Described by 20th-century economist Arthur Lewis, this is the point at which excess labor in low-productivity industries has been fully absorbed into the high-productivity industries.

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That is a massive amount of excess overhead in hardware, real estate, power consumption and productivity.

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While productivity initially bounced after the recession, reflecting a business sector that was shedding excess costs and becoming lean.

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Mr Greider chooses a global-crisis scenario, arguing among other things that the world is suffering from a shortage of consumption (an excess of saving) because workers in developing countries earn less than their productivity would indicate.

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