Peter J. Welling III Professor Brewer Data 150 7 October 2021
The article “What is economic growth? And why is it so Important?” by Max Roser talks about economic growth of the last couple centuries and connects it to a chart which describes the output of books from the 6th century up to the 18th century. In the chart it shows that the output level from the 6th century to the 14th century was relatively similar. This was due to the fact that their technology to date was not sophisticated enough to create more output. Once the 15th century hit, the output began to increase exponentially due to the fact that the printing press was now made available and rapidly spreading across the world. Every century the production of books doubled from 23 per thousand people to 54 per thousand people to then 98 per thousand people. This graph connects to the main idea of the article because the graph is an example of how growth is possible and what economic growth entails. Economic growth is an increase in the production of goods and services that people produce for each other. Connecting this graph to my economics class, this graph displays the increase in supply with not knowing the demand. I am assuming in this situation that the demand was high considering supply was being worked on for years and increased so rapidly over the course of two centuries. If this graph continued to today, it would appear as if it reached a plateau or possibly even a decrease in the graph. Considering in today's world the increase in technology has forced the old norm to shift paths an go digital.