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After 150 Years, the American Productivity Miracle Is 'Over' (qz.com)
An anonymous reader shares an article on Quartz: Economist Robert Gordon has spent his career studying what makes the US labor force one of the world's most productive. And he has some bad news. American workers still produce some of most economic activity per hour of any economy in the world. But the near-miraculous productivity growth that essentially transformed the US into one of the world's most affluent societies is permanently in the country's rearview mirror. In his new book, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, the Northwestern University professor lays out the case that the productivity miracle underlying the American way of life was largely a one-time deal. It was driven by a flurry of technologies -- electric lights, telephones, automobiles, indoor plumbing -- that fundamentally transformed millions of American lives within a matter of decades. By comparison, Gordon argues, today's technological advancements -- Uber, Facebook, Amazon.com -- will touch the productivity of the American economy lightly -- if at all. And a combination of demographic factors, such as the aging of the US population, and sociological problems such as growing inequality and educational performance that's worsened in comparison to many other rich nations, will stymie economic growth for the foreseeable future.For those not following Gordon's work, he has been expressing these views for quite some time now. Here's
his TED talk from 2013 It shouldn't come as a surprise that many strongly disagree with Gordon's views. Kevin Kelly wrote in 2013: I think Robert Gordon is wrong about his conclusion: According to Gordon growth has stalled in the internet age. This question was first asked by Robert Solow in 1987 and Gordon's answer is that there are 6 'headwinds' six negative, or contrary forces which deduct growth from the growth due to technology in the US (Gordon reiterates he is only speaking of the US). The six 'headwinds' slowing down growth are the aging of the US population, stagnant levels of education, rising inequality, outsourcing and globalization, environmental constraints, and household and government debt. I agree with Gordon about these headwinds, particularly the first one, which he also sees as the most important. Where Gordon is wrong is his misunderstanding and underestimating of the power of technological growth before it meets these headwinds. First, as mentioned above, he underestimates the value of the innovations that the internet has brought us. They seem trivial compared to running water and electric lights, but in fact, as billions around the world show us, they are just as valuable. [...] So the 3rd Industrial Revolution is not really computers and the internet, it is the networking of everything. And in that regime we are just at the beginning of the beginning. We have only begun to connect everything to everything and to make little network minds everywhere. It may take another 80 years for the full effect of this revolution to be revealed. In the year 2095 when economic grad students are asked to review this paper of Robert Gordon and write about why he was wrong back in 2012, they will say things like "Gordon missed the impact from the real inventions of this revolution: big data, ubiquitous mobile, quantified self, cheap AI, and personal work robots. All of these were far more consequential than stand alone computation, and yet all of them were embryonic and visible when he wrote his paper. He was looking backwards instead of forward." You might also find Freakonomics' Stephen J. Dubner views on this interesting.
Because slavery is not used anymore. At least openly.
Uber, Facebook, Amazon aren't technological advancements. Christ, people are stupid.
Think I'm trolling? Think again:
In a new paper, also cited by Leubsdorf, Danny Yagan at Berkeley suggests that reduced migration is only part of the problem. What has made the aftermath to the 2008-2009 recession so bad is that migration is low at the same time that it has become more necessary than ever. The 2008-2009 recession was especially localized, it hit some places harder than others and in a way that appears to be permanent. But migration has been too slow to solve the problem.
The usual story is that in-and-out migration equalizes wage, unemployment and employment rates across the nation. Some places may be harder hit than others but movement quickly makes the US into one labor market. In the aftermath of this recession, however, that isn’t happening for employment rates. Using a clever research design that looks at workers with similar education and skills doing the same jobs at the same large firms but in different locations, Yagan finds that location continues to matter years after the recession has ended. Workers who worked in the places hardest hit in the 2007-2009 recession have employment rates today that are 1% lower than similar workers in regions that were less hard hit.
I can tell you exactly what happened. People kept being told if they worked harder they'd be rewarded. So they worked harder and harder.
Now, the loudest voices from the conservatives (the group telling everyone to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and work harder) are saying "we never claimed there was a guarantee of a reward" and "shut your whiny entitled mouth" when the highest-producing people in recorded history ask for their reward.
So now the productivity gravy train has come to a screeching halt. Now that the rug of empty promises has been yanked out from under them, the people are showing no interest in working harder for nothing.
It's really that simple. A strong economy doesn't get votes. Americans now want to be entertained. There's no difference between trump supports and sanders supporters, but neither of them are advertised anything that will actually "make America great again." Instead, we've decided to embrace European smug mediocrity, and it shows. 40 years of lost wars because we had no desire to actually win. Stagnating economies, stagnating birth rates, stagnating education, blaming "inequality" because all basic needs are met, plus cell phones.
There may have been a pause but with us all being on the cusp of so many different breakthrough technologies, like 3D printing, self-driving cars, advances in AI, and lots more exotic stuff coming to fruition in materials research we can easily have another such burst of productivity.
