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Why is technology not making us more productive?
(www.bbc.com)
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this post was submitted on 24 Jul 2023
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It has outside the UK, like the oft-presented US graph of earnings vs. productivity.
The issue in the UK is the flood of cheap labour which led to a reversal in automation e.g. car washes becoming manual again instead of machines.
As they mention in the article - the UK is almost entirely dependent on American Tech companies for cloud services, etc. so all those numbers end up better reflected in the American economy.
Really you need policies that drive a high-wage, highly productive economy - free education, high minimum wages (to effectively ban non-automation), scrap in-work welfare like tax credits subsidising unproductive companies, etc.
I feel like rich people in the UK don't want to invest in tech or new ideas. That's the reason Silicon Valley exists: there's smart people and willing investors there.
Even so, it's mainly CA, NYC, and maybe Boston doing the heavy lifting in the US. The rest of the country is just some cows and corn. Maybe Chicago has tech companies now. Deep dish tech? I dunno.
The UK has a poor investment culture. Funds are concentrated into unproductive areas like landbanking and housing development because they have the largest return in our ridiculous property market, while investment into actual emerging technology development is neglected and the UK ends up as a client nation to the US.