zlacker

>>surpri+(OP)
They're going to eat our lunch because we let our legacy ICE vehicle manufacturers dictate the terms of the shift to electric. We have to be better about identifying economic developments that are likely to be concerns for domestic stability and national security, and not let greed and fear in the corporate class stop us from making the necessary changes. Another arena where we've already lost, in a sense, and will need to play hardball catch-up is healthcare: other countries have a more stable and hour-for-hour productive workforce because their workers can get preventative care and treatment for illnesses quickly and without a fuss. If we have to trash the medical insurance industry to reach parity with our peers, so be it.

>>underl+Bv1
Where are you seeing the US is a laggard in hour by hour productivity? The US is the best large country at this, coming in at #6 or #13 depending on the list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_labour_pr...

>>bobthe+Hw1
Hm, that's measuring everyone against the same dollar; Americans are productive by this measure because everything is expensive. I wonder if there are other benchmarks for productivity, adjusted for local market basket.

>>jazzyj+bA1
The numbers are in Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) USD so they already measure how many goods in the local market basket can be bought per working hour (on average, as these GDP numbers don’t account for income or wealth distribution).

>>tobero+yB1
For healthcare it might be getting to the point where the numbers are nearly incomparable. PPP seems like it'd be more inappropriate than usual for measuring a particular industry. US healthcare is known to be quirky.

Although there doesn't seem to be any obvious evidence here that the US could be lagging behind. Per-person the US is still a bit of a productivity outlier to the upside. When they aren't legislatively restrained they tend to work hard and in an organised way.