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Why Aren't We More Productive?

NPR

Advances in technology have driven eye-popping advances in productivity over the last hundred years. As machines have replaced artisans, individual humans have gone from making a single item every so often to producing hundreds of lamps or chocolate bars or T-shirts every hour.

Since the 1940s, productivity in the U.S. has been on a tear. Until about ten years ago, when it slowed to a crawl. Which is odd, because about ten years ago was when we really began to embrace computing technology and the internet. You might have thought these advances would make us more productive, but the data says they haven't. It's something of a mystery.

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Stacey Vanek Smith is the co-host of NPR's The Indicator from Planet Money. She's also a correspondent for Planet Money, where she covers business and economics. In this role, Smith has followed economic stories down the muddy back roads of Oklahoma to buy 100 barrels of oil; she's traveled to Pune, India, to track down the man who pitched the country's dramatic currency devaluation to the prime minister; and she's spoken with a North Korean woman who made a small fortune smuggling artificial sweetener in from China.
Paddy Hirsch
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