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Americans are becoming less productive, and it's a risk to the economy
- metadat 4y agoIf we aren't slaving away the party will end? This doesn't sound like the best arrangement.
- ppjim 4y agoI believe we are living a collective burnout.
- harshalizee 4y agoI concur. Almost everyone in my circle are all either too burnt out, or just tired all the time to do anything else. The few lucky ones, who can afford to have quit or taken a sabbatical to pursue something else. I don't know if this is a large scale effect of long Covid, or everyone collectively too exhausted after dealing with everything the last two years. Something's gotta give.
- silisili 4y agoThe COVID theory is interesting. I'm going through it as well, and did have COVID. I however assumed it was just the generally depressing nature of everything going on. You're in a climate crisis and going to all die or starve or go to war soon. You're a racist and transphobe because you don't care enough to keep up with everything or participate. You're a communist because you think health care should be free. Want a house? Yeah fuck off companies and landlords are buying them and you'll rent like a good citizen, and pay more for the privilege. Got a raise? Fuck you again inflation is going to take it all back and more. Got kids? Well, they probably won't get shot at school today, but thoughts and prayers just in case. And that's just American happenings, not even getting into global conflicts. I try not to dwell on any one thing, but man, it's all so exhausting. Where did all the optimism go?
- etempleton 4y agoYeah, I see it everywhere. Where I think the loss of productivity is though is that people burnout and teams at companies are hitting and inflection point where they have too many people coming and going and that is creating inefficiencies and wasted time. I don’t think people suddenly stopped working hard. I think work hasn’t been as conducive to, well, work in many places.
- chatterhead 4y ago
- aintmeit 4y agoYes, the noose tightens around the neck, but you're too dumb to notice.
- aintmeit 4y ago
- stjohnswarts 4y agoIt's around our collective necks unless you're part of the 0.1%, or you live off grid in a cabin in the woods. Otherwise, you'll feel it.
- aintmeit 4y agoYes, we'll all feel it. And by "it", I mean fate. Too late to change anything now.
- Buttons840 4y agoThis thread is a waste. Plainly state what you mean. Don't make allegories. Don't speak figuratively. Say what you mean. And include supporting evidence if you have any.
- aintmeit 4y agoI will continue to make allegories. I will continue to speak figuratively. I will not say what I mean. I will not include evidence even if I had it. We good?
- mplewis 4y agoAmericans are the American economy.
- cratermoon 4y agoSubtle here how "the economy" is used to mean "profits for employers and their investors". Also ironic that the 22yo profiled decided to quit and get his real estate license. As if that were a job never subject to bubbles and the whims of the financial markets.
- sschueller 4y agoMaybe workers should benefit a bit from all the increase of productivity in the last two decades since thay haven't until maybe finally now.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- theknocker 4y ago
- nomagicbullet 4y ago> “In the end, [low productivity] could have a profound effect on the country's well-being, according to economists.” Not to minimize the rippling repercussions a of slow economic growth, but this article is entirely framed from an economic perspective. A valid perspective, but also an incomplete one. What about the impact to individual wellbeing? To community cohesion? To mental health? If we ask economists if workforce disenfranchisement is bad, they will always say yes. Slow productivity is bad for the economy, but is it really “bad” for humanity.
- cratermoon 4y agoAs recent events has demonstrated, e.g. the pandemic response, the only acceptable perspective at the policy-making level is the neoliberal consensus, in which everything is decided, in the final analysis, on economic rules centering "free markets" and profits. Everything is transactional.
- norwalkbear 4y agoShouldn't the economy SERVE Americans? Just absurd and evil, people are human and don't just exist to serve to financial speculators.
- akomtu 4y agoThere is a bigger elephant in the room: what do Americans do, as a nation, to justify such a lavish lifestyle?
- metadat 4y agoEver heard of a Crab Mentality? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crab_mentality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crab_mentality
- Qem 4y agoPrints green bills that are worth a lot of merchandise in nearly every country in this world. If there's people alive 2000 years from now, this is one thing future humans will scratch their heads to understand about our time. "Do you mean, back then people worked their asses off and wrecked the planet to produce lots of things, just to exchange them for small slips of paper painted green elsewhere? WTF 20th-21th century people!"
- wetpaws 4y agoNobody cares
- anm89 4y agoA bunch of people getting angry in here because they dont understand economics. Productivity isnt a value judgement. It certainly doesnt assign fault. Saying low productivity hurts the economy is just a factual assertion. How we do or dont solve it and who wins /loses in those scenarios is a political decision Unlike many of our problems of the last decade, yelling at economics on twitter wont cancel it and make the problem go away
- cratermoon 4y agoI understand economics well enough to ask you to clarify, please, what you mean by "the economy".
- stevievee 4y agoThis article and many like it "assign fault" to the labour by making too many assumptions about the cause of the decrease in labour productivity being a decrease in labour effort, motivation etc. In reality, this just a misrepresentation of the metric. Not sure why you don't think this would anger some people.
- Qem 4y agoThe fault lies in whoever took the decision of ofshoring most high productivity manufacture jobs elsewhere. The service sector is not subjected to huge productivity gains. If one works flipping burgers or serving tables, productivity of individual workers is mostly bound. There is no Moore law increasing the number of burgers flipped or tables served per worker per year.
