Share <Embed>

Buy New

$15.32

List Price: $17.00
Save: $1.68 (10%)

Only 13 left in stock (more on the way).

Ships from and sold by Amazon.com. Gift-wrap available.

Turn on 1-Click ordering for this browser

This item ships to France. Want it Monday, Oct. 1? Order within and choose AmazonGlobal Priority Shipping at checkout. Learn more

Deliver to France

Added to

Unable to add item to List. Please try again.

Other Sellers on Amazon

Add to Cart

$11.12

Sold by: Books by Bobby

Add to Cart

$11.14

Sold by: Wildcat Media

Add to Cart

$11.20
+ $27.40 shipping

Sold by: allnewbooks

Have one to sell? Sell on Amazon

Flip to back Flip to front

Listen Playing... Paused You're listening to a sample of the Audible audio edition.
Learn more

See all 3 images

Average Is Over: Powering America Beyond the Age of the Great Stagnation Paperback – August 26, 2014

by Tyler Cowen (Author)

164 customer reviews

See all 6 formats and editions Hide other formats and editions

Price

New from

Used from

Kindle

"Please retry"

$11.17

—

Hardcover

"Please retry"

$20.77

$19.72

$2.30

Paperback

"Please retry"

$15.32

$7.30

$5.22

The groundbreaking follow-up to the New York Times bestseller The Great Stagnation

The United States continues to mint more millionaires and billionaires than any country ever. Yet, since the great recession, three quarters of the jobs created here pay only marginally more than minimum wage. Why is there growth only at the top and the bottom?

Renowned economist and bestselling author Tyler Cowen explains that high earners are taking ever more advantage of machine intelligence and achieving ever-better results. Meanwhile, nearly every business sector relies less and less on manual labor, and that means a steady, secure life somewhere in the middle—average—is over.

In Average is Over, Cowen lays out how the new economy works and identifies what workers and entrepreneurs young and old must do to thrive in this radically new economic landscape.

Frequently bought together

Total price: $30.75

These items are shipped from and sold by different sellers. Show details

Buy the selected items together

This item:Average Is Over: Powering America Beyond the Age of the Great Stagnation by Tyler Cowen Paperback $15.32
Only 13 left in stock (more on the way).
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
FREE Shipping on orders over $25. Details
The Complacent Class: The Self-Defeating Quest for the American Dream by Tyler Cowen Hardcover $15.43
Only 1 left in stock - order soon.
Sold by CELEBI and ships from Amazon Fulfillment.
FREE Shipping on orders over $25. Details

Customers who bought this item also bought

Page 1 of 1 Start overPage 1 of 1

This shopping feature will continue to load items. In order to navigate out of this carousel please use your heading shortcut key to navigate to the next or previous heading.

Tyler Cowen

80

Hardcover
$15.43
Tyler Cowen

122

Hardcover
55 offers from $6.29
Tyler Cowen
Hardcover
$13.42
Vaclav Smil

32

Paperback
$18.84
George Horace Lorimer

52

Paperback
$9.99
George Horace Lorimer

52

Paperback
$6.94

Editorial Reviews

Review

“A lively and worryingly prophetic read… some of the most talked-about issues in present-day America… observations that are genuinely enlightening, interesting, and underappreciated”—The Daily Beast

“A book that is gripping policy makers in Washington… An engaging and eclectic thinker.” —The Sunday Times

“Cowen’s book represents a fundamental challenge.”—Wall Street Journal

“A buckle-your-seatbelts, swiftly moving tour of the new economic landscape.”—Kirkus

About the Author

TYLER COWEN is a professor of economics at George Mason University. His blog, Marginal Revolution, is one of the world’s most influential economics blogs. He also writes for the New York Times, Financial Times and The Economist and is the cofounder of Marginal Revolution University. The author of five previous books, Cowen lives in Fairfax, Virginia.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product details

Paperback: 304 pages
Publisher: Plume; Reissue edition (August 26, 2014)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0142181110
ISBN-13: 978-0142181119
Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.6 x 8 inches
Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 164 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #210,921 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #125 in Books > Business & Money > Economics > Income Inequality
- #190 in Books > Engineering & Transportation > Engineering > Industrial, Manufacturing & Operational Systems > Robotics & Automation
- #232 in Books > Business & Money > Economics > Macroeconomics

Would you like to tell us about a lower price?
If you are a seller for this product, would you like to suggest updates through seller support?

