American Productivity: The Big Lie

Alan Tonelson and Kevin Kearns address the myth of American productivity on today's Op-Ed pages in The New York Times. It seems off-shoring labor accounts for much of what has generally been perceived as increased productivity. Lobar employed overseas is never counted in the analysis. All a business has to do to demonstrate its increased productivity is ship jobs across national lines.

I recently heard the story of an international film company that has shipped much of its technical work to China where labor costs are substantially cheaper, only to discover that the Chinese labor force is technically far less sophisticated than its American and European counterparts, forcing the company to go to considerable cost in an effort to train their Chinese workers. Perhaps if they were just stamping out plastic buttons, this would not be an issue, but the more highly technical matters appear to be a different matter.

My guess is, though, that the stock price for the company went up, because "productivity" rates were increased as a result of the off-shoring of labor, even though real productivity declined dramatically. Of course the company's productivity might also be increased by simply not meeting payroll and begging its employees to keep working even while they're not being paid.