I sometimes hear the claim that innovation in the physical world has stagnated since around 1970. More specifically, chapter 1 of The Rise and Fall of American Growth by Robert J Gordon claims that there has been basically no innovation in clothing other than changes in fashion. This is somewhat contrary to my intuition (although I definitely believe that innovation in the 50 years before 1970 was greater that in the 50 years after), and price of insulation seems like a relatively objective metric for this.
My favourite type of response would be time series data of clo per inflation-adjusted dollar, but I’d also appreciate people’s subjective experience of this.
[Question] How has the cost of clothing insulation changed since 1970 in the USA?
I sometimes hear the claim that innovation in the physical world has stagnated since around 1970. More specifically, chapter 1 of The Rise and Fall of American Growth by Robert J Gordon claims that there has been basically no innovation in clothing other than changes in fashion. This is somewhat contrary to my intuition (although I definitely believe that innovation in the 50 years before 1970 was greater that in the 50 years after), and price of insulation seems like a relatively objective metric for this.
My favourite type of response would be time series data of clo per inflation-adjusted dollar, but I’d also appreciate people’s subjective experience of this.