Hacker News Reader

There is no counterfactual needed. Productivity growth has declined, despite the expectation that software would accelerate productivity. I'm asking you why this didn't happen.

View on HN

Of course a counterfactual is needed, absent clear separation of causes and links to effects, neither of which the productivity metrics on their own establish. This is also widely known and talked about in econ circles in the face of this very data.

There is a counterfactual needed because it is not clear whether the growth would not have declined even more without Software.

Again I'm asking - is there a single credible economist who says that the growth would have been higher without technology?

I'm not even proposing that growth would have been higher without "technology". I said information technology has not increased productivity growth compared to the past. This is an observation of fact.

> Productivity metrics were better when businesses were run on just pen and paper

This is what you said.

Again, that is a simple observation of fact. No counterfactual needed. I said it had confounding factors, and I offered hypotheses

I asked you for alternative hypotheses and you've offered none.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com