Re: At least 1.4 million homeowners will lose their properti

On Thu, 29 Nov 2007 18:42:44 -0600, "John Galt"
<whoisjohngalt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:


"Rumpelstiltskin" <PleaseDoNotReplyByEmail@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:liauk3pr641dnmi2ktrjf5dj32agf5ukp3@xxxxxxxxxx
On Thu, 29 Nov 2007 14:01:31 -0600, "John Galt"
<whoisjohngalt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:


"Rumpelstiltskin" <PleaseDoNotReplyByEmail@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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On Thu, 29 Nov 2007 16:57:01 +0000 (GMT), Anonymous
<nobody@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On 28/11/07 23:05, in article
bfprk31hjg0qodmi39gmkplbun20vmqi44@xxxxxxx,
"Rumpelstiltskin" <PleaseDoNotReplyByEmail@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Of course. Productivity measures output per unit of time. You pick it
.
Our
manufacturers are the most productive, our programmers are the most
productive-----your choice.


Programmers are somewhat productive I guess, though
much programming I think is just excess complication.
Farmers are productive more or less clearly, as long as
their crops aren't just plowed under. Other endeavors
less so. Paper pushers almost not at all, no matter how
hard they work. "Output" should be followed by "of"
plus some thing that's outputted, which should be the
thing on which any evaluation of benefit to the
commonwealth is focussed.

In particular, how is productivity measure in the
service industries? My understanding is that productivity
is measure in terms of money obtained for an hour of labor time,
not by the laborer but totally. If so, a lawyer's charges of
$300/hour of work means that he/she is much more productive than
than the hamburger flipper whose effective wage plus social charges
is $10/hour.

Right. That's why productivity statistics are quoted only for an overall
workforce and then among individual industries. You can't make
cross-industry comparisons.

Another problem with the productivity measure is that some services
can't effectively increase their "product" output. The performing
arts, for instance. An actor performing Hamlet might do one evening
performance a day. If the play is very successful and plays to a full
house, that limits the ticket intake. The only way to improve the
computed
productivity is charge more per ticket. By this measure the productivity
goes up but the production of services is unchanged.

Sure, but this problem is the same across all economies, and since one
doesn't compare productivity stats between industries, isn't matter of
concern.

American productivity just took a hit if measured in Euros, since
the dollar has declined for the same amount of work being done.

Can anybody clear up this kind of problem. It is not merely a question
of widget production per hour and the revenues produced.


My personal opinion is that nobody's going to clear things
up for you very well, because while there may be some
real meaning to "productivity", the measurement of it is
so arbitrary as to be mostly dependent on the prejudices
and agendas of the measurers.

There are nuances, but the OECD countries agree on the measurement. It's
complicated, but not arbitrary in the slightest, and not subject to
prejudices and agendas. The French, for example, make a big deal about the
fact that they have higher productivity than us per worker PER HOUR
WORKED,
which gets them around the pithy issue that they work about 20%-25% less
hours that we do.

http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/59/29/2352458.pdf



I would think that working fewer hours would be a major
goal of a society. After all, very few people enjoy working
as much as they enjoy their time off. I know for sure I
don't, it's why I retired at 54 and have never for a minute
regretted it, nor do I have any desire ever to work again..

Weird as it sounds, Rump, every single assessement of "life satisfaction" I
have ever seen, measured different ways, shows that IN GENERAL, the people
living in long work week/late retirement developed nations (US, Canada, UK,
Japan, Australia) have higher satisfaction with their lives than those in
the short week/early retirement countries (France, Germany, Italy).

JG


It does sound weird - so impossibly weird in fact that
I simply don't believe it. I think somebody's probably
playing games with the statistics. There's plenty of
motivation to do so, and we all know Mark Twain's
three degrees of lies: Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics.
I don't have close ties with any French, Germans,
or Italians, but my Swiss friend gets five weeks a
year vacation and thoroughly enjoys his holidays.
When he was last visiting here, I was still working,
and he was surprised that many Americans only get
two weeks a year. I had three weeks more often
than two, but I often just let it build up and didn't take
any vacation some years, because it was too little to
be much relief or do much of anything with if I took it
every year. (My three big vacations, the best times
of my post-college pre-retirement life, were two years
each, but of course I had to quit to get those.) How
come I couldn't have been born rich like Paris Hilton?
I deserved it more than she does.

Besides, we've all seen those lists of "best places
to live in the USA", computed via somebody's
statistical criteria. Usually, I wouldn't subject my rat
to living in at least half the results, if I had a rat.

I worked briefly ten hours a day four days a week,
but I got tired of that really fast. It was nice to have
the extra day off, but the other four days were so
much worse that it was a net negative for me. The
last couple of years before I retired, I only worked
eight hours a day Tuesday through Thursday, giving
me a four-day weekend every week. That was so
nice I could have done it indefinitely: I actually looked
forward to going to work. However, the management
structure changed and I didn't care for the new
direction, plus the new management was pressuring
me to go back to a normal five-day-week, so I retired
instead. I'd told my old boss I could easily do my job
in three days instead of five, which is something I
probably wouldn't do if I hadn't already been prepared
to quit. Actually, I could have done it in two, but I did
want to work more than 20 hours just to avoid being
"part-time" and thereby losing some perks and
credits. Probably a lot of jobs are like that. Most of
the jobs I've had, private and my last job in
government, were like that. For people who don't
have to be at a service desk all day, the 40-hour
week seems just an conventional indentured servitude
and not really necessary. It drove me up the wall
when I had to go to meetings, which were pretty much
complete wastes of time, with everybody just farting
around and competing for imagined status instead of
getting their work done.










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