The Bureau of Labor Statistics issued a report yesterday saying that labor productivity showed the worst quarter-to-quarter decline since 1993. Productivity as a whole had been in a downtrend every year since it peaked in 2003, after an extended period of growth. Productivity per worker is one of the most important measures of economic health and a significant long-term forecaster. Its rise signals aggregate growth, and its decline signals trouble.
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Peer2Politics
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on peer-to-peer dynamics in politics, the economy and organizations
Curated by
jean lievens
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Scoop.it!
David Graeber, the anthropologist and author of Debt: the First 5,000 Years, would also probably approve of it as a characterisation of what he calls “bullshit jobs”. In a recent essay for Strike! magazine, Graeber remarks on “the creation of whole new industries like financial services or telemarketing, or the unprecedented expansion of sectors like corporate law, academic and health administration, human resources, and public relations”, all of which he describes as “bullshit” and “pointless”. Their activity is to be contrasted with that of what Graeber calls “real, productive workers”.
It is telling that even in such a bracingly critical analysis, the signal virtue of “productivity” is left standing, though it is not completely clear what it means for the people in the “real” jobs that Graeber admires. 
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Scoop.it!
Mainstream thinking sees a community on a different level from the individuals who form it. The social is seen as separate from the individuals. From a Designing Change -point of view, this would mean different plans and actions on the individual level and different plans and actions on the communal level. And this is how we often think.
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