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Why isn’t new technology making us more productive?

nytimes.com

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Re: Why isn’t new technology making us more productive?

#81

Post by ALittleLight »

evan_ wrote: post #34
ALittleLight wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the non-super rich see a lot of advantages from the modern economy. As an example, just yesterday, I was picking up an order at Walmart. The guy who brought the bags to my car had Airpods in. The existence of Airpods (and phones, Internet, Bluetooth, streaming services, etc) may not have made this guy more productive, but it probably improves his life somewhat.

and when he gets home he can eat bread and watch the circus on his phone!

Sure. Do you think it would be better to be poor without bread and circuses? Our bread and circuses are getting better and that seems good.

Re: Why isn’t new technology making us more productive?

#85

Post by titzer »

throw8383833jj wrote: post #35
uejfiweun wrote: post #2

I have a hard time believing this thesis that modern technology doesn't help productivity. Think about CRM software. Could you imagine having to go through hundreds of filing cabinets and massive systems just to get information about a customer? What about 100 SDRs doing this at the same time, every day? How about trying to meet with someone on the other side of the country? Or having to hire hundreds of assembly lin…

It sounds plausible: all the benefits have gone to the rich. So, I set out to see what a world would be like if we "redistributed" all those "benefits". So, simply take the entire wealth of every billionaire in the US and divide it by the number of citizens and number of years required to acquire that wealth. It's a relatively simply equation: Billionaire wealth / Citizens / 30 Years = Yearly Redistribution 4T / 300…

It'd be a lot more effective to redistribute that wealth, first, not over 30 years, and second, not to 100% of the population, but to the bottom income brackets, so the smallest quintile or even decile. So a one-time payout to the bottom 10% would be $150,000. For 20% or 30% of the population, that kind of money could absolutely and instantly lift them out of poverty.

Moreover, you needn't take every last cent from these billionaires. Just leave them with a mere $100 million each and they still have more money than they could reasonably spend in a lifetime.

Re: Why isn’t new technology making us more productive?

#87

Post by throw0101a »

uejfiweun wrote: post #2

I have a hard time believing this thesis that modern technology doesn't help productivity. Think about CRM software. Could you imagine having to go through hundreds of filing cabinets and massive systems just to get information about a customer? What about 100 SDRs doing this at the same time, every day? How about trying to meet with someone on the other side of the country? Or having to hire hundreds of assembly lin…

> I have a hard time believing this thesis that modern technology doesn't help productivity.

See Solow paradox:

> The productivity paradox, also referred to as the Solow paradox, could refer either to the slowdown in productivity growth in the United States in the 1970s and 1980s despite rapid development in the field of information technology (IT) over the same period, or to the slowdown in productivity growth in the United States and developed countries from the 2000s to 2020s; sometimes the newer slowdown is referred to as the productivity slowdown, the productivity puzzle, or the productivity paradox 2.0. The 1970s to 1980s productivity paradox inspired many research efforts at explaining the slowdown, only for the paradox to disappear with renewed productivity growth in the developed countries in the 1990s. However, issues raised by those research efforts remain important in the study of productivity growth in general, and became important again when productivity growth slowed around the world again from the 2000s to the present day.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Productivity_paradox

Re: Why isn’t new technology making us more productive?

#90

Post by gumby »

tshaddox wrote: post #76
gumby wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Okay but surely we're only talking about average productivity with some assumptions on the approximate employment rate and hours worked per week. No. Productivity is simply output divided by some input factor. Employment rate, hours worked per week, wage: none are involved in that calculation (unless you're measuring productivity of the wage, i.e. COGS). > No one is going to be impressed by a "5% increase in produc…

> On the contrary, investors and managers will be very impressed by that. No, they won't. You're free to propose any definitions of "productivity" you like, but this particular proposal doesn't remotely match what anyone will ever be talking about in discussions about productivity in the economy.

Indeed I propose the standard definition of productivity used in economics departments, business schools, and thousands of textbooks, news articles and the like, including those written by people, like Brynjolfsson, quoted in the article.

Seems a lot easier to refer to papers, statistics and the like when you use the same terminology everyone else does.

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