It should be apparent in looking at productivity, that although growing, it appears to be growing more slowly. How can this be the case if more and more people aren’t working and more and more technology is? This question actually has its own name. It’s called the “productivity paradox”, and it is perplexing more than a few very smart and knowledgeable people.
I believe the confusion rests in how we measure our productivity. Productivity is commonly calculated as GDP divided by total hours worked. When GDP grows or hours go down, productivity goes up. When GDP falls or hours go up, productivity goes down.
The combined effects of technology and the globalization enabled by it are eating jobs, but for those left working — because they are by and large earning less — they actually need to work more. Instead of jobs requiring the 5–6 hours of work a day they actually on average now require instead of 8, we clock in more than 8 hours as a matter of survival. Instead of working one full-time job 40 hours a week, we work one full-time job 47 hours a week to make sure to keep it, or multiple part-time jobs even more than 50 hours per week to compensate for the lower pay.
Advancing technology is not being allowed to improve our lives to the degree it could, if we were to make other decisions as a society. Instead, we’re actively forcing ourselves to work a greater number of hours thanks to the effectiveness of the tools we created to require fewer hours. Does this outcome make any real sense? Is all this new and extra work in the labor market truly necessary or are we performing it because a job, however unnecessary is currently necessary to live?
At the same time we’re fully voluntarily creating incredible world-changing value in our free time. Creations like Wikipedia and open-source code are not being counted as part of GDP calculations, meaning productivity is rising invisibly. The numbers aren’t showing it because we’re not even counting it.
https://medium.com/basic-income/our-paradoxical-economy-courtesy-of-technology-and-the-lack-of-basic-income-361f40051de0
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