[PeterStuer]

I hope you'll forgive me for the bluntness, but I'm trying to be brief.

First a question: how come 'productivity' has gone up by 2% annually for nearly a century (if you know compounding you know how massive this is), yet we all have to 'work hared' and 'longer' for less, while our social security is being eroded?

'productivity' in a 'Red Queen's Race'[1] economy has 0 value. We're not doing work to ensure 'survival' or 'progress' anymore. 10% of People could carry that. We long ago stopped having a production problem, we have a(n artificially sustained) distribution problem.

At the 'economic ground floor' level we're in a self accelerating 'service economy' which at the systems level is both driven and preyed upon by a 'rent-seeking' economy that in socio-economic power far outplays the former. Transactions are the key, not what actually goes around.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Queen%27s_race

[dredmorbius]

You could see real productivity increase by some measure (entropic, say, or total available free energy), with the "work harder and longer" dynamic, by other mechanisms.

Failure to equitably distribute gains, a capricious allocation such that individuals might make mint one year, be skint the next. No viable pensions or annuity system. Etc.

Value extraction from labour is the age-old economics problem. It faced feudal peasants, it faces the modern urban/suburban knowledge wage slave paying it all out in rent or mortgage interest. David Ricardo's two bugbears were the laws of rent and wages, in opposition to one another.

GDP's distortions are legion, but you still have the rent/wage dilemma without that.

... Though some measures of gross happiness or support might address that. Hrm. We mearsure GDP. But Smith says:

POLITICAL œconomy, considered as a branch of the science of aThe first object of political economy is to provide subsistence for the people statesman or legislator, proposes two distinct objects: first, to provide a plentiful revenue or subsistence for the people, or more properly to enable them to provide such a revenue or subsistence for themselves; and secondly, to supply the state or commonwealth with a revenue sufficient for the public services. It proposes to enrich both the people and the sovereign.

http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/smith-an-inquiry-into-the-...

That is, his standard for economic performance is support of the population, generally, and financing the state. Elsewhere and earlier he calls explicitly for improving the lot of the poorest especially.

GDP does none of this.

I've beeen meaning to read Kuznts's notes specifically for some time.