What the President Could Learn From Professional Economists -<br />Get the Upshot in your Inbox<br />Michael T. Flynn, who briefly served as national security adviser, gave President Trump at least one piece of excellent advice.<br />With lower growth in the labor force, we should expect slower growth in gross domestic product as well.<br />Here are a few things that the president could learn from his economists in his first briefing.<br />A second cause of slower economic growth is the decline in productivity growth, which<br />has occurred not just in the United States but in most advanced economies.<br />Among all voters, according to the Pew Research Center, Hillary Clinton won the votes of those with college degrees by<br />nine percentage points, while Mr. Trump won the votes of those without college degrees by eight percentage points.<br />N. Gregory Mankiw, a professor of economics at Harvard, was chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President George W. Bush.<br />Judging by those with whom Mr. Trump chooses to surround himself, it seems that the new president is averse to talking with professional economists.<br />According to a recent paper by Mr. Jones and three co-authors, the number of Americans engaged in research has increased<br />more than twentyfold since the 1930s, yet there has been no similar explosion in productivity growth.<br />When entrepreneurs introduce new technologies — think robots, for instance — those advances are likely to replace unskilled workers.
