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Have a look at our GDP per capita graph and tell me again we're not more productive. We're working less and less and making more and more. Some of it is commerc
by FredPret 4y ago
Have a look at our GDP per capita graph and tell me again we're not more productive. We're working less and less and making more and more. Some of it is commercial and social innovation, but a lot is technology as well.
I work as a specific type of tech consultant to medium-sized companies, and it's wondrous to behold how easy we can make many aspects of business. Critical functions that took multiple handshakes, paper mail, multiple mistakes, and at least a week now take pre-arranged agreements, API's, and they happen in maybe two seconds, almost always perfectly, and before anybody even realizes.
- lotsofpulp 4y agoWriting or titling an article with an obviously false premise is an easy way to invoke emotions and get clicks. Sort of related to this: https://xkcd.com/386/ https://xkcd.com/386/
- pcthrowaway 4y agoThe phenomenon is also called Cunningham's Law: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cunningham%27s_Law https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cunningham%27s_Law
- marcosdumay 4y agoWell, for the lazy, there's a nice summary here: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?locations=US-XD-1W&name_desc=false https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?location... I've pre-selected a few lines because the problem is supposed to exist on the data of rich countries. You can deselect them at the blue bar at the top of the page (it's not obvious). I couldn't cut the data in any way that showed the issue ever existed. There is an half decade long decrease on the wealth of the poorer countries but nothing else on this graph. Anyway, "productivity" isn't GDP per capta. It's close to the GDP divided by the total worked hours. The fact that the GDP per capta is increasing (I didn't expect this) really puts the productivity problem in an entirely new light.
- DANK_YACHT 4y agoThe graph looks linear. If productivity gains were increasing (or even staying constant), you'd expect it to be more than linear. This implies the rate of productivity change is decreasing.
- marcosdumay 4y agoHum, ok, you expect an exponential growth in productivity. Any reason why? Anyway, talk about an underspecified issue. The article simply has no claim at all of how they expect productivity to behave, just that it's not following the expectation. The one productivity problem I'm aware about is about it not growing at all for decades, just moving on a noisy horizontal. It's relevant that the GDP per capita follows a different curve. That means that people are working more and adding less value by work-hour.
- DANK_YACHT 4y agoI don’t have an expectation. The article is essentially asking why is the second derivative of productivity negative despite increased technological advancement. I’m just pointing out that your graph shows that the second derivative of productivity is indeed negative.
- marcosdumay 4y agoWell, it's walking around zero, since the trend is a line. The rate of change is neither decreasing nor increasing in linear terms. But, anyway, that's GDP per capita. Data for productivity is much less available, but here is some for the US alone (that's the change annualized): https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?id=PRS85006092 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?id=PRS85006092, Notice that the rate of change itself (first derivative) stays for ages around 0.
- DANK_YACHT 4y agoI guess we're really talking about the first derivative of PRODUCTIVITY_GROWTH in the formula GDP/CAP(t) = GDP/CAP(t-1) * (1 + PRODUCTIVITY_GROWTH(t)).