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C00002 00002	OPPORTUNITIES TO INCREASE PRODUCTIVITY
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OPPORTUNITIES TO INCREASE PRODUCTIVITY


	In order to afford new inventions like those in this book, in
order  to have more  leisure, and in  order to bring  the standard of
living of the  whole country  up to  the level of  the present  upper
middle  class,  productivity  has  to   be  increased.    It  must  be
immediately faced that an increase in productivity is genuine only if
it allows the same thing to be done with less human labor.  This will
dismay someone who  believes that there is a fixed  amount of work to
be done and that an increase in production per worker will result  in
an  increase in  unemployment  rather than  an  increase in  leisure.
Fortunately  this fear can be  laid to rest by  the observations that
the large increases  in productivity that have  occurred so far  have
not led  to permanent  unemployment.  Economic  theory also  tells us
that  the  level of  unemployment  can  be controlled  by  fiscal and
monetary  policy.   Therefore,  we  shall  assume  that  increase  in
productivity  is   an  unalloyed  good,  but   after  discussing  the
opportunities for increasing  it, we shall  devote some attention  to
the temporary dislocations particular improvements  may cause and how
to mitigate their undesirable effects. 

	Some areas  of human activity experience regular increases in
productivity and others  do not.   Which  do and which  don't is  not
determined by a law of nature but depends on the state of technology,
on social  organization, and on whether there is a desire to increase
productivity. 

MANUFACTURING

	Manufacturing  is   the  classical   area  for   productivity
improvement.  Its productivity  has both a technological and a social
component.   The differences  among manufacturing  productivities  in
different countries stem from both causes.  Thus there are many cases
in which a country like the Soviet Union uses an identical technology
to the U.S. (for example when  the plant is purchased from the  U.S.)
but obtains a  much lower productivity from the technology.   A first
approximation to quantifying this phenomenon might be to say that the
productivity is the  product of a  technological productivity with  a
social efficiency and that the social efficiency is characteristic of
the country and  sometimes of the  industry within the  country.   We
will guess that  the social efficiency of  the U.S. and Japan  is .8,
Britain is .6, and the Soviet Union is .5.  In this section, we shall
be mainly concerned with the technological component of productivity. 

	In general,  the productivity  of manufacturing  in the  U.S.
follows  the possibilities  admitted by  technology rather  well, but
there are some remarks worth making:

	a.  The technology of manufacturing productivity (as distinct
from peripheral topics like quality control  and operations analysis)
is  not   developed  as  an   academic  discipline.     There  are  no
experimental production lines and almost no professors of  production
technology.  Most  likely, there is a  substantial missed opportunity
here. 

	b.  The area  of fastest productivity  improvement is  in the
manufacture of electronics.  Unfortunately, this is a  consequence of
a technological situation, the possibility of integrated circuits and
the  possibility of printed wiring that  cannot be transferred to the
manufacture of mechanical devices. 

	c. Much  of the  increase in  manufacturing productivity  has
been achieved by  economies of scale in making  very large numbers of
identical objects.  This has substantial costs in the quality of jobs
and in  rigidity of product  design.   Computers provide a  potential
means of getting the economy of mass production with individuality of
design.  Numerical control and computer control of machine tools is a
first step in this direction  and the automatic assembly machine will
be  another.   Because  of special  opportunities, the  manufacture f
electronic  devices  can do  this  easier  than  the  manufacture  of
mechanical devices. 

RETAIL TRADE

ADMINISTRATION

	1. Not doing it. 

	2. Making computers talkto each other
	
	3. Wiping out the brokers and other parasites. 

PERSONAL SERVICES

	1. Law and medicine - better access to information. 

	2. automated design and diagnosis. 

	3. Teaching

DOMESTIC

	1. Delivery

	2. Cleaning and putting away. 

	3. Child care. 

	4. Food preparation. 

	5. Maintenance and repair.