Creating too much data. What do you mean by that . Ert we are committing creating too much data in the context of big data, and artificial intelligence. Most of that is being used for marketing. Most of the big data that is actually being used by corporations is to steal market share away from each other. That is not producing productivity are social benefits, it is just carving up a very zero some pipe. Brian when did you get the idea for this book . Robert the original idea of rapid even nine growth in the middle the 20th century, Slower Growth before and after, came about when i was graduating many when new work on the history of the American Economy came up with some startling numbers. , theis that the output total production of goods and services in the u. S. Economy doubled between the 1920s in the 1950s. And yet, the amount of capital that was used to produce goods and services did not increase at all. That violated all that the Economic Growth rules that said that output and capital should rise together. I immediately started wondering, what was going on . In fact, i did my phd thesis in my 20s on, could we be measuring the capital wrong . Daily get something wrong in the data . I found partial evidence that we had. But, that was the beginning of the idea. That there was just Something Special about u. S. Economic growth, and the book explains that to the notion that there is a special century between 18701970 when we achieved growth through inventions that were so broadbased and cross the scope of human activity that we could never do it again, and we have never done a before. Brian what do you think is the most important invention back in those many days ago . Robert the great thing about this special century is you cannot play that game. You cannot single out one invention. We had electricity. Elevators,ossible for a dense, new york kind of city. Portable machine tools. It may possible, floorstanding electric tools. It may possible, airconditioning. And then we have the internal Combustion Engine. Justwas a possible, not for automobiles, trucks, buses, but also, indirectly, may possible airtran. And the complete elimination of time as a barrier that it used to be back in 1870. You cannot just stop with electricity and the internal Combustion Engine. We have the end of isolation with a telephone, radio, motion pictures, television, the complete change in the daily routine of housewives. The no longer had to carry pails of water into the house. They were able to turn the tap on Running Water. Almost nothing among the single inventions is more important in its daily usefulness than Running Water. And together with that, at the same time, we developed Waste Disposal, so you no longer had to carry the dirty water out of the house. And then, think about health. Babies, 22 of newborn died within the first year of birth. 22 950, that was down from to 1 . Choose a single invention. I have electricity, internal Combustion Engine, running take itealth, altogether, it is more than just the effect of the computer. On modern society that we have enjoyed for the last 25 or 30 years. Brian your family, your parents were involved in economics in some way . Robert both my parents got phds in economics from harvard in the 1930s. My father was very lucky. And the very depressed job market of the 1930s, that he was asked to Teach Summer School at berkeley. At the university of california in the summer of 1937. He did well enough so that he was asked back. He spent his entire career as a professor in the Economics Department at the university of california at berkeley, which certainly, for a substantial time during that interval, was one of the top five economic departments in the country. They had something in those days that was reflective of antitheme of dissemination. They were called nepotism laws. There is a rule that only one member of a family could be in each department. That meant that my mother, who had an equally good harvard phd could never be a professor in the Economics Department. That my father was. So, she played the dutiful role of the second in the family, and she had a number of positions and Research Organizations around the fringes of the university, but was never in the center of the university, as a fulltime tenured faculty member as he was. Brian what about your brother . Robert funny thing you mention my brother. Our family became someone a tory becausese notorious of the connection with cambridge, massachusetts. As i mentioned, my parents both had phd from harvard, so did my brother who is younger. I was the black sheep of the family. I went down the river, and got my phd in economics from m. I. T. But, the whole idea of all four of us getting our phds in economics, in cambridge, massachusetts, was sufficiently alluring to business week that they ran a story in 1973 called. Is the difference between the way you think about economics and say your brother . Robert my brother was a selfavowed radical marxist. My brother would make Bernie Sanders look tame. Indeed, in the early 1970s, when my brother was in his late 20s, he did a book of readings in which he had introductions to the different parts of the readings. Capitalistbig business vision. Then the liberal vision. Then the true vision. And it was almost like marxist cuba. In fact, he held that cuba as a paragon of how societies should develop. I think he tempered his ideas later, he came to see the failures of the soviet union and Eastern European communism as an economic system. But, or member, i was washing dishes with him, and my parents 1990, shortly after the fall of communism, and he sort of looked at me and cynically asked, well, i guess you are pretty happy about this fall of communism. As if he was not. Brian why and how are your views different than his . Robert he was a victim of the vietnam