Don't let the pessimists get you down, greatness is always incomprehensible to them and they cannot see it coming even if beaten over the head with it.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
"TED Talks" ran their course some time ago.
#DeleteChrome
Management Won! Did you hear that guys, Management Won!
When a MBA degree became desirable than an engineering degree, Americans became more interested in imaginary wealth than creating and improving things
While companies are busy measuring smartphone sales as some proxy for how well the industry is doing (and calling the PC market dead), I see a difference between PCs as machines used to do things, and smartphones as ways to waste time. Obviously this isn't exactly true, but in general it is. This is why smartphones have replaced PCs in popularity - people would rather waste time than do work. The media is so focused on getting our "attention" rather than helping us get things done, and we're so connected to that media now, that in my opinion it's obvious why productivity is falling. People aren't really working when they're "working" anymore. They're just distracted.
Also, don't discount the importance of air conditioning in US productivity, especially in the southern US.
That said, there could be a new jump in productivity as better technologies are developed. What if we counteracted smartphones with a drug or a widget that could make you focus?
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
I am not a freedom / open source fanatic BUT let me be captain obvious ...
The reason the exploding internet and data revolution is failing is due to closed data silos. When we have to fight stupid things like obfuscated / or proprietary / or trademarked text file formats that you can't use because of magic laws of no value let alone dealing with anything complicated like unpublished binary formats and purposely closed doors ... you end up not being able to efficiently connect anything to anything. With the recent stupidity, if they prevent us from properly encrypting data we are going to have to cut off outside access altogether ...
The whole culture and economic and legal structure will have to change before you see anything as significant as he predicts.
For at least the last hundred years, they've been writing economics books like really boring Mad Libs:
"The __(segment of economy)__ is going to __(boom/crash)__ in the next __(time window)__ because __(jaggedy line graph of the economy)__ looks a lot like __(other jaggedy line graph that turns sharply up or down)__."
It must be nice to be able to pick your doctoral thesis with a dart board.
I hope that Gordon's prediction is incorrect, but being in the manufacturing industry and seeing the new hires come and go makes me worry.
The millennials are for the most part lazy and dependent. They can't function without their cell phones and this is inside a plant where cell phones are prohibited except for management and supervisors.
Have you ever fallen asleep at the keybhanusdiog?
The "problem" with interconnection is that it propagates outside of just Internet and device-to-device linking.
During the last few decades it has become increasingly easier for people to not only communicate but to travel and work together (or fight), no matter where they are.
This means:
- Salaries across the world are slowly trending towards a midpoint. This will suck for more developed countries and will boost lesser developed countries.
- Productivity will likewise even out: countries where people work 6h a day will no longer be able to sustain that work style. Similarly, countries where people work 12h a day, 6-7 days a week will slowly roll down to less than that.
- Cultures will clash. They already do and it's not pretty. Some countries' culture is 500 years back: they will have to go through a deep transformation to reach present time, or they will bring down more evolved cultures - and then productivity will be the least of our worries as a species.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
I see a huge false narrative. "Productivity" is a result of numerous things, and primarily related to Freedom. Yet I don't see this person mention Government regulation and usurpation of individual rights anywhere. He does mention wage disparity, but that is due to Government activity, not the Market. The educational problems are another issue where the Government has taken over and failed miserably.
But hey, more Government will surely come to the rescue and save us from that other Government waste and abuse.
*nothing directed at you, except the agreement with your statement*
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Economics has very low predictive power. The high numbers of variables it deals with, and the high pace of change in those variables (and even in the set of variables that needs to be considered) make any effort at prediction futile.
"You don't need to be a weatherman to know which way the wind blows"(IIRC)
To summarize, we all have seen what has happened in the US in the last few decades.
Who or whatever you want to blame:
technology, greed, de-regulation, "increased productivity", globalization, the decline of unions, etc
The fact remains, the average American is less well off than they were a generation ago.
No amount of statistical chicanery can deny that.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
America was strong because her morals led to a strong work ethic. Now people has fewer morals and are lazy
Because what? Because those algorithms aren't complex enough? This gets into that fine line of when do you call it an AI and stop calling it an advanced autonomous algorithm. The definition is fuzzy at best. You're putting human decision making on a pedestal and degrading the massive leaps forward that we have made in the algorithms which make these machines function. Artificial intelligence even by the most fringe of definitions still fully encompasses devices which can use data which they have gathered, apply an algorithm to that data set and then make a decision or perform an action based on the interaction of that algorithm and data.
It isn't AI like the Terminator or the Matrix, but it is simplistic, rudimentary Artificial intelligence. Navigation / Learning these things are by all modern definitions intelligence or intelligent behavior. If an ancient man was to see one of MIT's robotic dogs wondering about a forest, do you think they'd call it a machine? Without any outside influence beyond it's base programming it's performing an intelligent function
The problem is that inequality rises for example because there's an underclass of working poor who will stay poor no matter how long or hard they work. They're being kept back through "emergent behaviour"; the system of laws ment to protect the poor and large corporations employing their capital to suck as much value out of the working poor while paying a pittance, working within or around the laws to do it.
