Eubie Blake said that if he'd known he was going to live as long as he did, he would have taken better care of himself. If you can just hang on to your health for a while longer, the Class of 2000 may be the first in history to live forever. But all the miracles of biotech may not show up as faster GDP growth. The diseases may generate more GDP than the cures. Recently, the biggest thing going in the economy is a resurgence in productivity growth.
Productivity growth is important because it's a proxy for our standard of living.
Productivity, or output per hour worked, stagnated from the early 1970s to the early 1990s. It has boosted growth and made growth less inflationary. Prosperity, of course, is a moving target. And we all know about the Joneses. We try to keep up with them, but every time we get close, they refinance.