war. Body, but rather in spirit. He was just enough younger than i was that while i was free from the vietnam draft, and could go to graduate School Without any kind of compromises, he had to change his career ambitions in order to stay out of the vietnam draft, he did not want to be a Conscientious Objector and flee to canada. So, those were tough times for people in their early 20s. He became a radical protester against the u. S. Government involvement in vietnam, very early on in 1964 and 1965. In retrospect, i was quiet and passive and did not have much to say about it. I admire him in retrospect. For being able to express his views. As a result, they colored his views of how economy should behave. He became very much antibig business. Anticapitalism. How much, focused on society can help those in poverty needing help. Brian how did your views differ as they did, with your parents . Robert my views were very similar to my parents. My parents were what i used to call a kneejerk, new deal liberal. Supporters of roosevelt, supporters of truman, i remember at age seven and 1947, when the tafthartley act was passed by the Republican Congress that made it possible for states to become right to work states. Denying unions the full ability to organize. I remember how much my father was incensed by that. And this is the beginning of the retreat from the new deal. Supportive,ch liberal, progressive, what we now call progressive policies. Theink, as i expressed in postscript to the book, there are a number of policies that we should adopt that raise taxes on the very lucky people who are in the top 1 , of the income distribution, and i think we should have higher taxes on those who are making more than 1 million and more than 10 nine dollars per year. We should have a radical tax form that most tax credits and deductions that gives advantages to incentivize people, for instance, to have larger houses than they need through the mortgage interest of action. Fairly i have a middleleftwing view of economic policy. Oniffer with senator sanders several issues, while not overly supporting secretary clinton. In particular, i think it is simply too late for the United States to adopt a singlepayer medical care system. Of medicaredecades incentives to make our home medical system more expensive. We pay 18 of gdp on a medical care system. And for all of that, we get life expectancies that is about at the bottom of the top developed countries. And so, i think it is just simple he too late. There is no way that you could destroy the entire private Health Insurance industry, no way that you could take over bloated Health Providers and hospitals and practices around the country and suddenly impose on them the kind of roles that in canada and the u. K. , key medical care cost so much more moderate. Brian you say in the early part of your book that you had 15 Research Students to help you put this book together. Robert stretched over a good 10 years. Brian thats what it wanted to ask you. Go back to the beginning of all of this, and what were your researching and you have strong views, did you make up your mind ahead of time, how the outcome of this book would be, or did you learn as you went on . Robert the book starts out in 1870, the first half covers 18701940. That is divided up into food, the basic necessities. A chapter on food and clothing. A chapter on housing. And the invention of electricity. And the end of the isolation of the house. Dwellingyour standard was completely isolated from the rest of the world. Later, ionly 70 years must every house in urban america was connected five different ways with electricity, water,lephone, running and Waste Disposal. So, all of those things needed to be researched. The next chapter is on transportation and the gradual evolution away from the urban horse. Two, electric streetcars. Two motorized buses. To motor transport. In all of the things that are made possible, like personal travel. Motels. Supermarkets. Brian how does one research Something Like that . Robert i used an average of i would guess 40 different books, mainly those older time frames, topics. Out individual what my favorite books was called horses that work. Another one was called Living Conditions in victorian america. One of my favorite books was natures metropolis chicago and the great west. The chicagowhich was intertwined with the prairies states in taking timber from wisconsin, turning into wood, and sending it out to make ends as for the prairies. The meat and the cattle would come back to the chicago stockyards and be sent on to the east coast. It was a stack of books. And the Research Assistants helped find the books, they stuck them full of postits. With interesting passages, but i found that i pretty much ignored their postits because the books were so fascinating. I would read and i would take them and i would start quoting them, andaraphrasing gradually, stitched together this intricate web. If anybody has a common reaction to books, it is the first half of it. It is really fascinating. Most people time he that they just do not have any idea of the level at which people lived. And what my favorite quotes, which is in the book, and you know, it is still a mystery to me how i found this fabulous quote, but it is valid. That in 1885, the average North Carolina housewife walked 140 miles a year carrying 35 pounds of water. That invokes the hardship of being a housewife. All of that water that was carried into the house, because of a lack of faucets and Running Water, all of that water carried into the house for bathing, for cooking,ctions, for all of that had to be carried out. And to think of the backbreaking work that it was to be a housewife in those days. Brian how many years have you been at Northwestern University and what of utah . Robert i have been there since 1973, so