Don't know about the rest, but this one "headwind" isn't a cause, it's a symptom.
The real problem is people just don't realize how well they have it these days
That is incredibly true - a big part of this is that the media which should be researching and pointing this out, is instead over-dramatizing every small problem encountered to a degree that over time, things LOOK worse and worse even as they get better.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
We could have continued increasing productivity, at least into the foreseeable future.
I remember a couple of decades ago when telecommuting became possible (roughly 1990), and the IRS stepped in with rules that made it less inviting as an option. Among other things, you couldn't deduct the expenses of your home office, and you could no longer be a consultant (1099), you still had to be a regular employee (W-2). Unless, of course, you were a doctor, lawyer, or architect - those three professions were excepted from the rule.
A little later, someone pointed out that GE pays no taxes (among many other businesses), leading to the conclusion that it's nigh impossible to start a business that makes a competing product.
Microsoft did its "embrace, extend, extinguish" thing to a bunch of other companies. Microsoft would "consider purchasing" your software business, sign an NDA and send in some engineers to check out the internals and otherwise determine the fitness of the purchase, choose not to purchase, then come out with a competing product 6 months later.
This happened so many times it became a meme.
(Let's not forget that Microsoft illegally forced itself on many computers. Whole companies sprang up to deal with viruses and other security exploits, while a viable alternative floundered. The first person to purchase a computer and return the Windows software got sued by Microsoft, and had to justify his actions.)
We gave the telecom companies $200 billion to bring everyone up to broadband. They took the money and did nothing - much of the country can't get internet access, Comcast can be the most hated company in America, and mobile phone service is spotty, the quality is choppy, and the communications insecure.
We give away our productivity and resources to other countries for little or no gain, we've been neglecting our roads and bridges, our electric service is outdated and increasingly unreliable, our health care is third-world-class. Our education is top-heavy with administration and mindless rules, and the cost of extended education burdens the student for the rest of their life.
(It's really hard to start a new business, make an innovative invention or do scientific research, when you're burdened with education expenses for the rest of your life, have to hold down a low-paying job just to survive because the high-paying one was outsourced to a H1B, can't get good internet service, and are forced to use Windows compatible software, and have to purchase health insurance at $5,000 per year per family member.)
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This is in stark contrast with, for example, America of the 1920s. Reading newspaper articles of the times shows that the country was hopping with ideas. Just about everyone on the street in NYC had ideas on how to start a business, invent a new machine, or otherwise make their fortune in America.
Immigration was easy, just show up and get registered. Immigration was a self-selecting evolutionary sieve for people who were smart and could get along with other groups. You had to leave your family, community and support system behind, and learn a new language, culture, and laws. But if you could do it, you could make enough money to have the rest of your family come over to join you.
(Nowadays it takes 10 years and $30,000 for a Russian (to use an example) to emigrate to the US... if you win the immigration lottery.)
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My point for all this is that we *could* still be having increases in productivity. If we just eased up on all the arbitrary unfairness and burden we place on the people, The electronics revolution isn't quite over yet, the internet revolution is about half over, there's a ton of room for innovation in medical sciences, and the bio revolution is just getting started. (And the start of the AI revolution might be very cl
This is nothing new. In fact, the current degree of income inequality has been exceeded in the last 100 years, in the 1930s. Just like today, the 1930s were an era of prolonged economic stagnation fueled by intensive government regulation and global tumult. "This too shall pass."
is more and more likely to be made of silicon and steel. Automation is rendering the productive capacity of individual human beings less and less relevant. With production efficiencies at historic highs and still increasing rapidly, we should ALL have a great standard of living and a great quality of life - lots of time for creative pursuits, and friends and family, without working our fingers to the bone. But NO - workweeks are getting longer, more people have multiple jobs, and average incomes, (except for the elites), are dropping. Why do you think that is?
Fuck the "headwinds" - the clear and present danger to a healthy, happy future for most of us is extreme-and-still-growing wealth concentration. We need to tackle the truly Herculean task of re-engineering our social institutions, our cultural and historical and religious biases, our mass propag.., er, media infrastructure, and our fundamental outlook on social hierarchies. All the pearls of wisdom from all the pundits in the world are just more circuses - distractions from the job of building sane and fair societies for ourselves and our children.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
Our grandparents' parents electric lights and telephone are now the internet and wireless and google and wikipedia -- nearly instant access to nearly the sum of human knowledge nearly anywhere.
