[hn_throwaway_99]

> Even more surprising for me is that productivity growth declined during the ZIRP era. How did we take all that free money and product less?

This is not correct. Your link is only referring to manufacturing productivity, not overall productivity, which continued to rise. This Economist article has better information: https://archive.vn/6asPb. One hypothesis in the article that seems the most logical to me is that return on investment became so much better in other economic sectors that it siphoned talent from manufacturing.