Cub Driver ) wrote:
:
: How measured?
:
: Productivity is measured by the factors that measure productivity.
: Basically, you divide Gross National Product by hours worked, adjust
: for inflation, etc etc.
:

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0412-13.htm
Exposing the Conservative Straw Man - "Productivity"

"Exposing the Conservative Straw Man - "Productivity"
by Thom Hartmann

Thomas Jefferson wrote in a September 28, 1821 letter, "The government
of the United States, at a very early period, when establishing its
tariff on foreign importations, were very much guided in their
selection of objects by a desire to encourage manufactures within
ourselves."

Conservatives don't want you to know this, and - even more
frenetically - are working to prevent any discussion of
"protectionist" tariffs on labor. Their main argument - a straw man -
is that "productivity" is responsible for the loss of American jobs,
not a fundamental realignment in the rules of the game of business
starting in the Reagan era and climaxing with NAFTA and GATT/WTO.

Business publications love to quote 19th century economist David
Ricardo as saying, in "On Wages," his 1817 work, "Labour, like all
other things which are purchased and sold, and which may be increased
or diminished in quantity, has its natural and its market price."

Thus, they say, it's natural that American wages should have been in a
free fall ever since Bill Clinton signed NAFTA and GATT: America's
roughly 100-million workers now have to compete "on a level playing
field" with five billion impoverished people around the world.
Offshoring is simply the normal extension, they say, of Ricardo's
classic view of economics.

What they forget is that Ricardo also wrote, in the following
sentence, "The natural price of labour is that price which is
necessary to enable the labourers, one with another, to subsist and to
perpetuate their race, without either increase or diminution."

[snip]

"But offshoring isn't the problem for American workers!" conservatives
shout. "It's the increase in productivity. American businesses need
fewer workers because automation and hard work have made our workers
more productive."

This is a tragic lie, and it's been bought hook, line, and sinker by
most American politicians and even many economists.

Productivity is, very simply, the measurement of how many products or
services can be produced for how many dollars of labor expended. But
offshoring distorts productivity figures in two ways.

First, foreign labor is cheaper, but produces nearly identical amounts
of product or service. The result is "increased productivity."

Second, many corporations don't put offshore labor onto their balance
sheets as a labor expense. Because they hire offshore companies as
subcontractors to do work previously done by their own employees, they
get to reduce the number and cost of their employees while having an
only slightly increased line-item on their P&L for the subcontractor.
The result is that it looks like their remaining employees are getting
more done, because the offshore employees are no longer counted in the
productivity figures.

But the Indians and Chinese know something you won't hear on
conservative "business" programs. While China and India eagerly let
multinational corporations move work from America to their nations,
they fiercely protect their own domestic industries primarily through
the use of tariffs - taxes on imported goods - and the strict
regulation of imported labor..."


Ricardo's "natural price of labour" is also known as the iron law of
wages:


http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0110-05.htm
The Price of Globalization

"The Price of Globalization
by William Pfaff

[snip]

The iron law of wages is also simple and logical. It says that wages
will tend to stabilize at or about subsistence level. That seemed
inevitable to Ricardo, since while workers are necessary, and so have
to be kept alive, they have no hope of any better treatment since they
are infinitely available, replaceable, and generally interchangeable..."


Communist China offers an example of the iron law of wages:

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/silic...ey/4597519.htm
Mercury News | 11/24/2002 | Cheap products' human cost

"ZHONGSHAN, China - Pan Qing Mei hoists a soldering gun and briskly
fastens chips and wires to motherboards streaming past on a conveyor
belt. Fumes from the lead solder rise past her face toward a
ventilating fan high above the floor of the spotless factory..."



http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...2002May12.html
Worked Till They Drop (washingtonpost.com)

"SONGGANG, China -- On the night she died, Li Chunmei must have been
exhausted.

Co-workers said she had been on her feet for nearly 16 hours, running
back and forth inside the Bainan Toy Factory, carrying toy parts from
machine to machine. When the quitting bell finally rang shortly after
midnight, her young face was covered with sweat..."



http://makeashorterlink.com/?W1C232991
Photo essay: China's hi-tech toxics (child labor)

"Photo journalist Jeroen Bouman gets a rare glimpse inside the illegal
Chinese workshops where young teenagers work long hours amid noxious
fumes, recycling computers from the US and Europe. The industry has
turned four villages in Guiyu, Guangdong province, into toxic waste
tips. Drinking water is now brought by lorries from 30 kilometres
away..."


The U.S. may be seeing the start of the iron law of wages:

http://www.epinet.org/content.cfm/we...chive_01212004
Jobs shift from higher-paying to lower-paying industries

"In 48 of the 50 states, jobs in higher-paying industries have given
way to jobs in lower-paying industries since the recession ended in
November 2001 (see map)..."


A friend just returned from a trip to Communist China and reported that
the pollution was bad, like the "Smoke Pollution in Benzi, China" picture
at this site:

http://www.wri.org/wri/wr-98-99/airpoll.htm
Health Effects of Air Pollution


--Jerry Leslie
Note: is invalid for email