
Graduate school in a New Ice Age - peter123
http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/2009/03/02/22929/
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quoderat
What I've always wondered about is if productivity truly is rising at such
dizzying rates as the numbers imply, then where has all this productivity
"gone?"

It certainly hasn't seemed to have improved that many people's lives over what
they had or experienced for day-to-day living since the 1950s. Yes, there is
the internet and Google and all that, and it is a definite improvement, but by
my calculations if wages matched the productivity gains, they'd need to be
about 2.5 times as high as they are now.

So...productivity is better, but colleges can barely make it. Workers' wages
are crap, and falling. The food is worse, and the environment is worse. So
what does it even mean that we are more productive now, and where exactly have
these gains accrued?

~~~
gaius
One of my college professors used to say that there has been _no_ net increase
in productivity due to computers. Rather productivity has been simply shuffled
around. You need fewer accountants and secretaries (jobs that existed before
computers) but you need lots of computer people, doing jobs that didn't exist
before. But viewed as a whole, organizations generate no more value per person
employed.

