One of the Mysteries of the Economy Is Solved

Economists are moaning about how the U.S. economy isn't increasing in productivity as fast as it used to.

There's an observation, given a name I don't remember at the moment, that increasing productivity in services is difficult: it takes roughly the same number of people and time to perform Beethoven's Emperor piano concerto now as it did 200 years ago.

But some critical areas of the economy are declining in productivity.  Back when I was young one reporter would write one article in a newspaper.  But these days, as described here, on the recent rash of stories on Alan Dershowitz,  it takes two reporters to write an article.  In the good old days, the subject wouldn't have rated one story.