Bad, Productivity! Bad!

Are Workers Too Productive?

Increased productivity is exhausting the workers?  Yet the source of the increase in productivity is tools which multiply the effects of their labor... which creates more output for the same effort. Really?  Yeah, that doesn't quite jive when you think about it...

You can find similar doom-and-gloom predictions in historical documents from the agricultural revolution and the industrial revolution (and I'll bet all the way back to the Bronze Age "Woodcutters will be WAAAAY too productive!"). Times of change often result in displaced workers, which eventually frees up enough people to shift into new or expanding industries. Productivity in one area or another may create saturation in that particular market, but I can't believe that we've exhausted the capacity of human demand. First, that doesn't mesh well with accusations of "boundless capitalist greed" and it also conveniently ignores large parts of the world where people's wants and needs for goods and services are certainly not being met.

The big factor here is globalization. Localized industries (like retail and other services) remain little changed, while easily transferred industries (like manufacturing and export) shift to developing countries. But with 15% annual salary growth in India, how long do you think it will remain profitable to shift jobs there? The short term impacts are unsettling, but the long term result will be more countries with populations that produce things that we want and that want things we produce. The alternative is to condemn entire nations of people to living in squalor and subsisting on handouts: much better to allow them the dignity of work.