In this week’s episode, David is joined by two guests, who make a case for economic optimism. Michael Mandel, chief economist at the Progressive Policy Institute, and Bret Swanson, president of Entropy Economics and visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, are the co-authors of the new paper, “The Coming Productivity Boom: Transforming the Physical Economy with Information.” Michael and Bret argue that, despite the slowdown in productivity of the last few decades, innovations in information technology such as artificial intelligence are going remake our economy for the better. David’s blog: http://macromarketmusings.blogspot.com/ Michael Mandel’s homepage: http://www.progressivepolicy.org/author/mmandel/ Brett Swanson’s homepage: http://www.bretswanson.com/ David’s Twitter: @DavidBeckworth Michael Mandel’s Twitter: @MichaelMandel Bret Swanson’s Twitter: @JBSay Related links: “The Coming Productivity Boom: Transforming the Physical Economy with Information” by Michael Mandel and Bret Swanson http://www.techceocouncil.org/clientuploads/reports/TCC%20Productivity%20Boom%20FINAL.pdf