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The sad thing is that this kind of propagandistic sentences are crafted to make people believe that. Usually people don't understand producitvity so they unders

The sad thing is that this kind of propagandistic sentences are crafted to make people believe that. Usually people don't understand producitvity so they understand what you said from the sentence. A German reading that will think "Ha we work less and produce more" but that is NOT what productivity means. Productivity is the ratio between man work and output. So if someone works only 1 min a month and earns for that minute $30 you could say of that person that he is extremely productive. Compared to that person someone who works 24h a day and earns a million would have very bad productivity. [edit] So countries who find their competitive advantage in labour intensive industries and processes will by definition have lower productivity compared to industrialized economies. Germany being a very industrialized economy will have higher productivity by the nature of their business.

maxerickson 9y ago
National productivity numbers aren't using a mathematical gimmick though, they hold up if you look at yearly output/hours per year. One of the reasons for Germany's high productivity is that manufacturing is a large sector there.
- tomcooks 9y ago
  I think it has more to do with education. In Italy, Portugal and Greece students find themselves being overqualified for the antiquated production methods of industries in their countries, together with no investments from the government (e.g. italian 110m startup public investments against France's 60 billion) And agricultural output in PIIGS countries having been destroyed by EU regulations, goods are literally wasted because of quotas.
- comment123456 9y ago
  The problem is with productivity is that its that counter-intuitively, it might only be a measure of efficiency in absolute terms. For example consider a family that owns a plantation powered by slave labour. If you look at their gdp/work its close to infinity. Then you go to the plantation and measure the productivity ratio of this as an economy and it would be very low. So it depends a lot who captures the value of work and how you measure that as well. The more capital you have and the more you can extract wealth without working the more productive you will be.
  - maxerickson 9y ago
    National productivity numbers do not have that problem either.

maxerickson 9y ago

National productivity numbers aren't using a mathematical gimmick though, they hold up if you look at yearly output/hours per year. One of the reasons for Germany's high productivity is that manufacturing is a large sector there.

tomcooks 9y ago
I think it has more to do with education. In Italy, Portugal and Greece students find themselves being overqualified for the antiquated production methods of industries in their countries, together with no investments from the government (e.g. italian 110m startup public investments against France's 60 billion) And agricultural output in PIIGS countries having been destroyed by EU regulations, goods are literally wasted because of quotas.
comment123456 9y ago
The problem is with productivity is that its that counter-intuitively, it might only be a measure of efficiency in absolute terms. For example consider a family that owns a plantation powered by slave labour. If you look at their gdp/work its close to infinity. Then you go to the plantation and measure the productivity ratio of this as an economy and it would be very low. So it depends a lot who captures the value of work and how you measure that as well. The more capital you have and the more you can extract wealth without working the more productive you will be.
- maxerickson 9y ago
  National productivity numbers do not have that problem either.