- retrocryptid 4y agoSure. Our productivity is slipping. But remember, the economy is here to funnel money into Atlassian and Amazon. Sure, you might think that you can deliver a product without an AWS-backed mobile application and an agile methodology. But you must use agile, and that means JIRA. Otherwise you're just not a real company. So sure, JIRA may drive down productivity and your boss may require you replace a notepad with a triple-redundant DynamoDB table backed by a custom python app in a container fed via a barely functional API Gateway. But low productivity is the price we pay to participate in "the future." (Next you're going to be telling me I shouldn't have invested our payrole in Luna.)
- cityzen 4y agoIs the dynamodb a single table design? Asking for Rick Houlihan.
- labrador 4y agoThe reason seems obvious to me. Young people can no longer afford to buy a house. Young people have a much harder time achieving the American dream. When I was in my late 20's, early 30's I was able to get married, buy a house and start a family. It was almost automatic. That's just what you did. I found out after buying my house that it turned me into an adult who was invested in the system. Home ownership feels like the bedrock for a stable and sane society. I worked hard to attain and keep what I achieved. Today young people are priced out of the housing market and are hesitant to have kids because the future appears grim. Why get married under these conditions? Why work hard? There isn't much reward so it doesn't sense to waste your time that way. I never hear my theory discussed by wealthy people and their publications because they'd rather blame it on something else, especially on young people themselves.
- kamaal 4y agoThis doesn't look like a good argument. Developing countries, have it way worse, and they have kids, stable families and wake up to go to work(Which is often a tough job) every single day, without asking themselves 'Whats the point of all this?' You might want to check your other cultural/social incentive structures if they are rightly aligned and pay enough positives for people to start families.
- cratermoon 4y agoExcept in the US the political economy is effectively built on the idea that if you work hard, you'll get ahead. > You might want to check your other cultural/social incentive structures In fact, not working hard is seen as a moral failure, thanks to the Protestant work ethic. Is attitude is also seen in parts of Europe. So yes, please do question the cultural and social economic forces in play. Developing countries? Generally outside the old work hard, get ahead mentality, and sometimes outside the entire developed western (post-industrial revolution) attitudes towards work, accomplishment, and happiness.
- sgregnt 4y agoAre there any statiatics to support such claims? E.g. number of median salaries to buy a median house or avg price of sqaure foot to median salary (to account for larger house size)?
- twobitshifter 4y agoIt appears we are on trend after correcting for the pandemic bubble. During the pandemic output fell but hours worked fell much more. More productive industries made up a bigger proportion of the non farm labor. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/OPHNFB https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/OPHNFB Look at a 5 yr view to see it clearly.
- mountainriver 4y agoThe answer is super simple. Cheap money made jobs too available so people quit working as hard.
- ninefathom 4y agoThe article itself mentions the impact on the economy. It also mentions productivity steadily increasing since 1948. So... productivity has been going up for decades, with purchasing power of average wages steadily declining over the same period. Maybe I'm just missing something, but this sounds to me like maybe the issue with the economy isn't the hypothetical, average American worker. Maybe the economic issue is actually some outliers in these data sets. Some outliers that contribute little to the productivity metric but disproportionately impact the various economic metrics. Hrm. Wonder what group of people that might be...
- landemva 4y agoAs far as "productivity metric" and GDP, the military industrial complex in USA has wasted tons of debt money the past couple decades. Half the defense budget, and all of the 2008 bankster bailout, and the 2020 cruise line bailout, should have instead been given to every American. Congress spends like this because the voters elect those people to best represent the banksters, cruise line CEOs, and bomb makers. Since voting doesn't change anything (except maybe local elections) why work so hard?
- the-printer 4y agoPeople need to put those “second brains” to use it seems.
- nus07 4y agoYou know what would make me more productive ? If I didn’t live in anxiety and felt a sense of security. I would then want to feel productive and contribute . However my time is instead spent haggling and spending hours talking to health insurance and every other form of insurance . I don’t know if I will have enough saved for a house and a good education for my kids . Public education is getting worse and college is becoming more expensive. No one wants to teach. I am also trying to save money and no option works because this country is like a casino with only 401k and stocks as saving options. And I am male so I don’t have to think about abortion but maybe guns. Ultimately Ronald Reagan’s policies from the 1980’s is coming home to roost . We live in a corporatocracy and no one wants to fix the community. You still want me to be productive working 60 hours a week ?
- nikau 4y agoIts possible all the low hanging fruit for automation has been picked. Pretty much every industry is reliant on computers and automation now, and all the high ROI process improvements are done.
- lifeplusplus 4y agoI was working hard because I had hope, I thought yes I'm trapped in a rat race now and housing is increasing in cost faster than my income ever could but if I keep working hard then I'll be in a prime position to catch a lucky break.... But real estate prices basically double in two years and I don't think I can get that lucky... So why kill myself, promotion doesn't matter, whether it happens this year or 10 years from now I'll be in the same place more or less. I'll try to enjoy however little and however hollow it's now. I never read fiction now I do.