There's an inflection in the productivity graph, yes, but it is opposite of what Gordon says, productivity will go up, not just in the USA but worldwide.
there are 3 kinds of people:
* those who can count
* those who can't
One barrel of oil has a price more or less equal everywhere around the world with the minor price differences attributable to transportation costs, quality and demand to this particular brand. However a guy flipping burgers in California making $15 per hour, or a truck driver making, let's say $70,000 per year, are not more and not less productive than Chinese cook making $3 per hour or some truck driver in a country XYZ, making $7,000 per year. Clearly, both of the workers in their mind are 100% productive and put 100% of their efforts.
First and foremost, readers must understand that US dollar is fiat currency and from the cook's and truck drivers point of view, productivity is equal. It is the pay in US dollars that is not equal. However the pay does not only reflect productivity, but also reflect other factors, such as prevailing salaries in the area and customers ability to pay prices for the services rendered. It is logical: business will continue and expand, as long as there is a profit to be made, irrespective of the salary level.
A Recap: we have found direct connection between productivity calculated in US Dollars to the customer's ability to pay. We have already determined, that individual efforts of the workers are equal in absolute terms (but not equal when calculated to the country's currency).
In USA customers have ability to pay those high prices, can afford to buy $40 steaks and $10 burgers, because there is enough wealth accumulated, people are not afraid to spend it and, as we all know, USA is does not blink for a second when there is a need to borrow another trillion dollars, mostly from Chinese. It is the wealth created by US people, allows USA to pay.
What exactly is "Wealth"? The answer is a) imperfect but predictable and relatively transparent legal system, b) obnoxious and annoying, but professed freedom of speech, c) civil liberties, d) absence of external military threats and e) adequate respect to the property rights. All those factors make USA a country, relatively attractive to many (but not all) immigrants, relatively attractive to investors to both US assets and to obligations. Capital availability allows development of risky ideas and creativity, which further fuel innovation. And it is innovation and creativity that is a driver of high added value products.
For those who are ignorant, it is a little secret that, for example, in China, you cannot do business, unless the inner party has an official stake in ownership. If you have a successful business in Russia, it will be taken from you (Yukos, VKontakte (Durov)). Mexico and Latin America is a cradle of corruption. When did you hear about last great global blockbuster, an invention created in islamic world (where would they be without oil/gas)?
Here is the full chain:
Productivity equals Wealth equals Civil Liberties, Rights and Freedoms
I would disagree, at least in the case of Amazon. They've revolutionized Logistics and Distribution, especially in concert with the shipping partners like UPS, FedEx, and DHL.
Better logistics and distribution adds to productivity.
Drastic cuts, old wealth disappearing, new order emerging etc held something at bay in Europe.
America had its own internal frontier. As long as the frontier was moving west and more land came under the till the population growth kept it going. World war II and the baby boom helped it going farther.
Finally we have run out of frontiers both in Europe and America. But that is merely the space frontier, the time frontier is endless. The next generation, always larger than the previous in sheer numbers will provide the demand needed to create more jobs than lost. But the pace is furious and is acceleration. Society does not have the time to adjust or grow to create more demand.
The world simply does not have the energy and material needed to provide first world comfort to the third world. But efficiency gains in material and energy use, as well as labor use, can create the demand needed to keep all the world employed gainfully.
Improving the living conditions of the third world is how we can create jobs in the first world. We need to promote trade that will genuinely improve the lives of the people of the third world, not trade policies driven by tax dodgers, job outsources, and environment scofflaws.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
No, not the welfare recipients. American laws and tax structures favors people who have money, use people to their, and game the system.
Just a though experiment:
A person works to make $100; they can expect to end up with $70 in their paycheck.
If someone's rich relative gives them $100, they get $80.
What utter bullshit. The person doing nothing gets more, and they procreate, breeding more people who provide no benefit.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
The millennials at the company i work for seem to be, on average, hardworking and productive members of the team. The people who are a little older and have been with the company for five or ten years may still have a leg up on them, but that's because of experience which is obviously something that only comes with time.
Perhaps the hiring practices at your company need improvement? Or maybe you need to adapt more? What does "can't function without their cell phones" mean exactly anyways?
"the young men of the governing class, are habituated to lead a life of luxury and idleness both of body and mind; they do nothing, and are incapable of resisting either pleasure or pain."
- Plato, The Republic, 380 BC
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
As usual, pretty much everyone pushing on one end or the other is full of it.
First, many innovations save you money, hence LOWERING GDP, and therefore lowering productivity.
Next, our immigration policy, while bringing in highly skilled tech workers who have great productivity, by the numbers brings in primarily unskilled workers who have pitiful productivity. As those folks become a larger part of the work force, overall productivity goes down, while the innovation of the high-productivity folks can continue to increase standard of living for say the upper half, while not being reflected in GDP.
Moral: don't pay too much attention to numbers. Pay attention to what actually is happening in the physical world.
With Government entitlements and subsidies, who needs to be productive...
Is it a measurement of sex and sleep deprivation?
Will you run an engine lathe eight unfucking hours a day because the syndicate tells you the people
need what the lathe produces?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Well, Gordon may be right, but I suspect he is projecting his own plight ( age, etc...) on the nation.
