Those are not the assumptions, but there are indeed a great many problems with measuring productivity.
Usually, you only count work for money. Cooking dinner at home does not go into the statistic. Ordering dinner from a restaurant does. I would say that it is a problem that the “production” of leisure time is not counted. Of course, it’s not clear how this could be reasonably done.
“Productivity” already goes some way towards addressing such problems. It is usually GDP divided by hours worked (for money). US Americans work far more hours than their European counter-parts, so that their average incomes are much higher. Whether they are actually richer, depends on the value of “free” time. “Free” in quotes because it does not include necessary work like housework or healthcare visits.
If you look at a list of countries by productivity, you will find that it more or less matches common intuitions about what the rich countries are. That’s where people want to migrate to, so it does tell you something.
The point being made is that the global economic order, as built and maintained by our world leaders and “captains of industry”, is obviously not sustainable in a variety of absolutely crucial ways. We need to find a less capitalistic and more humanist dynamic to orchestrate our society by. It’s becoming more and more clear that simply assigning dollar-value amounts to everything and then comparing them is not a good holistic strategy for managing the efforts and direction of a civilization.
Those are not the assumptions, but there are indeed a great many problems with measuring productivity.
Usually, you only count work for money. Cooking dinner at home does not go into the statistic. Ordering dinner from a restaurant does. I would say that it is a problem that the “production” of leisure time is not counted. Of course, it’s not clear how this could be reasonably done.
“Productivity” already goes some way towards addressing such problems. It is usually GDP divided by hours worked (for money). US Americans work far more hours than their European counter-parts, so that their average incomes are much higher. Whether they are actually richer, depends on the value of “free” time. “Free” in quotes because it does not include necessary work like housework or healthcare visits.
If you look at a list of countries by productivity, you will find that it more or less matches common intuitions about what the rich countries are. That’s where people want to migrate to, so it does tell you something.
The point being made is that the global economic order, as built and maintained by our world leaders and “captains of industry”, is obviously not sustainable in a variety of absolutely crucial ways. We need to find a less capitalistic and more humanist dynamic to orchestrate our society by. It’s becoming more and more clear that simply assigning dollar-value amounts to everything and then comparing them is not a good holistic strategy for managing the efforts and direction of a civilization.