Be the first video

Your name here

Try the Kindle edition and experience these great reading features:

See Kindle Edition

Customer reviews

Write a customer review

See all 164 customer reviews

Top customer reviews

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Patrick M. Obriant

The Middle Class is Dead - An Economist Predicts the Future

September 23, 2013

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

Tyler Cowen writes the terrific Marginal Revolution blog [...], teaches economics at GMU, and in his spare time writes books. In "Average is Over" Cowen examines the trends of the last 30 years including the introduction of smart technology, polarization of high and low wage earners, outsourcing of manufacturing jobs, wage stagnation. Cowen uses the prizm of chess, chess software, and chess software games as both analogy and predictor for future of how technology and technology / human interfaces will evolving and projecting these trends forward into the next 20 - 30 years.

Given the trends from today Cowen's "Average is Over" makes a strong and highly plausible argument for a likely American future. Perhaps even the most likely future.
The good news -
The already expensive, livable, and elite cities become even more so. For those self motivated, hard workers from anywhere in the world and nearly any economic background, the future looks extremely bright. Their tools and access to smarter training gets better and better. Online classes are easy to access worldwide. Smart technology gets smarter becomes "genius" but still works far better with people than without. Productivity (and wages) for these top 10-15% continues to increase. Even if you cannot work with "genius computers" managing, hiring, training, assisting, or coaching those who can will still be lucrative.

The not so good -
What does the rest of Cowen's America 2033 look like?
Older and poorer. Invest in micro housing and trailer parks in Texas. Maybe it won't be so bad. [...] or maybe it will be.[...]
Cowen correctly points out the huge pitfall in online education. "Online education can thus be extremely egalitarian, but it is egalitarian in a funny way. It can catapult the smart, motivated, but nonelite individuals over the members of the elite communities. It does not, however, push the uninterested student to the head of the pack." The remaining 85% stagnate albeit with access to cheap fun and cheap education. Many of the 85% will live quite well as they benefit from the near free services but others will fall by the wayside.

But maybe it does not have to be this way. Cowen himself points to a potential way out. Education has typically failed to motivate. And even the best online courses are probably even worse than most classroom teachers. "You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink." There are however a few coaches who have demonstrated the ability to motivate. [...] I never met Coach Fitz but I certainly met mine as a lazy 8th grader on the football field in the form of a 5 foot 4 inch Woody Hayes disciple named John Short. Could this be bottled and taught? The future for your kids and the rest of us American 85 percenters may depend on motivators like these.

What the end of average will look like to colleges.

"It will be a brutal age of good schools and also mediocre schools undercutting each other in terms of price and thus tuition revenue. If it costs $200 to serve a class to another student, how long will it be before an educational institution undercuts a competitor charging $2,000 for those credits?"

This is a highly original book. I strongly recommend this especially for a high school senior or college freshmen.

96 people found this helpful

Helpful

Comment

Mikio Miyaki

danger in front of us

June 25, 2015

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

Thomas Pikkety claims the gap between the poor and the rich widens further in his best known work of “Capital in the 21st Century.” Tyler Cowen sheds light on this issue from a different angle. In “Average Is Over” he asserts, due to advance of intelligent machines, mid-skilled labor forces are more and more relegated to a lower post and their wages become increasingly cheaper and cheaper. What await them are only gloomy future.

I read this book as a good chance to stir my morale up. Tyler Cowen says the ability to mix technical knowledge with solving real world problem is the key to be the big earners in polarized labor markets. The productive worker and the smart machine become stronger complements than before. Only who can learn to think like smart machines or at least enough to understand their operation will get success. Individuals who work with genius machines will need to retrain and learn new systems constantly.

He depicts shanty world, where the economically left behind people are seeking out cheaper living. They are surprisingly politically conservative and look toward local communities and tight local bonds in order to protect themselves against economic risks. The American future precisely written here would not be what he dreams of. With this prediction he warns us of the danger in front of us. Thinking about the geographic and institutional cluster where commercial talent is on the rise, the cities with high level of education tend to have much lower levels of unemployment. In this sense we are pressed for constant education of ourselves.

