Reply #106: How Do You Determine "Domestic" Production? [View All]

[Yavin4]

For example, HP is an American corporation with their HQ here. However, they can send the bulk of their work to their subsidiary in India and have that count as productivity. IOW, there's no way to isolate the work that is being done here vs. work being done overseas when it's all under the same corporate umbrella. This is why the gains in productivity in the past decade have not lead to job and wage growth as the economists have expected.

This is also why the housing sector collasped. Folks were basing their data on historical numbers when people had union jobs and would pay their mortgages on time. Today's economy is filled with layoffs on a minute's notice, part time, and temporary jobs, and none of these things lead to sustained employment that would enable people to pay off a mortgage over 30 years.