my point is that evaluating reading comprehension is typically done as a test, and test taking is not a valuable skill

the evidence is that individual workers are more productive than ever, and this trend has continued since long before the 1970s. this is despite any measured decline in reading comprehension

the older generations are obviously not propping up the world economy through their singular reading skills

Find a way to test informally, like taking metrics on the number of times that someone misunderstood written questions, instructions, or requirements at work. If it was possible to measure that cleanly, I bet you’d find a similar trend.

I often find that people simply don’t read anymore beyond a sentence or two, which makes it impossible to communicate complex ideas. If it can’t be expressed as a bullet point, it may as well not exist.

Individual workers is a rather nebulous statement without citing how the measurement was taken. Like if you have 9 people with zero money and 1 person with a trillion dollars, on average everyone is a multi billionaire.

The vast majority of our production comes from more and more highly automated tools. The concentration of skills to build those things can skew the results in the short term and lead to new and interesting problems long term.