5 Feet of Fury

Theodore Dalrymple: The Stubborn Appeal of Stupid Ideas

Theodore Dalrymple writes:

While I am on the subject of simple ideas, I found a truly simple one in the economics and business section of the paper. The headline read, “Productivity puzzle solved: just give the lowest-paid a big rise.” I loved the article: We all love evident foolishness.

British workers have the lowest productivity of workers in any major economy. If nothing changes, more people would have to work longer hours to increase national output. The low productivity may be due to low investment, or to the quality of the workers themselves, or to some combination of the two.