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Where has all the productivity gone?

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Re: Where has all the productivity gone?

#171

Post by lkrubner »

throwawaylinux wrote: post #151
lkrubner wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can not take credit for Solow Productivity Paradox, all credit needs to go to Solow himself. The uptick in productivity between 1995 and 2005 is mostly attributable to 2 sectors: retail finance In retail, it was the era of big boxes, lead by WalMart. Basically, it was the era when big retail learned how to take advantage of big databases to better manage inventory. Sadly, this did not seem to be the beginning of a…

Do you have a source for that? You're saying a productivity increase that amounted to around 20% across the entire workforce is mostly attributable to advances in HFT and logistics in the retail industry? Even if we ignore that both of those were probably only made possibly with computers, that seems astounding considering retail and finance makes up less than 20% of the economy by GDP.

“You're saying a productivity increase that amounted to around 20% across the entire workforce is mostly attributable to advances in HFT and logistics in the retail industry?”

No one ever suggested that. It’s the excess productivity growth of 1995-2005 that is largely attributable to retail and what improvements there were in the productivity of trading financial instruments.

Re: Where has all the productivity gone?

#172

Post by danybittel »

schnitzelstoat wrote: post #10

I think people are doing more work than ever, but that doesn't mean the work is useful. Think about how much easier it is to build a SaaS or something vs. even just ten years ago, but that doesn't mean that the new stuff being built will bring economic value. In fact we might expect there to be diminishing returns in terms of what delivers real utility and thus improvements in productivity don't translate to a simila…

This has also been my experience.

Clients will always try to push as much as possible. Ie. if a task is now faster to do, the client will ask for that productivity improvement. It makes sense, if you continue to charge the old price and "keep" the productivity improvement for yourself, the client will eventually go elsewhere, where the productivity improvement is passed to him.

You can somewhat mitigate the problem if you do creative work.

Re: Where has all the productivity gone?

#174

Post by synquid »

skohan wrote: post #62
MattGaiser wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> this is something I saw inside a lot of companies, especially when they get sizable funding: they become simultaneously obsessed with hiring and process A lot of it just seems to be driven by strange attempts at optimization. For example, at my company, there was a lot of time spent on figuring out developer metrics (for all four of us on the team at its peak) and cost accountability. On the cost accountability sid…

Yeah this also sounds like part of the "MBA-ification" of business. I think a lot of this comes from a reasonable goal to have: if can find appropriate metrics which represent the work your company is doing, this should give you a reasonably objective way of measuring how different interventions move you closer to or farther from your goal. But I think the problem is that actually finding and implementing those metri…

Sounds like a case of Goodhart's law, "Any observed statistical regularity will tend to collapse once pressure is placed upon it for control purposes."

Re: Where has all the productivity gone?

#175

Post by actually_a_dog »

coldtea wrote: post #147
op00to wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You couldn’t be more wrong, or more dismissive. Ask a working single mother whether inexpensive, effective appliances are a significant productivity and quality of life enhancer.

Ask a working single mother is she would trade "inexpensive, effective appliances" to 1960s era healthcare, housing/rent, and education costs, and working/middle class job availability. The answer might suprise you...

I don’t think quite as many “working/middle class job(s)” were available to single mothers in the 1960s as you seem to be claiming.

Re: Where has all the productivity gone?

#176

Post by Gibbon1 »

perl4ever wrote: post #156
Gibbon1 wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've come around to the idea that we should put excise taxes on the sale of new cars that use fossil fuels and use the revenue to help working class people replace their existing gasoline cars with electric[1]. The idea is help people do what you want them to do instead of apply the rubber hose. [1] One way to think about that is you force people buying new cars to be carbon neutral by paying to retire existing cars.

The goal is to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. In order to do that, it has to be done in a way that the masses will not revolt and eliminate the political leaders who want to prevent climate change. I think that your suggestion, while I guess it's mainstream and basically what's already being done in most places, is guaranteed to fail in both respects. If we tax one thing and subsidize another, without any linkage t…

I see the fundamental problem is dependence on existing capital assets that emit CO2. Like gasoline and diesel cars and trucks. Focusing that seems reasonable that you a) don't want people to buy new ones. 2) want to expedite the retirement of current ones.

