

Yeah, the article isn't a problem, I'm pretty sure the author is being 100% honest, but the editorialization is.

The title of the the first paragraph is "Declining Productivity and Moore’s Law".

I disagree, productivity by itself doesn't imply growth. For me "slowdown in productivity" unambiguously means a decline. You also don't write "slowdown of the vehicle speed" when you mean a decrease in acceleration.

It still talks about productivity slowdown afterwards, in overall repeatedly, while in fact the productivity increases 1.27% in the worst period analyzed.

Well spotted! Perhaps macro economists are so used to thinking in terms of growth rate that they forgot to specify it.

Like acceleration of population growth peaked in 1968.

Very relevant if you want to predict the future.

Nonsense. The only long term prediction you can make with confidence is that the future will not be like the past.

Well, that used to be untrue — for a long time, the future was a lot like the past on human lifetime scales. But now we have technical and consequently cultural and even environmental changes that make it likely the future will be unlike the past, so now it is true. But maybe someday that will change and future will be like the past again.

What makes you think so? Status quo bias is pretty strong.

It always is! Status quo for Newton’s laws was the strongest it ever was in November 1916.

And Newton's Laws are still great approximations for nearly all circumstances people care about almost all the time.

Eg the Apollo programme was flown completely on Newton's Laws.

Plus entropy

They could teach a lesson to all the clinical researchers and studies that completely eschew derivatives for exclusively qualitative analyses.

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