m8ta
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Its also very difficult to compare western euro productivty to US productivity due to healthcare costs. The US system employs a payroll deduction to lessen the input of the employer and reduce ECI while the european system does not. Further, this underweights those costs in CPI. Statisticians in europe catch that difference while the BLS does not. One could point out, for example, that Europeans enjoy more leisure time, better health, less poverty, less inequality and thus more economic security, greater intergenerational economic mobility, better access to high-quality social services like health care and education, and manage to do it all in a far more environmentally sustainable way (Europe generates about half the CO2 emissions for the same level of GDP) compared to the US. I bet these facts don't show up in McKinsey's business productivity study. Then there are the aspects of the American model that may be impossible and unwise for Europeans to copy, but boost US productivity statistics nonetheless: Much of the surprising acceleration of U. S. productivity growth since 1995 originates in the trade sector, particularly retail trade . . . perhaps the most important factor of production in making this format possible is a large plot of virgin land which is much more widely available in the sprawling American metropolitan areas . . . The American explosion of productivity growth in retailing calls attention to basic life-style choices that constitute yet another form of ʺAmerican Exceptionalism.ʺ While the American form of metropolitan organization may promote productivity growth, Europeans are rightly skeptical of unmeasured costs of low urban density in America as promoted by explicit government policies. Europeans decry side-effects of the American system that may promote productivity without creating consumer welfare, including excess energy use, pollution, and time spent in traffic congestion. Tom Geraghty.
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