On Jan 12, 2008, at 11:30 AM, Shane Mage wrote:
> This assumption is more than dubious. Since most services are
> nonproductive (neither increase nor decrease the total real output
> of consumable and investible goods and services, representing merely
> private or social overhead costs) "productivity" is not a meaningful
> concept in relation to them.
Why does this distinction matter? From the POV of a capitalist in retail, the more you squeeze out of a pants-folder's hour of labor, the more money you make. I know the distinction is supposed to mean something at the macro level, but I've never been convinced. Supposedly the growth of all that unproductive stuff was to have doomed capitalism by now, but it ain't.
> As to services that are in fact
> productive (notably transportation and consumer-purchased
> communication services) there is no reason to expect productivity in
> these sectors to grow less rapidly than in manufacturing. In light of
> the extremely dynamic broadband and wireless communication subsectors,
> productivity in productive services might actually be growing faster
> than in the manufacturing sector.
Might? There are statistics on this, you know. According to bourgeois analysts, the major burst in productivity in the late 90s was in retail and finance, which you deem unproductive. Still, manufacturing productivity, according to the deluded bourgeois statisticians at the BLS, continues to outpace service sector productivity.
Doug