Average Is Over: Powering America Beyond the Age of the Great Stagnation

Average Is Over: Powering America Beyond the Age of the Great Stagnation cover
Good Books rating 4.0

Technical:
  • ID: 86
  • Added: 2025-09-02
  • Updated: 2025-09-02
  • ISBN: 9780698138162
  • Publisher: Penguin
  • Published: 2013-09-12
  • Reviews: 3

Renowned economist and author of Big Business Tyler Cowen brings a groundbreaking analysis of capitalism, the job market, and the growing gap between the one percent and minimum wage workers in this follow-up to the New York Times bestseller The Great Stagnation. The United States continues to mint more millionaires and billionaires than any country ever. Yet, since the great recession, three quarters of the jobs created here pay only marginally more than minimum wage. Why is there growth only at the top and the bottom? Economist and bestselling author Tyler Cowen explains that high earners are taking ever more advantage of machine intelligence and achieving ever-better results. Meanwhile, nearly every business sector relies less and less on manual labor, and that means a steady, secure life somewhere in the middle—average—is over. In Average is Over, Cowen lays out how the new economy works and identifies what workers and entrepreneurs young and old must do to thrive in this radically new economic landscape.

Reviews


Pull quotes
  • "Man + machine teams can usually outperform pure machine teams."
  • "Fully ¾ of 17-24 year old men in the US are unfit for military service."
  • "There will be a 'premium on conscientiousness' and dutifully fulfilling the desires of the wealthy."


Pull quotes
  • "Average is over."
  • "The key questions will be: Are you good at working with intelligent machines or not?"
  • "Lacking the right training means being shut out of opportunities like never before."


Pull quotes
  • This book is far from all good news.
  • America will become a 'hyper-meritocracy,' where many careers become more demanding as employers will be able to measure economic value with 'a sometimes oppressive precision.'
  • Income inequality is justified by meritocracy, and this framework is self-reinforcing.
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