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

Tyler Cowen

Sep 2013 · Sold by Penguin

About this ebook

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.

Ratings and reviews

This is not a book that you understand in the first twenty pages. The concept is pretty simple - boredom and a want of simplicity are keeping us from working with all of the tools we have to build a better world, a better economy, and a better life. However, the volume of detail Cowen goes into on just how that world might look is compelling, dangerous, and a little scary - but in a good way. I've already recommended this to at least 3 people - and will continue to do so in the future.

A good but not great book that explores two broad themes in varying depth. The first theme is the emergence of smart machines that will increasingly replace human labor and intellect. Here the author exhaustingly describes the evolution of chess programs to illustrate an inevitable transition from human to human-and-machine collaboration. The second theme examines the impact of the changing workforce on work, the economy and society. as a whole.

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About the author

TYLER COWEN is a professor of economics at George Mason University. His blog, Marginal Revolution, is one of the world’s most influential economics blogs. He also writes for the New York Times, Financial Times and The Economist and is the cofounder of Marginal Revolution University. The author of five previous books, Cowen lives in Fairfax, Virginia.