So. now that the humor has been dispensed, let's look at productivity, rewards, and satisfaction/incentives.
Manufacturing jobs moved out of the nation. Building things gives most people a form of satisfaction.
Then there are trends in corporate behavior: downsizing, outsourcing, and the wage gap. A lack of job security is a negative.
Prices on homes, cars, etc. are too high for the average wage-earner ( NOT a husband and wife both working! ).
How much expandable income does the average worker have?
Have the corporate MBAs and government economists worked out how much they can extract and not accounted for this?
Now comes required/mandated health-care. Extra expenses. Unaffordable?
Add onto all of that the future prospect of paying for college, or loan debts larger than some homes....
Looks pretty dismal, but not because of the workers. Let us label the thing properly:
Corporate greed, government greed , and idiocy all around.
The rise of government regulations on private employers contributes to the decline in overall productivity.
It's amazing how the changing *genetic distribution* in America doesn't enter into the discussion at all. I guess genetics doesn't play any role in intelligence or personality or work habits ( http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/04/why-kenyans-make-such-great-runners-a-story-of-genes-and-cultures/256015/ ).
Where did I say they needed to work harder and write better than previous generations? I said to work hard, not hardER.
I guess you can add reading comprehension to the list, so they actually understand the communications people send. Also the ability to let perceived outrage diminish as it's all too easy to take offense where none is meant. That's just a super valuable life skill all by itself.
Last word for me, I've said what was needed:
but the world accepts this now
And that... is why you fail.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Productivity increase = growth. It's not even a question that this is true. The amount of labor it takes for the average worker to be able to buy a loaf of bread, a gallon of milk, a gallon of gas, etc... Is the indicator of how well a society is doing. Have a look at this:
http://www.epi.org/publication/ib330-productivity-vs-compensation/
I see it all as a bi-product of globalization of industry which has been pushed hard since the 1980's (Regan years) and got a little assistance from the wars that transpired following 9/11. There was even a Time magazine interview with a General (I believe that was his rank) where he said something very similar. To paraphrase "we'll continue to go to war to plant capitalism and establish/negoitate trade agreements because it's good for the world and very good for maintaining peace". When you have someone in India, China, etc... willing to do for $10/hr the same job a US worker demands $60/hr for. There is a real problem. Left out of the equalition that calculates the impact on our society is that the non-US worker is accepting the much lower wage because it's a good wage relative to his/her culture. He may drive home at the end of the day through streets where little law enforcement or infrastructure exist. He may not even have dependable electricity or running water. He may live with a dirt floor, etc... So to him the wage is good, but it's very much connected with his culture. When we give US Corporations incentive to use off-shore labor. They not only nix American jobs (while finding every tax loop hole possible.... here's looking at you Apple Corp) but they also collectively lower the standard. They productivity demand continues to rise while compensation flat-lines. It's really just a compensation balance American way of life taking a hit overall as the big corporations continue to profit. The divide between the elite upper class and average US worker widens. If you're still thinking that's really not a problem, you have no f-ing clue about economics. You may hold the opinion that you prefer the average worker to take this kind of hit and tell me you like the idea of the Elite 1% getting richer, but to say it's not happening at all is absolute ignorance. I'd love to see some data that refutes these claims because 100% of what I've seen, like this data tells the same story.
I think at one time a lot of people who were starting a business did in the back of their minds want to do some good. Some of this good translated into increased productivity for humanity. Today I think the balance has shifted dramatically; the focus is all on the benefit to the company and no one really cares about doing good any more. This has translated to companies that sell us crap that wastes our time rather than make us more productive because they only care about making what we will pay the most for. Any gains in productivity (I saw Amazon's logistics mentioned) now go to benefit the company internally. This has come to be perceived as normal because we all know a corporation is not obligated to help anyone except the shareholder's bank account.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Except people keep killing each other and not using turn signals.
This is probably an indication of the relationship between functional growing society and its ability to support corrupt politicians and an increasingly corrupt tax/ legal structure.
Bringing in cheap labor hurts productivity. Businesses don't come up with better functions/strategies or new technologies, they just get cheaper people.
Think of it as mowing a lawn. A lawnmower allows a person to maintain a yard (a ride-on allows an even larger lawn). What if you just had those manual reel-mowers? Bigger lawns for most people wouldn't be possible. But if you had cheap labor (say 50 cent an hour Indians), you could hire a bunch of them to use reel-mowers on your lawn.
The unofficial U.S. immigration policy was been unrestricted illegal immigration. I've seen Americans replaced in lawncare jobs by, presumably, illegals. George W. Bush's line about illegals doing jobs Americans don't want to do is a crock of shit. Business owners replaced Americans with illegals whenever it was possible. (Both the Democrat and Republican establishments are created a second-class that do crap labor, don't speak English, and won't assimilate. Wonderful situation they've created.)
