Adding a few hundred million Chinese and Indians to the world's productive labor force after 1980 slowed the rise in income for workers all over the developed world.
There is a huge qualitative difference between an economy built on natural resource extraction, where the populace is a cost center, and an economy built on productive labor by the population, where increasing capabilities of the society leads to more wealth.
"With planning and the right investments in people now ... our world of 7 billion can have thriving, sustainable cities, productive labor forces that can fuel economic growth, youth populations that contribute to the well-being of economies and societies, and a generation of older people who are healthy and actively engaged in the social and economic affairs of their communities, " UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund, said in a new report.
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When the rewards to the productive use of labor and capital go up, more people are hired, and more investments are made.
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Indeed, the Industrial Revolution itself (since 1750) entails the near-incessant introduction of new machines, factories, technologies, energies and transportation-communication systems all of which saved physical labor and made skilled labor more productive (thus better paid), and coincided with massive growth in all kinds of jobs, including in services, intellectual fields and in the invention, design and creation of new technologies.
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While international trade moves our jobs into more productive activities, takes advantage of our comparative advantage, makes our labor force as a whole more productive, it does not necessarily create more jobs than it destroys in the short term.
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The related business returns include a more educated workforce, more productive employees, and less risk of labor disruptions.
Free trade raises our standard of living, not by adding jobs, but by increasing what Adam Smith called the division and specialization of labor, making jobs more productive.
Over the last three decades, American factories have become vastly more productive in terms of output per hour of labor.
Instead of taxes and redistribution, the reformed programs rely on modern capital, labor and insurance markets, highly productive savings and investment, and highly effective, pro-growth market incentives.
In fact, hiking the current levy on payrolls to shore up Social Security and Medicare would have the perverse effect of weakening the economy by raising the cost of labor and reducing the rewards of productive work.
We know that when a woman can plan the size of her family, she is healthier, more likely to finish her education, join the labor force, become more economically productive and engage in politics, thus more effectively shaping the future of her family and her country.
It accounts for one percent or so of Euro-zone gross domestic product and its labor force is one of the least productive on the continent.
American companies cannot compete in a global economy when they are burdened with labor contracts that are so numerous, onerous and counter-productive that they make generating a profit an impossibility.
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Human beings as we know them are excited by every development in their offspring, because what purpose is there for the hard labor of parenthood if not to send forth an independent, productive adult who can satisfy his own needs?
The biggest problem, from an economic perspective, is that despite all these ills attacking the labor force, government stats show the average worker is twice as productive today as he or she was 40 years ago, thanks to technology, meaning that an occasionally distracted employee is a small price for a business to pay for so much more output.
The prospect of a higher wage encourages people to drop out of school and participate in the labor market (where they might crowd out those who are even less productive).
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