Take cars as an example: if we were building Fort T models, then yes, they would cost peanuts (especially Chinese copies). But for every dollar of productivity increase we add two dollars of safety devices, emission controls and new shiny gadgets.
Making safer and less-polluting cars is a productivity improvement: it means people are getting better cars -- and everyone else is getting less likelihood of getting killed in a car accident, less health damage from other people's exhaust fumes, etc.
Right, but in the context of this discussion the cost primary function of the car (moving my butt from one place to another) has increased, or, in the best case, stayed the same.
Though, interestingly, the older generations, especially in rural areas, talk about driving as an event. Back in the day they would carefully plan trips into town once a week to gather supplies and run other errands. These days, nobody thinks twice about hopping into the car every single day of the week. The average number of miles per driver driven per year has certainly trended upward over the years.
The total costs may be as much as ever, but the consumption is also higher. The productivity gains have been realized by moving your butt further and more often.
Productivity is an economic term of art, which IS the context of this discussion.
Productivity in the non—services sector of the economy has increased dramatically. You can buy much, much more stuff per inflation adjusted dollar.
There remains rigidity in the market, which doesn’t generally make it easy for people to work 15 hour weeks to earn a 1940s income, but really, productivity for goods has dramatically increased.
That's not quite true. Automation has expanded at an explosive rate for 20 years. For many products, it takes nobody at all to produce them. How does that figure into 'productivity'?
I do not believe there are that many fully automated production lines and even those ... needs people to maintain them and build them and develope them and fix broken parts etc.
Believe it or not, its been happening. In fact if it isn't automated and is of any size, then it's been outsourced to Asia. When it grows to a sufficient size to warrant the fixed overhead of automation, it may return to the western world. But without the assembly-line jobs, giving lie to the idea that bringing factories back will create (many) jobs.
The 1% of 'old factory jobs' that are retained (Engineer, planner etc) won't employ many people.
