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zer00eyz 2 hours ago

The chart you're showing, absolutely reflects the reality of some of the most productive segments of our economy.

Ford now makes more cars, with fewer people. Sears used to have people who took photos, laid out catalogs, opened envelopes (with checks in them).... Amazon has none of that. We replaced switch board operators, with mechanical, then digital switching. More calls routed, fewer people required. go back 45 years and "draftsmen" was a job - replaced by auto cad.

All these industries have seen massive productivity.

Are the people flipping burgers more productive? Plumbers? Welders? Teachers? Nurses? -- to some extent yes, because of technology but not to the same extent as the previous businesses. Anything that qualifies as "service economy" work has not seen the same gains as Ford (see: https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/phenomenal-gains-in-manufactu... )

PaulDavisThe1st 2 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

One cause for lack of productivity gains is Baumol's cost disease, which generally affects organizations involving N different people (for N>1) where for one or more reasons N cannot be meaningfully reduced, if at all. Orchestras are the canonical example.

There's a variant of this, however, in activities that are done essentially by 1 person (as is true for most of the examples you mention in your last paragraph). You can improve their individual productivity - more pipes fixed, more joints welded, more patients well-attended to (*) - but in the end you cannot get rid of the individual doing the work in the way automated manufacturing has.

(*) even with a nurse though, this starts to break down for activities where time is a critical part of whatever is being done. Sometimes caring well for a person is primarily a matter of spending time with them, and this is certainly true for teaching as well. In such cases, you cannot make the person "more productive" no matter what technologies you might provide them with.

boelboel 43 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

Construction notably has had productivity losses since the 80s afaik.