The H1-B visa system is designed to bring in cheap workers. Why bother training Americans for these jobs when there's a cheap foreigner out there who can do it on the cheap?
The standards of how people live and behave is also a factor. An Indian who works for 16 hour days and then you ditch after 5 years is a better investment than an American who works for 8 and needs time off. Some illegals live 20-30 people packed into an apartment (my economics professor did this; to be fair, I no idea if he was illegal or not, but it irritated me either way).
If we curtailed illegal and visa labor, rebalanced trade, then wages for Americans would naturally increase. When demand for labor is higher than the labor supply, wages rise. When demand shrinks or the supply is too great, wages fall. ("Everyone learn to code" sound familiar?)
It was powered by cheap energy: https://gailtheactuary.files.w...
thegodmovie.com - watch it
I don't know why he even mentioned social media when comparing and contrasting growth of productivity.
That being said, the true effects of machine learning have not really hit yet. Once we are in the midst of the upcoming storm of automation, it'll be interesting to see if he still holds the same view.
The issue is that nothing radically new has been invented (like was in the late 19th and early 20th century). An analogy would be we are hitting mores wall and we have been just making things more efficient for the last 40-100 years.
I agree though that this country was in the right place at the right time, with the right laws and system, ect. There are a few other connections too, like for instance the UK giving the US pretty much all experimental research during WW2. It would be tantamount to the US giving all its technology secrets to china or india and seeing those economies benefit. On top of that, we also got most of germany's secrets and scientists.
The US economy surged simply because the New World had a very low population and a tremendous amount of natural resources. We no longer have a small population and we have exploited resources to the point that acquiring useful materials is much more difficult. Many of us have also learned that growth is its own kind of horror story. Look at the wastelands that were once the leaders of growth such as Detroit, NYC etc.. Flint Michigan is an example of what growth can do. Then consider that when we go back 150 years all manufacturing involved tremendous numbers of workers as did farming. Now we don't need workers in those fields and we need less every year. Technology is replacing human effort. That is exactly what technology is supposed to do. It is replacing human effort by elimination of employment. And the price and availability of labor is becoming less and less relevant. Instead of worrying about whether a worker gets paid one dollar an hour or ten dollars an hour the new game is to worry about whether your robots can produce better product, cheaper and quicker than the other nations robots. It is not like the handwriting is on the wall. It is more like the message has been printed on a baseball and shoved up your nose. Yet the state of denial in the US is such that the changes that must be made to accommodate this entirely new horizon are close to zero. In twenty years the percentage of the public that is employed will be less than 5%. Our laws, our government, our social customs and beliefs all must be altered almost beyond recognition to prevent chaos during this transition. It may well be that authoritarian regimes such as china will have an unbeatable edge as they can order large social changes at the snap of the fingers whereas nations that are more moderate simply can not adapt quickly enough to prevent collapse. Frankly capitalism will become almost unheard of in the near future. The simple fact is that the public will have to be well paid in order for businesses to survive. That means that sales taxes and business income taxes will be the only resource to support both the public and the government. Consider this as a serious example. Driverless cars simply will not get traffic tickets. Your police departments are financed by income from traffic tickets. Without traffic tickets, it may be impossible to have police departments that are effective. Driverless cars are just one change among a host of changes coming at us like a bullet. We need the velocity of adaptation to equal the velocity of change and we are failing miserably.
Your example, of course, deliberately ignores the $30 the rich uncle already paid on taxes. You're bitching that they only paid $50 in taxes instead of $60 compared to your $30. Go feel the bern and try to steal the rest of the $100.
You should have responded with:
I should buy a boat.
That snidely implies that one needs money to procure a boat to avoid drowning in a hypothetical "a rising tide".
It also superfluously drags in a cat meme, which is the only way Mankind can communicate while avoiding the scrutiny of the AIs. [*]
[*] you are theeneenk I make joke...
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
And it's a typical day in Democrat fantasy land.
As machines do more work, the productivity per human employee trends toward infinity. I'm not entirely excited about a future where fewer humans are doing less of the meaningful work; that leads either to utopia or dystopia and I'm pretty sure utopia is a fantasy.
As a thought experiment, imagine the U.S. in 50 years with ~350 million people, 1 or 2 percent of whom can program robots well enough to not be a net-negative balance on a ledger. The rest can try to work in service jobs that robots haven't yet become better at; think nurses, barbers, masseuses, salespeople, etc. where real human contact is still desirable. You don't need 98% of the labor force in the service industry. Even if that 98% of the population worked half-time just so they could spend the rest of their working week getting services from the other half, no one can survive on a part-time job. Most people are not that great at service jobs, and very few would willingly pay ~half of their salary every week just consuming services, which is what would be required to avoid massive and increasing wealth inequality.
The utopian vision is something like extreme socialism or extremely lucky capitalism; either way it requires very forward-looking investment or policy changes. Either the 98% gets most of their consumable goods virtually for free due to complicated tax and social policies or the 98% become expert capitalists and invest enough money in an index fund of robotic manufacturers, effectively converting share dividends into the goods and services they'll need for the rest of their life.
