"-- Focus productivity towards increasing efficiency
-- Maybe not focus only on increasing the productivity of labor, but rather on increasing the productivity of capital, and even more the productivity of "rent", i.e. of natural resources or other such "free" value provided by our environment"
I believe productivity actually is a measure of effeciency. So for example, thinking in microeconomic terms, and carrying that down to the level of business, measures for work groups or production lines in manufacturing might be good units produced per hour--ex. 800 units produced in an 8 hour shift would give the productivity, or efficiency measure, of 100 units per hour. Similar measures exist for machines.
When you get to the level of the business enterprise, measures such as sales per employee are attempts to aggregate and measure employee productivity. Measure such as return on assets and return on equity are attempts to measure the return on capital, and compare the effectiveness of different businesses in using money invested in the business.
When you aggregate to the business, you obviously lose a lot of meaningfulness, particularly in measures like sales per employee. Clearly these measures obfuscate if the productivity improvement is due to increased captial investment, or improved knowledge and skill of employees. And I haven't ever really looked at these numbers at a national level--which is of course where your comments are focused.
But I wonder if in your first point you are intending to say, focus productivity discussions around producing the same output with less resources? I'm not sure.
The second point on the measurement of the use of natural resources is a very interesting one. I haven't seen attempts to do this before, but they must exist.
Productivity measures at a national level, I believe, tend to aggregate labor and capital, and just provide one productivity measure. The improvements could be due to improvements in labor, in capital or in systematic combination of the two. I don't know if productivity measures at a national level attempt to measure return on capital and return on labor--are you aware of literature on these points?
I think however that the national productivity numbers receive a fair amount of focus, because they are a key driver of the ability of real wages to rise over time. If productivity rises, the returns of that efficiency improvement comes to labor, and to the owners of capital--theoretically anyway.
I also must admit that I am a bit over my head when we start discussing "productiveness", from a business perspective (be that local or national) so hope some of our other community members can add to this discussion in a more expert way than I can. My intension here is to have this be an "open source" discussion, where we collectively build this model. So your input is valuable (and by the way, welcome to the communty!).
I worked for years as a manager in the US (I'm now in Europe), though it was in the social services profession, so trying to figure out how to measure productivity was a bit challenging there (though we figured out how to do it...but, for example, what kind of value do you put on a counselor who happened to work especially well with a psychotic, potentially violent client that everyone else was nervous about? Its labor intensive, but high value. But I digress...).
It can't just be about business bottom lines, in my opinion, it has to include "quality of life", in my estimation. For awhile now, I think the US model is more and more on the money bottom line, not on the quality of life. In Europe, the quality of life is quite high, and business is good too. How do we measure this between two systems that are so different?
Again, my concerns for putting this diary up, I acknowledge, are more practical in concern. How do we create productive and healthy business, for more jobs, so people have work, thus money to spend, so they can enjoy their lives...and still maintain a good safety net? It is an issue that isn't being addressed enough here in Europe (other than pressure from the "free marketers" who say we should abandon our system). "Once in awhile we get shown the light, in the strangest of places, if we look at it right" - Hunter/Garcia
I totally agree with you that quality of life in general is better in Europe than the States. I have European friends here in the States that often make the comment they would prefer to work in America, because they feel the opportunity and upward mobility economically is so much higher, but retire in Europe, where they really know how to live. that is also my experience, having lived both places. (though perhaps this California weather is hard to beat!)
but your point about measuring quality of life in addition to the economic measures is very important. I imagine we could find some work that has been done on this already, and perhaps use some of that as a basis.
But of course the spiritual side tells us that we all have happiness right in front of us. I was looking for a quote I loved from a book I'm reading by a Guru in India, who was a common man with basically no money, but I can't find the quote. But this will suffice:
If you look to others for fulfillment, you will never truly be fulfilled. If your happiness depends on money, you will never be happy with yourself.
Be content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belolngs to you.
Translated by Stephen Mitchell
In some ways off the subject, but a reminder that we are really all in charge of our own quality of life, at the end of the day. So deciding what to include as quality of life measures may be quite a challenge. I'll do some searching though.
