the evidence is that individual workers are more productive than ever, and this trend has continued since long before the 1970s. this is despite any measured decline in reading comprehension
the older generations are obviously not propping up the world economy through their singular reading skills
I often find that people simply don’t read anymore beyond a sentence or two, which makes it impossible to communicate complex ideas. If it can’t be expressed as a bullet point, it may as well not exist.
The vast majority of our production comes from more and more highly automated tools. The concentration of skills to build those things can skew the results in the short term and lead to new and interesting problems long term.
That fewer and fewer people operate. Hence the people are more productive. Additionally, instead of everyone being unemployed, we just raise the standard of living and demand more stuff that employs just about everyone.