Did Thomas Friedman skip his Wheaties?

Or maybe I did. In any case, his column today made no sense to me.

In short, he wrote that the U.S. economy is currently facing both the Great Recession (not much credit available) and the Great Inflection (new technologies which spur innovation). And if only there was more money available, businesses could take more advantage of the new technologies to create new jobs.

But he uses this example:

“Five years ago,” said [Ethan Allen Interiors CEO Farooq] Kathwari, “it would take about 20 hours of labor time to make a high-quality custom sofa. Now, due to our investments in technology and a smaller work force that is more highly skilled, the labor time to make this sofa is about three hours.”

Given that, it's not obvious at all that these new technologies are actually supporting job growth. Maybe it was simply a bad example... but when you only get one Sunday column, you'd think that you'd think it through a little better!