On this basis, the average German worker is more productive than the average Greek.

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In the tech world, it is widely known that a star performer is not just 50 percent more productive than an average person, but two or three times more productive.

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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.

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