>Agreed. But overestimates in productivity growth in services that
>are purchased by businesses and not sold to consumers induce
>offsetting underestimates in productivity growth in industries that
>produce goods and services that are actually part of final demand.
>
>>What does is mean, and, more importantly, how is it distributed?
>
>Oh, distribution is lousy and is getting a lot worse fast. No
>argument from me on that.
I don't mean distributed just in the income distribution sense. I mean in the qualitative sense that income is an imperfect proxy for. How does Moore's law affect the life of a female-headed urban family? A truckdriver-nurse-four kid family? How are Wal-Mart's productivity gains distributed? Certainly not to its workers or suppliers (or even to its managers - the company makes them double up in Motel Six's). To its working class customers via low prices? I suppose, but the cheapened reproduction of the working class is a capitalist's dream, not a working class dream; a high proportion (can't remember exactly) of WMT's customers don't even have checking accounts. Socially, the WMT customer base isn't thriving. If productivity gains are distributed mainly to profits, then that's not a very good deal.
>A *very* different argument from Roach's, you will notice. The
>argument that the productivity gains are not social welfare gains
>because they are the result of speed-up might be true. But it's not
>what Roach is talking about.
No he's not, but his points are good too. Finance surpassed manufacturing in the gross product originating accounts years ago, so productivity in finance - heavy tech users - should be a pretty important question. There's no doubt finance people work a lot longer hours now than they did in the 70s, but I think the stats say no.
>And it does face the problem that the unemployment rate now is lower
>than at any time from 1980 to 1993: how is Wal-Mart accomplishing so
>much extra speedup now when its analogues could not do so then?
Kalecki's fear of the sack. The workers' psychological unemployment rate is a lot higher than 6.1%.
>>What other services? Not finance, as even Jorgenson and Stiroh
>>conceded, if my memory is serving me. How do you measure the real
>>output of the financial sectory anyway?
>
>God knows. Maybe it's like the gambling sector: value-added in
>gambling is how much the casinos fleece from the marks, after all.
Pretty much. The inputs are salaries, the outputs are fees. The higher the fees relative to salaries, the greater the productivity. Isn't money beautiful?
>>Health care? Ha.
>
>Actually, yes. Remarkable things are happening in treatments for a
>bunch of different diseases. Why, the difference claritin has made
>for my daughter...
I'm not arguing against scientific progress - I meant in the economic sense. Massive inflation, far in excess of outcomes.
Doug