up to about 43 years. And, in the first half of that time, i taught graduate, elementary macro economics. Im not an economic historian by profession, so i have never taught economic history, even obviously im very interested in it. I have always taught elementary economics to freshman, i have taught intermediate economics to juniors. And sophomores. Course,ave my favorite which delights, i think from the teaching evaluations i can say that taught to 15minar students on the topic, did economics when the two world wars. That of course, is economic history. It is about the role of economics in world war i, and world war ii. And one of the most fascinating topics to me, which comes alive in chapter 16 of the book. It is the role of world war ii and to a lesser extent, Government Policies in the great depression. Ethicalging about this acceleration of u. S. Economic growth in the middle the 20th century. Brian i want to come back then just a second, but how you characterize your findings in this book at the end, and if you are a young person in your class, some he puts her hand up and says, professor, what is my life going to be like, how much changes are going to be, how much growth is there going to be compared to the years that you read about since the 1870s . By sayingwould start that roughly speaking, since 1870, each succeeding generation has achieved double the standard of living of their parents. Gdp,has been measured by measured output. Of course the benefits of Running Water, the benefits of produced reduced infant mortality are not counted in gdp. So, the idea of doubling is actually an understatement. As the improvements that people have enjoyed. That has been true of every generation of until the last generation. The current young people, the socalled millennials, will be the first generation who fail on average to double their parents standard of living. And we are seeing the symptoms of this now, we are seeing a decline in marriage. We are seeing student debt. We are seeing a delay and household formation. We are seeing a delay in marriage. A delay in having children. People areung struggling. 40 of u. S. College graduates are unable to find jobs that require a College Education. Complete lawwho school, never did find a job that requires a law degree. It is what we have this terrible situation. Debt,ebted, with student baristas, taxi drivers, people in menial jobs, who have blighted their lifetime financial future through college debt. And somehow, we need to come up with a different system. In the book, i recommend repayment of College Loans that are contingent on income. You only repaid to the extent that you benefit from your College Education and get a job requiring a College Education. That is called income contingent loan repayment. It is wellestablished in australia, wellestablished in britain. Brian so if you are a young person, you came out of college, you had student debt, and you suffered from a spell that implement, you and not be expected to repay any of your debt. During the time of an employment. Robert or if you are a young person and you were attracted to a lowpaying job in civil social service, helping people out, say nonprofit organization, you would repay less of your Student Loans because you would be only required to pay them in proportion to your income. Northwestern is an expensive school. As you stand in the classroom and look out at your students, and know this, how does it make you feel looking out there at the happier students in the class may not be able to find a job that they have paid 60 grand a year . Robert the problem is not with northwestern and the elite schools like harvard, princeton, yell, more and more there making it possible for students to go through without substantial student debt, by giving them very generous scholarships. Most of the elite schools have very large endowments. And they are investing their endowments in student aid, northwestern is just announcing a Major Program in to further reduce the student burden of debt. It is the lefty universities, the state universities, the smaller, less prominent private universities where the problem is. And the further you go down in the level of academic prestige, the more likely the students coming out are likely to find that they cannot locate a job requiring a College Education. Brian what is your philosophy of teaching . Robert my philosophy of teaching is to bring together the real world with the abstract and dry, text material that shows them how to shift curves, and solve equations. In macroeconomics. Probably alone, among my colleagues, i have put together course packets for both my intermediate and my principles of economics course, that contains clippings from the economist, from the wall street journal, from the new york times, showing in many cases, how ordinary people are caught in the impact of the overall economy. I have a wonderful wall street journal clipping from 2009 written at the absolute bottom of the recession, called the smith family expenses the recession. Is a classic example of how the textbook multiplier works. In terms of a reallife family chronicled by the wall street journal. Job, they loses his are a lucky family, they have some other the mother keeps her job. And the end, the way that they adjust is that the father starts doing the childcare. And they take their children out of the childcare facility and like other parents, doing the same, the childcare facility has to lay people off. They stop going out to restaurants and the restaurant has to lay people off. It is a wonderful story that illustrates the impact of the multiplier, the dry, textbook concept. That is my way of dealing with the real world. In my freshman seminar, we just had our last class on monday. I showed them a series of videos from a bbc series called the world at war t