At least Bizweak is consistent: they never fail to print something boneheaded. Some of the more urgent howlers:
> Europe now has an hourly output per worker some 20% below American levels.
OECD stats show hourly per capita productivity in France, Germany and several other EU countries is significantly higher than the US. The 20% figure is just official GDP divided by population, a false metric.
> Europe also spends less on research and development -- about 2% of GDP,
> vs. nearly 3% in the U.S.
Ye gods. US R&D was 2.61% of GDP in 2003 (the NSF tracks the numbers here: http://www.nsf.gov/sbe/srs/infbrief/nsf04307/start.htm). Of course, a big chunk of this is military; civilian R&D is probably 2.3% or so. The EU figure is an average covering semiperipheral economies like Spain and high-tech stars like Finland; if you look at individual countries, per cap GDP correlates reasonably well to R&D (Sweden and Finland are above 3%, France is around 2.3%, I think, and Spain is 0.9%).
> The biggest psychological impulse to boost productivity is the
> survival instinct: the drive to be smarter, faster, bigger.
What a crock. This is like something out of a bodybuilder magazine. "My ultra-silicon-phallus makes me King." Productivity is boosted by diffusing work-place skills, strong unions, topnotch educational systems, cooperation across disciplinary fields, and high wages. When workers are expensive, capital is forced to invest in labor-saving tech. When workers are cheap, capital just sweats them.
-- DRR