I'm slow today, I don't get your point. Where is the efficiency?
My point is that certain sectors of the economy have lagged badly in terms of productivity growth. Manufacturing, farming, most of the production side of the economy in general sees steady improvement in productivity. This is why our standard of living goes up. Technology, in and of itself also assists. Computers have made a large impact.
When I started working in engineering 20 years ago, I had to call a company to get a mailed out datasheet or databook, so I could evaluate a given component. Eventually I had an entire wall of databooks for reference. I don't have any of those now. All on the web, and available in seconds or minutes at most. Things like that.
But the service sector that relies on professionals (education, medicine, law, etc) has not benefited in the same manner. Sure they all have better tools, and medicine in particular can accomplish much more today then a few decades ago. But few radical improvements have occurred.
Education is a good example to consider what is possible. AFAIK, we could implement a Web based educational system today. Heck, an OK computer + highspeed link could be had for <$1K/yr per student. Public education spends around $5K/yr or more per student. But tossing out all the public school teachers is not likely to happen. Its the same problem with radical tax code revision. We could choose to unemploy all the CPA's and Tax Attorneys, but I doubt it. In medicine, we could push offshoring. This is actually happening BTW. I have read about S. African hospitals and Indian hospitals targeting Europe and the USA for business.
Fundamentally, the problem is that an hour of professional time keeps rising in cost, while the economy as a whole sees the reverse, increased productivity. So unless a teacher teaches more students/hour, and a Dr. treats more patients/hr, these fields become progressively more costly compared to the rest of the economy. Basically, increased productivity in Detroit, or housing construction, or farming, or simply Wal-Mart & Home Depot delivering low cost Chinese products to America, makes education and medicine more expensive as a fraction of our lifestyle. There does not seem to be any simple solution, other than to eventually replace more and more of the functions performed by teachers & Docs with either lower cost labor (at home or abroad) or by automation. |
