The Great Productivity Puzzle
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The Great Productivity Puzzle
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Re: The Great Productivity Puzzle
#2A few rants (mixed in with a few half-baked ideas):
1) Economic progress from the industrial revolution is about quantity. We learned to make a lot more stuff. The industrial revolution is not quite done, but the impact is less and less every decade. We may never match that quantity growth of stuff because we don't even want more stuff, we only want better stuff. And we're getting better stuff and more variety.
2) Info. tech. IS being mismeasured and it's huge. We're not all imagining it. The economics of info tech are REALLY good except in the official GDP numbers. And arguing that it's not counted in economic measurements doesn't debunk the mismeasurement claim, it supports/explains it. What's more, info tech decimates a lot of industries - music, GPS, newspapers, travel agents, etc. And self-driving cars are probably going to decimate the auto industry and wipe out a lot of logistics related jobs. Everyone(A) will be better off but official GDP will fall.
3) Wages aren't growing largely because the economy needs more skilled and more managerial workers, but we don't seem to be producing a lot of them(B). It's an awesome time to be a skilled worker. Good and growing pay and billboard signs desperately seeking talent. There's no end to work that needs to be done with the right skills. Meanwhile, unskilled workers aren't so useful anymore. They were well off when anybody could sit in an assembly line and produce a lot of stuff. But now unskilled workers don't really produce, they mostly trade their time for other people's time (e.g. by cooking their food) and they do so from a weak negotiating position. I don't see any of this changing anytime soon.
(A) Everyone = the vast majority of people
(B) Anecdotal, I could be wrong
Re: The Great Productivity Puzzle
#3What sorts of constraints in our daily lives feel blindingly obvious, in terms of wishing for a solution? I mean beyond true life-transition concerns like finding new housing or new jobs.
In the past, I'm sure a clothes-washing machine must have felt pretty obvious even if people weren't sure what it was. It's always been a pain to do laundry and there had to have been a wish for some sort of contraption to make it drastically easier, even before knowing what that contraption would be.
When I think of real constraints in daily life, I can only think of things like - the effort of transition from waking to working, commuting, perhaps the convenience of having nutritious food that improves your health, and... what else?
What sorts of things do you think of when you say, "I wish I could just snap my fingers and..."
Re: The Great Productivity Puzzle
#4What sorts of constraints in our daily lives feel blindingly obvious, in terms of wishing for a solution? I mean beyond true life-transition concerns like finding new housing or new jobs. In the past, I'm sure a clothes-washing machine must have felt pretty obvious even if people weren't sure what it was. It's always been a pain to do laundry and there had to have been a wish for some sort of contraption to make it d…
There are plenty
- Folding laundry
- Setting a table
- Ironing shirts
- Cleaning the house
- Doing taxes
-.....
Re: The Great Productivity Puzzle
#5A few rants (mixed in with a few half-baked ideas): 1) Economic progress from the industrial revolution is about quantity. We learned to make a lot more stuff. The industrial revolution is not quite done, but the impact is less and less every decade. We may never match that quantity growth of stuff because we don't even want more stuff, we only want better stuff. And we're getting better stuff and more variety. 2) In…
> The economics of info tech are REALLY good except in the official GDP numbers.
Take Google, for example. The (economic) value that Google provides to me is far more than I pay for, which is zero. It's even far more than what Google makes from the ads it serves me. Google is capturing as revenue only a small fraction of the value it creates. That (and similar cases) are why much of the info tech economic/productivity gain doesn't show up in the official GDP numbers.
Re: The Great Productivity Puzzle
#6I normally take a dim view of economics and this article is worse than usual. My complaint is the massless, frictionless world of economics does not take real world forces into account.
> technological advancement just ain’t what it used to be.
We're about to see millions of human roles vaporize when automated driving hits home. This isn't like the dishwasher or desktop calculator. We've already seen self checkout stations. How long until whole stores are automated? Eg: http://newatlas.com/go/5028
> Many productivity-enhancing new technologies are capital goods—think back to the moving truck.
Bullshit as well. Hardware is rapidly approaching free as services dominate. Plus most of our readers shift capex to opex by cloud hosting, for example. Furthermore, offshoring and free trade means you won't invest in equipment because you're not even making the widgets any more, in house.
> Look at what an ideal kitchen looked like in 1955
Mostly irrelevant when "instant gratification isn't fast enough". Our kids can't even be bothered to microwave something in 30 sec, so prepackaged convenience, dominates households.
Finally, what does corporate malfeasance (eg VW emissions, banking crisis, LIBOR fraud etc) do to productivity?
I think this is a more honest assessment: http://www.businessinsider.com/alan-greenspans-mistake-has-l...
Re: The Great Productivity Puzzle
#7I hear classic economic thinking is that productivity gains lead to higher wages. But could the causation be reversed? Cheap labor tends to disincentivize innovations that can lead to productivity gains.
Perhaps we're entering a period where there are simply too many people for too few jobs. This keeps unemployment high, wages flat, and removes the incentive for companies to invest in automation.
Re: The Great Productivity Puzzle
#8Yes, things like Google Search must be increasing productivity. But at the same time the amount of time dedicated to infotech entertainment addiction is going through the roof. I wonder how much productivity the hours of Facebooking at work is costing us.
Re: The Great Productivity Puzzle
#9A few rants (mixed in with a few half-baked ideas): 1) Economic progress from the industrial revolution is about quantity. We learned to make a lot more stuff. The industrial revolution is not quite done, but the impact is less and less every decade. We may never match that quantity growth of stuff because we don't even want more stuff, we only want better stuff. And we're getting better stuff and more variety. 2) In…
> The economics of info tech are REALLY good except in the official GDP numbers. Take Google, for example. The (economic) value that Google provides to me is far more than I pay for, which is zero. It's even far more than what Google makes from the ads it serves me. Google is capturing as revenue only a small fraction of the value it creates. That (and similar cases) are why much of the info tech economic/productivit…
Well, the official GDP numbers also don't count the value of sunshine and rainbows -- because that's not what they're created to measure.
If you get a lot of value from something you pay nothing for, and it doesn't increase your job output in dollars and cents, then there's no reason it should increase GDP.
Re: The Great Productivity Puzzle
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The economics of info tech are REALLY good except in the official GDP numbers. Take Google, for example. The (economic) value that Google provides to me is far more than I pay for, which is zero. It's even far more than what Google makes from the ads it serves me. Google is capturing as revenue only a small fraction of the value it creates. That (and similar cases) are why much of the info tech economic/productivit…
Well, the official GDP numbers also don't count the value of sunshine and rainbows -- because that's not what they're created to measure. If you get a lot of value from something you pay nothing for, and it doesn't increase your job output in dollars and cents, then there's no reason it should increase GDP.
and to that extent we should reduce the importance we place on policies that increase GDP.
GDP increases are nice, but they are by no means the only important thing to consider. many other considerations must be made when creating or changing public policy.