4 people found this helpful

Helpful

Comment

Michael Schmidt

Nice ride, destination uncertain

October 15, 2014

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

Not quite as overblown as Kurzwiel's "singularity" (in short, the notion that, among other improbables, we'll soon have conscious machines, notwithstanding that we don't know what consciousness is) but equally based in part upon an overreach; that "genius machines" (GMs) will arise that will raise the game...

Good analysis of that which I had seen for myself as the problem: Masses of people who were once employed farming and transitioned to bolt-tightening on assembly lines are being moved on to... what, exactly? So far so good; the title is well-supported by the content. But clarifying the problem statement does not solve the problem and that leads to shortcomings on two fronts. On the "below average" side of things, the author does some hand-waving and proclaims optimism with no discernible basis or form. It seems to me that all the routes up from the floor entail traits not in evidence in much of the population (not a pejorative; we cannot all be above average simply because half minus one of us are by definition below average) and although most are above average in something, very few are strong in a cocktail of traits that would likely lead to uplifting, and there is no reason to believe that the fraction so gifted will rise. And no indication whatsoever how those not so gifted will survive, much less thrive. We can take comfort in the reasons for the inherent stability of US governance and society (a strength of the book), but it would appear that said stability may be tested as never before.

The other constant theme is the rise of the GMs. Excellent discussion about how and why the greatest chess is played by man-machine combinations. Loss of the third star because of the unconvincing premise that GMs will be developed that will provide opportunity for high-level main-machine collaboration in a variety of technical, social, and even artistic endeavors. I find this a reach much too far. As intractable as the game of chess once appeared to be, it still has precisely defined boundary conditions: starting point, end points, and rules. No real-world endeavor is so blessed. The author also opens the possibility of "solutions" that are comprehensible only to the GMs. As one who is already skeptical of machine-produced "proofs" of mathematical theorems, I have a serious problem with the concept; I invoke the Emperor's Clothes Principal -- if it's incomprehensible to any human, it's incomprehensible. And bogus.

In sum, decent read, no answers; if you're looking for them, move on -- and let me know if you find any.

3 people found this helpful

Helpful

Comment

Set up an Amazon Giveaway

Amazon Giveaway allows you to run promotional giveaways in order to create buzz, reward your audience, and attract new followers and customers. Learn more about Amazon Giveaway

This item: Average Is Over: Powering America Beyond the Age of the Great Stagnation

Set up a giveaway

Customers who viewed this item also viewed

Page 1 of 1 Start overPage 1 of 1

This shopping feature will continue to load items. In order to navigate out of this carousel please use your heading shortcut key to navigate to the next or previous heading.

Tyler Cowen

80

Hardcover
$15.43
Tyler Cowen

122

Hardcover
55 offers from $6.29
Robert Kegan

26

Paperback
$27.24
Erik Brynjolfsson

246

Paperback
$12.25
Tyler Cowen

56

Paperback
$14.00
George Horace Lorimer

52

Paperback
$9.99

Pages with related products. See and discover other items: global economy, business forecasting, health economics, health policy, public economics, public finance

Buy New

$15.32

Turn on 1-Click ordering for this browser

Other Sellers on Amazon

Average Is Over: Powering America Beyond the Age of the Great Stagnation Paperback – August 26, 2014

Frequently bought together

Customers who bought this item also bought

Sponsored products related to this item (What's this?)

Editorial Reviews

Review

About the Author

Product details

Related Video Shorts (0)

Be the first video

Sponsored products related to this item (What's this?)

Try the Kindle edition and experience these great reading features:

Customer reviews

Read reviews that mention

Top customer reviews

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Most recent customer reviews

Set up an Amazon Giveaway

Customers who viewed this item also viewed

Buy New $15.32

Turn on 1-Click ordering for this browser

Sorry, there was a problem.

Sorry, there was a problem.

Other Sellers on Amazon

Average Is Over: Powering America Beyond the Age of the Great Stagnation Paperback – August 26, 2014

Frequently bought together

Customers who bought this item also bought

Sponsored products related to this item (What's this?)

Editorial Reviews

Review

About the Author

Product details

Related Video Shorts (0)

Be the first video

Sponsored products related to this item (What's this?)

Try the Kindle edition and experience these great reading features:

Customer reviews

Read reviews that mention

Top customer reviews

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Most recent customer reviews

Set up an Amazon Giveaway

Customers who viewed this item also viewed

Buy New

$15.32