I would concur. The global economy never actually recovered from the dotcom crash. Since then it has just been papering over the cracks, inflating property, artificially low interest rates, “quantitative easing” i.e. just printing money that’s not backed by anything in the real economy. The correction when it comes will make the dotcom crash and even the 2008 crisis seem mild.
(Real, meaning subtracting inflation) productivity improvements stopped in 1980, and have been going downhill ever so slightly since. Productivity today is actually a bit lower than, say, 5 years ago. People do less. Now this needs to be measured in real growth to see this effect (although, in the last 6 years or so, even productivity growth without inflation is negative). Attempting an analogy to make it maximally real: essentially, if I have you work for me (as 1 more employee), how many big macs can I sell extra ? The answer, say, was 800, 10 years ago and now it's 700.
Meanwhile, all costs that productivity needs to carry have been steadily increasing, which can be roughly expressed as "per worker, how much needs to be supported ?". For Europe, especially this is very bad (frankly, it is very, very bad for everywhere except the US where it is merely dismal). Essentially, whereas in 1980 every individual working needed to support the life of 1.8 persons, most of them children (who will support others when they grow up), now it's 2.3, most of them elderly (who's main contribution in the future to the economy, as dismal as it sounds, is dying).
This is generally referred to as "secular stagnation". It's a huge problem, because, put simply, the total amount of economic activity we can dedicate to any person is essentially productivity. So you can only get a nicer house if productivity goes up.
In my opinion, it is in fact a much bigger process than the generally agreed upon view above. In 1985 or so the world went from (on very large average) demand-driven to supply-driven. Simply said, in 1975, if a baker produced 5 more pieces of bread, people would buy them, eat them, pay for them, and work a bit harder themselves (maybe making some more windows ... or whatever) to make up for it. In 1995, if a baker produced 5 more pieces of bread, they would rot on this shelves. This is what then causes the productivity stagnation.
Another way to put this is that we are demand-limited. People are producing everything they want (which in economic terms means that they are not willing to work harder for more).
This means that while before 1980 we were arguing "how can we produce more cars ?", "how can we get more people flying/traveling ?", all good questions. Now we're arguing "okay, next year, we'll sell less cars, less people will go on holiday. How do we divide up the profits from that ?". Whatever the outcome, I guarantee not many people will be happy with it.
In other words, the problem is (as stupid as it sounds) that we ... as in humanity as a whole, don't have enough to do. We are embarking on a few grand projects, like urbanizing China, but as a whole they don't seem to make a big difference. We should decide on something ridiculously intensive to do, requiring massive infrastructure build, and go out and do it. Maybe colonize the bottom of the oceans (or the top). Fly to the moon and build a base this time. Capture an asteroid. Or how about automated metros everywhere (or just in many places) ? Whatever. But the alternative is that we're going to have a lot of people sitting on their hands (and being very poor and hopeless and maybe even homeless because of it). That seems like a good thing to avoid.
I must confess that while I wasn't rooting for him, I was hoping that Trump's infrastructure plans would accomplish exactly that, at least for America (and they still might, I suppose), but so far not much has happened.
What are you basing this on? There are currently more cars than ever, more people traveling than ever, more women joined the workforce, huge improvements on communication levels (non-internet, non-mobile communication to mobile phones with 4G).
No improvements since 1980, seriously? I grew up in the 80's and 90's. If I see what we have and what we can do today (such as cheap travel), seriously? I would love to see the face of any person living today and traveling back 30 years to 'improve their lifestyle'... hahaha.
And the 'frankly, it is very, very bad for everywhere except the US where it is merely dismal' gives me a clear indication that you never left your home country, which is pretty clear which one that is.
So yeah, what data are you basing this on?
Judging by the "productivity is lower now than 5 years ago", this person is not looking at data.
Often the first people to decry Economics as "not a science" take the least scientific approach.
We have masses of people dying in poverty, of diseases and causes that a minority of us can ignore. We have water shortages in multiple major cities in the world, we are causing extinction of many species, and we are harvesting all the resources in the planet we can get our hands on with no real attempts to ensure that life can continue .
We have plenty to do