Jim Ley wrote:
> On Wed, 7 May 2008 01:54:23 +0200, "John of Aix"
> wrote:
>
>>> By the way because you will seldom see a taxi on the streets of
>>> Lille the Station now hires out Segways or whatever they call them.
>>
>> Nor in many towns, that is because, as I've said elsewhere, the
>> current taxi drivers don't want any change in the law.
>
> Of course they don't - they get less competition, what you should be
> looking at is do customers of taxis and prospective taxi drivers want
> a change to the law, not the incumbents who benefit from the system.
>
>>> That's your modern dynamic productive France.
>>
>> I did not say it is dynamic but it is the most productive nation in
>> Europe, that is a fact not opinion, you can look it up if you care
>> to do so.
>
> Erm, no, it has the highest productivity per hour worked
Quite, but that is the way it is calculated
> - but it also
> has a very small labour force and I don't feel it's reasonable to
> count productivity and ignore the productivity of the non-working who
> are being supported by the workers.
That is also the way it is calculated. Any other way would mean that
countries with larger populations would automatically have higher
productivity than smaller ones. Like any figure it is counted per
person, per thousand etc.
> So yes, on the simple output per hour worked they look good, but
> that's not a good measure of productivity, due to the very different
> numbers of workers
I've said so several times that while per hour productivity is higher
(and calculated that way normally) it is inevitable that a worker who
works 48 hours will (or at least should, even if lazy) produce more in
the end than someone working 35.
However, this being said, working 35 hours gives other things to the
economy, not only a happier workforce, unaccountable statistically, but
the extra free time available brings benefits such as more money spent
on leisure, more time to visit museums or otherwise inform oneself, less
stress so less cash spent on treating it etc
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