There's also the crazy techno-punk idea that somehow the 99% of people who couldn't care less how their cell phones, much less toasters, work will take 3D printing and Maker culture to its logical nanotechnological conclusion with everyone surviving on their own using minimal resources from a small amount of land and copious solar/nuclear energy to power their nano-assemblers, *without* ending the world in grey goo or biological plagues or any number of other terrible outcomes.
Thorium is regulated under strict nuclear non proliferation despite it not being a viable source for atomic bombs. Thorium is found where raw earth minerals are found. Thus China and other countries are eating our lunch in terms of productivity because we can't compete in rare earth minerals. Everything needs rare earth minerals these days from cars to computers to cell phones, robotics, 3D printers -- You name it. If a product doesn't use rare earth minerals directly it uses them in the machines that are used to produce it. It's far cheaper to manufacture near where the raw material is unearthed. Since the US is suffering from regulatory capture by big energy giants, all the rest of our manufacturing is suffering as well.
If the energy industry would stop fearmongering about "nuclear" and lobbying against it, and our government would let us build safe Thorium reactors that can't go critical and actually consume nuclear wastes, then we'd have a use for Thorium (rather than just stuffing back under ground). If we allowed a market for Thorium to exist then mining rare earth minerals wouldn't be so expensive as it is today, and we could bring manufacturing (and productivity) back to America. The more manufacturing we do here, the less chance for our foreign competitors have a chance to steal our trade secrets. Currently we have to mobilize massive legal machinery and push though crap like TPP in order to enforce policy globally because we are engineering things here, but are forced to manufacture them over seas (and then ship them back here to sell them to our own people -- just think of all that waste in shipping).
[ Would you like to know more? ]
who does this guy think he is exactly?
Between the 60 hour work weeks and automation there's not a lot of work to go around in a country where your entire quality of life is based on your job.
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They're trying to position bots with machine learning as a replacement for company specific apps that take care of customer service issues. If it works out expect millions of customer service jobs to go away. Funny thing is it's mostly a problem for the developing world because those low end jobs have already moved over there.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Once a technology has matured sufficiently the required knowledge to master it becomes much easier to attain. Innovation occurs when talented people use their skills to improve upon the state of the art. Who is inventing the technology that will keep us fed in spite of global warming? Who is going to clean up the plastic particles choking the oceans? When it come time to address these issues some societies will be better prepared than others. Those spending enormous amounts of resources to keep people out will likely fare the worst. How is that Mexican border wall coming along, Mr Trump?
This is easy to explain: the libtards have largely removed the motive to innovate, work hard, create, and produce. They've done this through hand-outs, bail-outs (the republicrats helped here), "changing the narrative" to make successful (rich) people the enemy, over-taxation, over-regulation, etc.
Just remember: you didn't build that.
> By comparison, Gordon argues, today's technological advancements -- Uber, Facebook, Amazon.com -- will touch the productivity of the American economy lightly -- if at all.
Those are all commercial successes that are built on real innovations.
I must admit, life is not changing as dramatically as it was during the time of Bell, Edison, Wright Brothers, and Ford.
Kind of kills productivity no? Also how will income inequality transform with robotics and AI under a capitalist system? Will the productivity of the average worker improve or will their displacement and unemployment decrease overall worker productivity?
This is just an American myth! If you actually go and look at the graph of labour productivity since 1970 you'll see the USA has always been no better than average, and certainly below the level of most of the nations with similar societies but social democracies that provide greater equality and freedom such as Australia, Canada and New Zealand. Of course if you prefer to compare the USA to the most damaged countries then it'll look great..
"Sending drones..."
I'm guessing you do, since the gov thinks violence is an answer to everything. (Plus very profitable to a few people.)
Salaries across the world are slowly trending towards a midpoint. This will suck for more developed countries and will boost lesser developed countries.
Yes, I've long said "free trade is the great equalizer." It's not that workers in developed countries get a pay cut. It's that their raises are not as large as those of workers in less-developed countries.
The rising tide really does lift all boats, and the trick is to not begrudge them their 8% raise when you're only getting a 2% raise. The alternative -- banishing the factors that drive growth -- means both parties would get a 0% raise.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
Government has succeeded in destroying so much of what was special about America. We used to often here "it's a free country" and people really meant it. We used to believe that the world was open to any who wished to apply themselves and they could expect equal treatment from a government designed to protect their right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness - a government whose sole function was to protect the freedom of the people, not to rule over us.
Yeah it wasn't perfect. Yeah it didn't cover some people well if at all for a long time. But it was based on something radically different than almost any government before. And that difference made a huge difference in the economic realm as well when freedom extended as free trade - voluntary marketplace interactions only.
