America's peak years of indigenous innovation ran from the 1820s to the 1960s. There were a few financial panics and two depressions, to be sure. But in this period, a frenzy of creative activity, economic competition and rapid growth in national income provided widening economic inclusion, rising wages for all, and engaging careers for most.

Unemployment rates tend to rise and fall in roughly equal proportion at all rungs of the ladder, and that happened between 1973 and 1985.

My view is that innovation has declined in the everyday processes that businesses tinker with incrementally as they try to become more productive over time.

Edmund Phelps Quotes