The Lost Future We Never Had

Where are our flying cars?

J.K. Lund MS

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7 min read

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4 days ago

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According to futurists of the 50s, were supposed to have flying cars, supersonic jets, and work 15 hours a week by now…what happened? While predicting the future is difficult, some experts argue that since the 1970s the pace of progress unexpectedly slowed and shifted. The cause? Growing ambivalence to progress and the rise of the regulatory state. But all is not lost, we can still get the future we deserve.

Growth is Good

We must begin this discussion on the basis that economic growth and technological progress are objectively good. Progress is the reason that people live longer and far fewer children die in early childhood. It’s the reason that peace, rather than war, is now the norm. It’s the reason why more of us have clean running water, lighting at night, heating in the winter, and cooling in the summer.

The average person on planet Earth today is 1550 percent wealthier compared with the average person in the 1800s. Economic growth brings increased human capability, it frees us from the toil of spending our entire waking lives hunting and gathering food. It allows us to live, not merely survive. Technology underpins all progress, including labor productivity, which in turn, drives growth and material progression.

But economic growth and labor productivity rates appear to be stalling out in much of the developed world; a trend that most trace back to the late 1960s. Productivity growth in the US, for example, grew at a fairly steady 2+ percent per year for most of American history. Beginning in the 1970s, however, productivity growth slowed to just around 1 percent per year on average.

To get a sense of what this means, had the productivity growth rate continued at its pre-70s trend, the median American household would be about twice as wealthy as it is today, with a median income of $150k instead of $80k. This is not limited to the US; growth rates are just as bad, if not…