Here's the problem with measures of productivity: they are uniformly terrible.
Productivity exists nicely in the minds of economic theoreticians but concrete measures if it so often seem unable to capture nuances of the modern economy. It's not that it's impossible to do, it's just hard to consider all the product offerings available to consumers. If we take some time to think out of the box, we see that productivity has definitely gone up over the past decade.
For instance, let's consider content-delivery-to-consumer productivity. Netflix, Hulu, YouTube, etc have all vastly increased the ratio (video content)/(cost to aquire) and (video content)/(time to aquire). Not only have consumers been spared the once necessary and time consuming trek to Blockbuster, $15 which would have once afforded you a few video rentals a month now gives you access to the entirety of Netflix's library of content. Amazing!
This is a textbook example of productivity, possible only because of technological advances, but it is not captured in traditional measures of productivity.
Productivity exists nicely in the minds of economic theoreticians but concrete measures if it so often seem unable to capture nuances of the modern economy. It's not that it's impossible to do, it's just hard to consider all the product offerings available to consumers. If we take some time to think out of the box, we see that productivity has definitely gone up over the past decade.
For instance, let's consider content-delivery-to-consumer productivity. Netflix, Hulu, YouTube, etc have all vastly increased the ratio (video content)/(cost to aquire) and (video content)/(time to aquire). Not only have consumers been spared the once necessary and time consuming trek to Blockbuster, $15 which would have once afforded you a few video rentals a month now gives you access to the entirety of Netflix's library of content. Amazing!
This is a textbook example of productivity, possible only because of technological advances, but it is not captured in traditional measures of productivity.
So we must disregard them.