Productivity

If the U.S. wants to unlock the full potential of its small business sector, widespread AI adoption must become a policy priority. With targeted support, AI can become a powerful tool for enhancing productivity and strengthening U.S. competitiveness on the global stage.

Policymakers should not attempt to reallocate innovative resources from large to small firms. Instead, Congress should pass the Tax Relief for American Families and Workers Act of 2024 and expand the R&D tax credit. These measures will incentivize firms of all sizes to continue investing in productivity-enhancing and socially valuable R&D.

Construction labor productivity has significantly declined, falling 40 percent from 1970 to 2000, even as productivity in other industries, such as manufacturing, has grown.

The Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has aggressively downsized the federal workforce. To maintain essential services with fewer staff, the administration must embrace digital transformation, leveraging AI, automation, and self-service portals to improve efficiency and modernize government operations.

A study found that countries with the highest robot density will see accelerated economic growth from robot adoption and will also see heightened robot accumulation in the future.

Average annual growth of U.S. labor productivity over the past five years hit 1.9 percent in the third quarter of 2024.

The United States has faced an unprecedented slowdown in labor productivity in the last two decades. Policymakers must incentivize businesses to adopt and invest in the development of critical and emerging technologies.

Nursing homes are notorious for worker shortages, which worsens the quality of care for patients and the work environment for employees. Japanese nursing homes have begun deploying robots to address these problems.

U.S. manufacturing productivity has been in decline for more than a decade. If policymakers don’t do more to turn that around, real wages will stagnate and U.S. manufacturers will increasingly find themselves at a competitive disadvantage.

Absent major policy intervention, the experts tell us, AI will drive up income inequality to stratospheric levels. This idea is becoming de rigueur in Western intellectual circles, even though the underlying arguments supporting it are fallacious to the point of absurdity.