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No, productivity growth _as measured by economists_ is becoming irrelevant.
by arcanus 9y ago
No, productivity growth _as measured by economists_ is becoming irrelevant.
- blazespin 9y agoHow should we measure it?
- crdoconnor 9y agoIt's not really measurable. Whatever it is, GDP / hours worked isn't it.
- mattmcknight 9y agoNo sure why you are being downvoted, as this is a main point of the article. "But the essential insight is still important: much that delivers human welfare benefits is not reflected in GDP." GDP is not that useful of a measure for the wide variety of things that used to be expensive but are now free. It also includes a lot of things that are not exactly products, depending on which calculation is being used. In a broader sense, these national level calculations ignore the global economy except to add exports and subtract imports. Countries that import a lot thus have worse looking GDP, while still consuming large amounts of others' production. We used to use GNP (until 1991 or so) as the official measure, but it made the increasing amount of the budget spent on government debt obligations look bad so they switched. No doubt we'll find another gross measure to use.