Putting an excise tax on new fossil fueled cars would discourage manufacture and sales. Using the revenue to help working class people retire and replace their older fossil fueled vehicles with zero emissions ones reduces the number currently in service. The key word with that is 'help' as in help that do what's needed. Instead of carbon taxes which punish working class people for not doing something unspecified to fix the problem.

That said I also support banning production of fossil fuel powered cars with enough forewarning that industry and the economy can adjust.

Re: Where has all the productivity gone?

#177

Post by lmnop1234 »

nonameiguess wrote: post #115
IkmoIkmo wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cheap clothes, cheap flights, cheap music, movies, cheap food, longer life expectancy, bigger homes with smaller household sizes, cheap washing machines and various appliances, all with far fewer working hours, and far less household work while you're off-work. I'm definitely better off than my parents or grandparents. Hell, we have stories in our family where my uncles would shower at the communal bathhouse cause th…

Amen. You know what? I paid double what my parents paid for the house I really think of as my childhood house that they bought in 1989, and I paid more than quadruple what they paid for our actual first house in 1979. But my house is also double the size, it's downtown in a major metro, I'm not going to have to rebuild it from the inside out because it's not falling apart and everything already works. There is no asb…

>These people who think it's been so downhill since the 70s.

Hmmm. Old enough to remember the 70s (and 60s and a bit of the 50s).

It's easy enough to cast about for a few real advantages of modern times.

. The ability to type to this forum. Essentially a Usenet group with a different interface.

. Replacement of Sears with Amazon

. Video on demand

. LED lightbulbs

. Greatly improved medical care in some areas, particularly surgery.

. Faster closing on stock trades.

A time traveler from 1965 would notice nothing unusual about my house aside from the flat panel TV.

I think that aside from some healthcare tech, I'd willingly trade cheaper beachfront property and skinnier / more athletic kids for 99% of modern advances.

Re: Where has all the productivity gone?

#178

Post by Gibbon1 »

legulere wrote: post #173

The west has a productivity stagnation because it’s concentrating on services instead of industry. The productivity of services grows much slower that that of industry.

Amusingly we outsourced the sector of the economy with high productivity gains while keeping the part subject to Baumol's cost disease.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol%27s_cost_disease

Re: Where has all the productivity gone?

#179

Post by bonzini »

hedora wrote: post #161
harryh wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As for "longer life expectancy", all accounts I've read say that we got that early on in the 20th century In the US, life expectancy at birth was around 53 in 1921. Today it's almost 79. That's a nearly 50% increase. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1040079/life-expectancy-... It's a particularly interesting time to discount the life extension benefits of modern technology. We just saw multiple vaccines get develo…

I think you’re reading too much into “life expectancy at birth”. Life expectancy at age 20 hasn’t moved nearly as much. The big wins were reductions in deaths during childhood. Not to sound harsh, but the main economic benefit is that now people need to have fewer children to maintain a stable population.

In the late 80s life expectancy in Italy was around 70, now it's well above 80, and a large part of the difference is due to how many died 55-65 to cardiovascular problems or cancer.

A lot more of my relatives died of heart attack or cancer in the 80s than those from the next generation did in the last ten years. In fact in the last few years I witnessed many people getting surgery for those same heart issues or cancer that would have killed you a couple decades back.

Re: Where has all the productivity gone?

#180

Post by bonzini »

forcry wrote: post #141
harryh wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As for "longer life expectancy", all accounts I've read say that we got that early on in the 20th century In the US, life expectancy at birth was around 53 in 1921. Today it's almost 79. That's a nearly 50% increase. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1040079/life-expectancy-... It's a particularly interesting time to discount the life extension benefits of modern technology. We just saw multiple vaccines get develo…

>Today it's almost 79. That's a nearly 50% increase. What about the quality of life? We know that people are getting sicker at a younger age, and if we consider that in addition to the ever increasing cost of the treatments, it does not appear to be a net positive.

I would guess that those who are getting sicker at younger would just have died.

Let's say hypertension is now diagnosed at 50 instead of 70. How many people used to die of a stroke between 50 and 70 due to undiagnosed hypertension?

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