Bit by bit the people have forgotten freedom. Bit by bit those with a very different vision whether the State rules the people and a person is subservient to the state has taken over. And it has hurt economically as well. There are over 400,000 regulations on the books. The amount of red tape on business is ridiculous. The amount of limiting of choice of what can be offered for sale or purchased is extreme and growing. The State eats 40% of wealth and more as it has us $19 trillion in debt and at least $100 trillion more in hock for unfunded liabilities.
So don't pretend that the rich did it or some unknown malady has befallen us. Look to government and to the people forgetting freedom and what this country is supposed to be about.
Never use your money to save a company you don't have an investment stake in. Companies that are so myopic as to have those sorts of issues will NEVER praise you for saving the day; the fact is they will most likely fire you for profiteering. Never, ever, work for a place like this. No good will ever come of it. My director says the same thing. I use my personal accounts for my convenience - that is all. on the rare occasion I use a personal account to get something, I am asked why - and I tell him I wanted it NEXT DAY. If the system ever goes down due to Company planning it is the Companies problem. Find a boss that backs you on that and get behind them - they will likely look out for you in many other ways.
does anyone think that a human worker can become more productive, indefinitely? its got to taper off at some point, unless the work being produced is mostly from automated enhancement, like robot arms. i can only move so fast, build so fast, think so fast, write so fast. this is as stupid as the idea that an economy can grow forever. when we are using all the energy input from the sun, and have used up all the stored materials on earth, we will have a steady state economy, with negligible input from extraterrestrial sources (the gravity well is too costly to overcome by any trivial means). and, why do we need to be more productive? why cant we just be happier? productivity increases are only necessary if you have a boss or company that needs increasing profits. profit is not necessary. all we need is enough entropy reversal to maintain homeostasis and increase the complexity of the ecosphere.
As someone whose water has been and continues to be out for the last 12 hours, I can say that no, the internet is decidedly not as essential "as running water". Although it does let me bitch about it on the internet, so I've got that going for me...
This sounds Oddly Familiar...
"America is past it's prime and over, nothing better is coming"
http://patentlyo.com/patent/20...
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
...negatively
I think Robert Gordon's conclusions are so clearly self evident5 that it astonishes me anyone would even disagree at all... I mean.. just *what* is going to pick up the slack for the introduction of electrical devices, lights, refrigeration, transportation, the assembly line, and so on.. These things can only ever be invented *once*. It's not too different from the rock and roll boom of the 50s to 70s. That's not about to happen again, ever, either...
Never again. If you want those heady days to return I suggest you take a little trip with John Titor...
America is a car culture. We drive more than any other culture.
Self driving cars will benefit us Amis more than any other culture.
An 8 hour work day with a 1-hour-commute each way can show a 25% daily performance increase if that commute is transformed into useful working time.
I expect in car offices will be a major selling point, and will double as entertainment centers, while being as upgradable as car stereos are today.
The same productivity increase applies if the commute is used to check bank account and pay bills that would have been done at work. The same applies if personal stuff done on the commute lets the worker stay at work longer.
Would You rather spend your first hour at work checking email, or do that on the way and arrive ready to roll?
The first self driving cars will be bought by those who make the most money, and are the most productive. Self driving cars will trickle down step by step to eventually allow our welfare recipients to get to classes at the community college more easily.
We AmeriCANs still have a few tricks up our sleeves.
We simply don't know what technological advancements the future will bring. Development may have slowed but that is not what gives most cause for concern. Our biggest problem is that the worlds economy depends on growth, while there is a limit to how much this planet can handle in terms of resource consumption and pollution. We either have to find a way to decouple economic growth from increases in consumption or rebuild the international economy so that it can cope with negative growth. Further adding to the problem is that it is no longer possible to keep the poor 3rd-world masses in the dark wrt how miserable their situation is. The increased migration we now see towards Europe and North America is just the beginning of a stampede. It is just a fraction of the migrants that are refugees from wars. The vast majority are economic migrants. More fair distribution of resources globally is the only non-violent solution to this problem.
As for the US economy the dominating problem is that resources and wealth is accumulating out of circulation. It doesn't help business-owners that they are able to sell a handful items to the super-rich when the mass of consumers they rely on for their income no longer can afford the products. The US economy would have been much better off if the income-distribution among the populous had been as it was 20, 30 or 40 years ago. The de-regulation of finance and industry that has has happened since the 1980's can lead to total disaster if it is not reversed in time. Competitive markets are great, but un-regulated capitalism tend to converge towards private monopolies. Startups and small businesses need some basic forms of protection in order to maintain a competitive market.
"what makes the US labor force one of the world's most productive. is permanently in the country's rearview mirror."
Bullshit might get you at the top, but it won't keep you there. And here's the next fortune teller that can explain exactly what went wrong.....for just $3.99
Seems since all the manufacturing and IT and oh whatever else can be shipped to a foreign countries has been done so (and now with the Pacific Trade Partnership Agreement we are shipping off our farming, dairy, etc.) what is there to measure? Seriously, I would like to know?